The past couple of weeks saw no post from me and it makes me sad… Not because anyone might miss me, but because it means the holiday season is here once again. 2019 is almost done… I can’t understand how we are almost at 2020. The year 2000 seem insane… but now 2020 is just a few weekends away.
The lack of posts is due to the type of work I do, which kicks up significantly during the holiday season. Not to mention all of the family and church events that are happening during that season. Makes enjoying your hobbies a little more difficult than the rest of the year.
The other thing that kept me away from posting is, I have the hardest time finding images for my posts. Not sure if anyone else struggles with this, but I sometimes spent as much if not more time looking for images than I do writing.
With all of that said I wanted to write a quick post about the things I am thankful for this holiday season. I know the post is a little late, because Thanksgiving was last week.
I am thankful for video games in general, as a storytelling medium, as a way to pass time, as something to completely get away from real life.
All of those things can vary in importance to different people, but I think each one of those is very important to someone.
For me games have always been a way to disconnect from the world and rest my mind and soul from the everyday. There is an awful lot of responsibilities that are laid on people of all ages, that sometimes promotes unhealthy habits that could lead to self inflicted pain. Video games as a medium helped me not do that.
When I was younger, video games helped me stay out of bad crowds. For some reason going out with people my age, seemed too much effort with very little reward, so I didn’t do that. I am now a full fledged adult and can tell you with full confidence that it served me well. Not a whole lot of my friends are living stable, wholesome lives at the moment. Some have served time, others have had their relationships completely broken, and it’s not due to the lack of video games of course, but because they had nothing that kept them off the streets during that critical age where you are able to ruin your life with one mistake.
I am thankful to video games, for enabling me to do things I couldn’t do in real life. Things like driving a car, being under the age limit that was a big one. Winning a FIFA World Cup with my country’s team… something that probably will never happen, even if my country was the only one left in the world they would still manage to mess it up… not bitter.
Life is about stories, we all love hearing stories, we love telling them and videogames are full of stories. To me video games were the books of our time. Even though I still read a lot of books, it was very different to be the character that makes the journey. There was something so very unique about, making decisions, reading the dialogue, reading the responses of other characters to you. Being that character in a fantastic world with incredible creatures and powers. It was and is still the most amazing part of playing a video game.
This next thing might not be as obvious, but English is not my first language, and RPG games like Final Fantasy, really helped me with reading comprehension. You weren’t going to get where you needed to go if you didn’t pay attention. I remember, because of video games, I was reading at the 11th grade level while being in the 8th. Practice makes perfect.
Video games are a relatively inexpensive hobby too. Which was extremely helpful when you are young. I don’t know how it is for kids these days but when I was a youngster I had to make my own money to get video games. I used to mow lawns to get some money, I even started my own lawn mowing business when I was 14. It didn’t do all that well, but it got me some money to get video games. Luckily I was alive during the time when Blockbuster was around. So renting a game for $5 was the greatest thing for someone on a budget. I would mow a lawn and then go rent a game and it was the greatest feeling as a kid, to earn that money and then reward yourself with something cool. So being into video games I stayed away from expensive hobbies like, card collecting, or sports. I played a bit of sports but nothing that cost my parents money.
So there is that, thank you to those that make video games, you work is appreciated and valued.
What are you thankful for?
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