Lost

...and I don't mean the TV show. Slowly, over the past few weeks, a series of...emotions and thoughts bouncing around inside my head, have started to become clearer and clearer. It is the realization, that as a person, I am completely lost. By lost I mean...directionless, purposeless. Meaningless.

It is becoming increasingly apparent to me, that my life is...inadequate. I run through a basic daily and weekly routine made up of...job, games, friends. It is the same thing week to week, day in and day out. My life can be quite simply reduced to a combination of life, computer, and comic shop visits. Not much meaning there.

Also quite apparent to me, is that this is all my fault. It is a cage I've built for myself, out of surrendered dreams, and desires slowly given away to apathy and inevitability. What's even more disturbing to me, is that I don't know how to change it. For as far out as I can project it...it's the same. Except it won't be the same. I seem to be the only person I know that isn't moving forwards somehow. My mother and father continue to refine their ideas and their writing. Len works on something similar...even Oscar and Chris are at least in college, with their own ideas of what they want--with varying degrees of insanity therein.

Only I remain the same. I'm afraid that I gave up everything that could help me long ago...to other people's expectations, or at least what I thought they expected of me. It terrifies me, the thought that I might live out a long, healthy...meaningless life. That this is all I'm good for now. To give away my time to something I don't really care about for money, and to spend the rest of my time in another world, trying desperately to escape reality...even for a few more minutes.

I would ask for help--but I know there isn't any. I have learned, long and hard, that the only person who can help me is myself. It must be done on my own strength, or not at all. I've ruined too many friendships trying to draw on others for strength to do that again. All of my live, from the very moment I was born, I've fought, fought for life, fought for something better, fought for myself....I just wonder if I've finally hit the one wall I can't break down or go over...

People Piss Me Off

It should come to no surprise to anyone who knows me, and fairly unsurprising to anyone who doesn't, that I have a temper. (And if you don't know me, why are you reading this?) Well, guess what. My temper has been inflamed, and in an attempt to cool myself down, I am writing about it here.

It started, actually, with a good thing. I finally, finally, finally got my demo of Halo to work. It turns out, it wasn't that the graphics card was glitching. It was a distributed computing project I was running in the background, that was sucking away huge amounts of processing power. The game would boot, run out of processing oomph, and die. I quit the background program, Halo runs fine. I played the Silent Cartographer level for a while--then decided to try the limited multiplayer included with the demo.

Apparently, Halo also stands for "Hellacious Assholes Lurking Online" or something like that. I can't remember ever being beaten so thoroughly by anyone on a demo version of a game. Y'see, it turns out that the room marked, "For Beginners" was created by a guy who apparently considers it great fun to use his great Halo skillz to beat up on newbies. Such as me. I was killed 20 times in two minutes. Even Lt. Dan can't do that to me.

So, I fume and storm, and watch WWE Smackdown! for a while to help myself cool off. I finally decided it was safe for me to start playing an online puzzle game. After all, how bad could puzzle games get?

Just as bad as Halo, apparently.

Long story short, bad teamwork, idiocy, morons, assholes, and plain old irritations abound in that game. I called another player on making a bad move that hurt me--and he blamed ME! What the hell is wrong with people? More importantly: What is wrong with me?

I know what one of the big problems is--I hate playing cheap. I hate cheats, shortcuts, backstabs, and all other manner of ways to get ahead unfairly. I like playing games how they were meant to be played, in the manner and style I enjoy. But, apparently, that's not cool. Apparently, I should be playing Halo for three years, just to get the opportunity to go beat up on 'stoopid n00bs'.

People piss me off.

My Kingdom for Some Sleep

Gurk. I think my title says it all--I'm bushed. That's what I get for staying out late two nights in a row, then not havin g the opportunity to get some decent sleep. Friday nights, I'm used to it--RPG game night. (We played X-men, I was team leader for the session. I drew the luck of getting to meet with Magneto. Woohoo.) Saturday, though--Halo and other various game night.

I was told, the session would start at 1pm, it'd be informal, not much going on...me, Len, Oscar and Lt. Dan. Well, it DID start at 1pm. It didn't end until 1 AM. After twelve hours of talking, laughing, playing Soul Calibur and Halo, I was worn out. (Note to self: if we're gonna play Halo, make sure we have four controllers, not two. One on one Halo Slayer matches aren't much fun.) It really got to the point where I could have gone home, I just didn't want to be the only one missing out on stuff. I shouldn't complain, I did stay willingly. It also had one small side-effect...

I think I'm getting addicted to Halo.

Yes, me, the RPG junkie, diehard FPS hater. It's fun. Fastpaced, but not overwhelming, bullet-flying fun, but not impossibly hard. I'm playing the PC demo--and I'm telling you, I wonder if by the end of next week, I'll have bought it. I shouldn't, I don't want to break my "No more games until you beat one" rule...I need to start playing more KotOR then. Oh my, the dilemmas of a game addict short on cash...