But like, with love.
Maybe “commanding” would be a better word. Or “inspiring”. Or something else that isn’t quite so brutal.
But I want the ability to decide to do things and just fucking do them. I am so very sick of my vacillating and uncertain ways.
I have had it up to here with agonizing over trivial decisions and raking myself over the coals over things I “should” have done by now but haven’t because I am too busy raking myself over those fucking coals.
This isn’t how I wanna be. I want to be strong and decisive. I want to be the kind of person who makes the decision then deals with the consequences.
Because there are far worse things than making the “wrong” choice. Yet I treat it like it’s the worst possible thing in the world to make a mistake.
Yet another way my depression rigs the game against me.
Partly it’s the experience trap. Without life experiences to enrich your soul and toughen you up and make you a more substantial person, you lack the wherewithal to go out there and get those very experiences.
The world stays a vast and terrifying unknown that it is very easy to project all your fears and worries onto and therefore imagine as a cold and hostile place.
And it is for some and isn’t for others. The happy person’s experiences are no less valid or meaningful than those of us twisted lost poets.
If you think to judge life, you have to include all lives, not just your own.
But I digress.
See, this is why it’s so important for young people to get out there into this big ol world and try all kind of crazy things and get all kinds of life experiences while they are still too young to know better.
Only through a marked inability to foresee the consequences of their actions can young people make all the vitally important mistakes that will make them stronger adults.
Whereas “sensible” types like myself stay at home and learn nothing.
I dunno how to make myself a slave to my own will. I suspect it has a lot to do with things like getting over myself, plunging into things head first, and going ahead and doing the things I know will be painful and scary.
It’s not like someone is going to come along and do them for me.
In most cases that’s not even possible.
Nobody can take care of my health for me. Nobody can live my life for me. Nobody can protect me from reality and be the shield I cower behind for me.
Sooner or later I have to take responsibility for myself and my fate. It’s tricky because I have to somehow take the empowering responsibility without setting off the booby traps of self-recrimination and inner loathing strewn all about.
How can it be my job to fix my life but not my fault it’s so broken?
How can I be too crazy to have done better but not too crazy to do better?
How can I have hope without power? How can I have power without hope?
And just WTF am I going to do with my life anyhow?
Why can’t I just live? Why do I need answers to these question?
Why can’t I just be a person like everybody else?
Only, ya know, fabulous.
I really don’t know.
But I am going to keep trying to figure it out.
More after the break.
The final fight
Stuck on the final fight of an Oblivion mod called Knights of the Nine : Revelation.
Because it’s so haaaaaaard.
The problem is that there is too much going on and it is overloading my very limited capacity for multitasking.
There’s the main villain, Sir Gareth, who hits pretty hard. There is this slow moving glowing black sphere he summons which follow me around like my own personal Locknar. There’s these rains of little fireballs that can fry my ass. There’s this enormous fire BEAM that shoots between Gareth and the Locknar now and then.
Plus there’s these demons he also summons. All in all, it’s too much for me to track and I can’t develop a coherent and effective battle strategy with my brains all scrambled.
So I have been gutting it out, which in this case means dying a lot and saving the game when I make even the slightest bit of progress.
But that is taking forever and I am beginning to get sick of it. Plus I have my doubts as to whether I am actually getting anywhere as I think the fire beam thing might actually be healing him up, in which case, fuck it, I give up, I don’t stand a chance.
I’ll just write the whole thing off as a bad job and do something more rewarding, like writing my name on the wall in shit.
But barring that, I am still going to give up on trying to kill the bastard for now. I might even go way back to the earlier part of the quest, before the trip to the past.
It’s a long story.
I have asked the mod author himself for hints on that last fucking fight, and based on those, I will decide whether I want to continue the fucking thing.
I’ve put a fair bit of time, energy, and aggravation into the mod so far, and I have enjoyed myself. So it would suck to give up now.
But let me intone the Gamer Sanity Mantra : I play video games to have fun. If a game stops being fun and doesn’t seem like it’s going to go back to being fun any time soon, I have every right to ragequit and play something else.
I will not sacrifice my sanity to the sunk cost fallacy.
I will not beat my brains out on the same brick wall for hours.
I will recognize the signs of game induced insanity (constant agitation, obsessive thoughts, burning depression, muttering to oneself, finger counting) and follow their signal that I disengage for a while.
And when enough time has passed, I will look back upon that game with clear eyes and a fresh mind, and cooly consider whether or not I could do better now.
And thus, I will be free to enjoy video games without risking my very soul. Amen.
I feel cleansed.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.