Gear is Better than Roses

Day 37 (repost from Day 2): Virtual and RL Trauma

This morning was a teacher in service morning and that means I can’t take my kids to school until 10:30 am.  Though I did have plans to drag my kids on errands with me instead I spent over an hour just watching them play Diablo 3 on the PS4.  I was putting away dishes and then I just stopped to watch for a moment and before I knew it I was dragging them to the car because we had to get them to class.

It made me grateful that I am reflecting on this 100-day experiment because I forgot how much I lose myself in games.

Patches Can’t Fix Everything

When the mind experiences trauma, it is hard not to dwell.  Actually enjoying or focusing on day-to-day matters seems impossible.  I know it is not impossible but I also know that it just feels that way at the most unexpected times.  In many ways internal noise is like frustration with a video game.

When a game glitches it makes everyone crazy; controllers are thrown; there is online trolling for solutions, and venting.  It is hard not to hold on to that one annoying moment even though a patch will fix it the next day.  But not everything is fixable with a patch.  If a game is just bad, sometimes we still keep in our cabinet and save our progress on a hardrive just in case someday we get bored and don’t want to start over again.  Trauma can be a little glitch or a bad game but in either event it is not worth giving it too much time from my day or space on my hard drive.

I know its pathetic that I keep fantasizing that Blizzard is going to offer a patch for my life that I can just download direct to my brain and play past all the bad stuff.  Instead I have to consciously remind myself to stop trolling and occupy my mind/ hard drive with better games and memories: like watching my kids side-by-side on the couch playing Diablo and giggling at their Barbarians bikini mid-drift.

Playing: Diablo 3

System: PS4

Developer: Blizzard

Reflection: Because Wednesday evenings are filled with catechism, daycare, and homework, time for games is sparse.  In the morning before we even left the house we set out to complete one quick mission in Diablo 3 that took less than 10 minutes.  As I said in my first post I can’t change the big picture or deal with all the hard stuff in RL, but 10 minutes of hack and slash and teleporting back to town is manageable.

For those of you who don’t know me, Blizzard was instrumental in helping me decide to marry my husband.  After anything Blizzard, the most romantic game I ever played was Animal Crossing.  I remember waking up and first thing turning on my Gamecube excited to read my new love notes on the message board.  The first Diablo and WoW have both been a mechanism to love one another with gifts, and healing, and time together even when we were apart.  Yesterday while in game, I walked right by the mailbox in town and my hubs had to remind me to “check the mail.”  He had left me gear that I am not a high enough level to equip, it was both thoughtful and a great motivation to keep leveling up so my warrior can look even more awesome. 

Today I offer this tip: For the gamers out there that are in love with a fellow geek…send gear, its better than flowers.