Helldivers: Survive the hard stuff and don't shoot your wife

Day 63: You don’t live your best life by doing what is easy.

To my complete disgust, students in my introductory speech course often admit that they aspire to be reality television stars.  Other than Tabletop of course, the only "reality" show I adore is Survivor.  But in most cases living in a fish bowl of social scrutiny is both narcissistic and asinine to me.  I don’t want to be famous but I would be on Survivor, especially with Wil Wheaton (someone call Jeff Probst stat). The idea of a social experiment that is both physically and mentally grueling, that challenges the core aspects of human interaction is so great.  This show appeals to me because castaways are asked to complete impossibly hard tasks.  Plus its all one big game, and games are fracking awesome.  But the reason my students’ shallow aspirations bother me is because all of my best qualities have been acquired by doing hard things.

The last few years some of those hard things include:

handstands and arm balances post wrist fractures

running half marathons

finishing my EdD

writing a dissertation (all recent characters named DrCCB)

deciding to game instead of get a divorce

When life deals you hard stuff, call in the turrets

Currently I am undergoing several simultaneous self-imposed transformations in my marriage, in my gaming habits, in myself, with my hair (yup stay tuned for Jem hair).  Some days life is so painful that I am not sure how I will ever move my legs from the bed to the cold hard and unforgiving floor of the early morning, but I do.  And I am able to do that because I do hard things.  By choice or by fate, I faced the hard things and did not let it make me hard, all those experiences just made me durable. 

It does not mean I have to do every hard thing that comes my way.  I have regularly mentioned I am not good at FPS games.  Though not an FPS, my current aim accuracy in Helldivers is less than 20%.  But we are surviving levels because I call in the turrets and take cover when I can’t survive another wave.  I don’t put down the controller I just learn new stratagems (this is a real word I swear) to help keep the support coming.

Updates: 

Wil Wheaton is not responding to my blogging pleas to visit Btown.  At this rate I am thinking I will need a Wheaton effigy to replace him at our table for gaming. 

Jem hair countdown 5 days (not Gem as autocorrect keeps insisting).  

John has not killed me as much in Helldivers.  We have taken a screenshot of the three times where my character was not shot by my husband.  Plus my turrets have totally saved his butt several times. The "accidentals" row numerically counts how many times you killed your co-op player.