A Birthday Past

My birthday went pretty well all told. I enjoyed myself at work--it's nice to be told you look ten years younger than you are, even with all my gray hair. Helps to have a baby face and no crow's feet, and to be in good shape. At home we didn't have any big plans, which was just as well since Dorothy had kind of an off day with her Pheo business anyway. Haley did make me a cake, though, and I liked the quiet time.

Much of my fun I had online, just making funny comments and tending my farm and my fish and sending app gifts and all that. I get a lot of commentary now from some of my former students, and from some of the former students of a writer friend. And quite a few people weighed in to wish me a happy birthday whom I have hardly had any contact with apart from saying hello when we first did the friend request/accept thing.

Now that I have passed the half-century mark, there is no denying that time is running out, and so I have to make some decisions about what I do and do not want to do. I am not going to spend every minute working or anything like that, but my recreation time should at least be something I genuinely enjoy and that amounts to something. Taking a walk is exercise, even if I take one to just enjoy it. So is reading a book, or watching a quality movie, or even just having a fun online chat with a friend.

I said a few months ago that I was going to try to give video games a go as a means to relax, but this just isn't going to happen. I was right the first time when I essentially chose not to play them years ago. I get no exercise, I'm not killing anything that needs killing, nor saving a real kingdom/space colony, nor escaping a real dungeon or penetrating a real castle. I'm not even shooting a real gun or wielding a real sword, and the worst thing for me is that I'm forcing myself to go along with some other guy's imagination of a virtual world, even while I see the program loops running in my mind, and note the dull, dismal sameness that exists from level to level of the programmed subroutines and loops. A new weapon? Oh, that's a call to a new routine, and then back into the loop. Whoopee.

Games remain hot, my kids love them, but they just aren't for me--I get nothing out of playing them at all. I was also wrong in thinking that I needed to avoid them because I need to "own" them if they play them. I don't. It now turns out that the longer I play the less I want to. I do like a lot of the artwork, though, but I can enjoy that without playing a game.

More thoughts next time.