Each night as I lay in bed, I look forward to the next day. I am excited at the prospects that lay ahead. It is more than a taste of what I laid out at the year's start.

I feel as though I am amidst change. I referenced the other day how I have found I am no longer interested in console gaming. Last night, I realized that outside of a deck-building game, I have not played a PC game since moving to Bartlett over a year ago. Now, I regularly watch one being played, typically by City Planner Plays, and have enjoyed his take on Manor Lords that will be released later today.

Just as console gaming has played a foundational role in my life, PC gaming has done so even more. Long ago was the Texas Instrument TI-99 as a 5 or 6-year-old. Later there were shareware disks, and "playthroughs" on Aldus PageMaker—a near endless parade of games along the way that included a rich tapestry of people in my life whether...

...watching over friends' shoulders with Bard's Tale in the late 80s and EverQuest in 2000,

...competing after a Bible study with Unreal Tournament LAN parties in 2002,

...and team building at work at UofM with end-of-the-day Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat mod in 2003 that would evolve into a virtual world of World of Warcraft in 2005.

Just like pickup games in basketball, sparring in Taekwondo, and shared smiles, I never knew the last one was the last one.

I am just interested in...real-world PC gaming. Instead of building things on a screen, it is there before me, shaped by these two hands, not clicked into existence. I typically do not reach out for that sort of thing because of the actual expense, labor, and expertise required. I tend to gravitate toward playing in this sandbox.

What is the meaning of it all? What do I have to show for it? Longing for a reality that could never be? It is funny how I will look over my life with computers, leisure, and career and just think, "What a waste," at least it comes off as pretty hollow! In the end, the relationships along the way were all that mattered. Solving puzzles was just the background context. It is an artificial life.

But what else could there have been?

'Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair
And the days surround your daylight there

America, Ventura Highway