Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Life is a Journey Not a Destination...

...and I hate that.

Okay, let's back up.

Brent and Katie can tell you that I make everything a game. It is no wonder that Katie ended up being a game designer for a living. She was raised with a mother whose mindset is "How can I turn this into a game?" Not just for the win, though I love to win, but just because everything is so much more fun if it's a game. 

But here is the truth of it. Or another part of the truth of it. 

I turn everything into a game because the "getting there" parts of life bore the fuck out of me. I want teleportation technology so I don't have to waste time travelling to get to the fun place. I want replicator technology so I don't have to waste time cooking to eat the delicious food. Before the Kindle made it much harder to do I was a back page reader in books to make sure the main character was still alive before I bothered investing my time. Odd that I hate spoilers in movies and TV shows so much...but what can I say, I'm an enigma.

I walk fast. I drive fast. I have tightly packed vacation schedules. I want to get to the good stuff right away. 

The whole "enjoy the journey" thing doesn't work for me unless I turn the journey into a fun game. And they don't have to be complicated games, or even something anyone else would recognize as a game. Like count the tiles of concrete on the sidewalk and how many steps are there in each section and can you make it even, two strides never three. Or how many crows are out today, is it more than yesterday and can you get one to follow you? Or race the sucker hole so you don't get rained on, but anthropomorphize the clouds so it's personal. 

Travelling becomes pay attention to all of the people in the airport because surely one of them will make a good character in a short story. Or if you're really lucky you'll get a whole blog out of something that happens. 

Life is a game to me because otherwise I can't. I just can't even. 

It's why meditation failed for me so many times. The sitting and just being for me was pure torture. When do we get to the enlightenment part? I just want that. When I finally found a program that was catered to people who absolutely cannot shut down their minds it was a revelation. OH! I have been meditating all along. Just they were walking meditations and counting my steps wasn't just a great game, but it was a way of meditating. 

It's why I write short stories. I don't want to waste my time writing the middle part when I already know how it ends. I want to get there as quickly as possible. Often I already know what I want the last paragraph or last line to be and the rest is just working out how to get there. And it needs to be as quickly as possible or I'm going to lose any interest in it at all. 

Which makes this a really long way to tell Dana I don't know if I'm ever going to get back to the story I started in January. I am SO bored with these people...




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