With a crispy chicken sandwich from Sonic in hand, I mumbled some complaints to Danny through a mouthful of chicken and ciabatta. Just some crap about how life isn’t fair in regards to some unfortunate events that have been occurring recently in my life. Things I won’t get into because they’re just not worth dwelling on at this point. Because… You know what? Nevermind. Not worth dwelling on.
Anyway, I mentioned to him that when life gets tough, I notice that my urge to play video games gets stronger, namely World of Warcraft. This compulsion comes over me, telling me to submerge myself in this friggin’ game and just forget about life for a couple hours, or a day, or fuck, a week. I told him that I don’t know why this happens to me, and then he said something that flipped a light switch somewhere in my mind.
He said that he totally understood what I was saying, which I already knew (after nine and a half years of unwedded bliss, I would hope so), and he proceeded to say that his theory was always that, well, life is unfair. Sometimes you work your ass off to get nowhere, or worse, find yourself further back than when you began. Sometimes you do everything right only to find that people who do everything wrong are the ones that float to the surface while you continue to drown. Sometimes life just sucks and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it. But when you work hard in a game, you see the results from your hard work. If you work hard, you’re guaranteed to level up, get that sick piece of gear, or find yourself with a collection of 511 battle pets (quite the achievement, let me tell you). There is no such thing as failure in games as long as you put the time in and you keep trying.
Not to be a Debbie Downer or anythin. I’m not implying that life is always a steaming pile of dog shit on your front porch. It’s just that every now and then, you find yourself up to your eyeballs in that dog shit and you can’t find your way out, no matter what you do. That’s where World of Warcraft comes in, and thank God for that.
