During my mom’s stay at the hospital throughout 2009, she had to have a lot of blood transfused to her. The tumors she had were especially hungry for hematocrits and as her levels would drop suddenly, pints of blood had to be had at the ready so keep her stabilized. All in all, over the 5 or so months she spent in and out of the hospital, she ended up using 12 pints of blood.

You know those commercials where they say to please donate blood, that you might be saving a life? Guess what, they’re 100% true. Thanks to those 12 pints of blood my mom was able to live just a little longer. She had no way to pay that cosmic debt back, but I had.

Since late 2009, I embarked on a small quest to donate those 12 pints of blood back (and just to put it more in perspective, that’s 1.5 gallons of blood). Last night I made it. Last night I donated my 12th pint of blood of the last two-ish years, and finally managed to pay back what was owed.

I feel awesome. I know for a fact that this blood I have donated will go to help someone else live a little longer, be with their loved ones a little longer. I know Mom is high-fiving me right now.

I don’t intend to stop. I intend to continue donating every 2 months, because someone will always need blood. I exhort you to donate blood regularly as well.

For Mom, for myself, for those who will need it and will have it thanks to my and your donations.

Today is my dad’s 59th birthday. Or, it would’ve been, anyway. My dad died in 1993, 18 years ago last November 19. I was 19 at the time, he was 40, just a month shy of turning 41.

I don’t talk a lot about my father, especially not as much as I do about my mother. It’s not that I loved him any less, it’s that he’s been dead longer and I’ve had many years to bring that pain down to a semi-comfortable numbness. There’s also the simple issue that I didn’t know my father well.

My parents divorced when I was 2. My father had a problem with drugs and my mother wasn’t gonna have that. My father went through rehab, completed it, relapsed, and rehabbed again. During this process, my entire early childhood, I only got to see my dad on a few occasions. I really didn’t grow up with him, though everyone did their best to make sure he was somehow in my life.

The picture above was taken when I was 10. By then he was living in the States, doing (I would only learn later on) ministry with other men who’d gone through the same problems he had. By the time I hit my mid-teens, my dad was an established youth counselor working with troubled teens in Florida. I visited him over one summer and went camping with some of those kids. It was the summer I had my first cigarette and saw my first pair of real boobs, up in the North Carolina mountains.

He was a youth counselor for years, and even if I didn’t entirely grasp all that he did (he did not like to talk too much about his cases to protect his kids’ privacy), I was fucking proud of what he did. The flip-side was that I was jealous that those troubled kids got a lot more of him than I did. But he lived in Miami, and I in Puerto Rico, so we did what we could.

He died suddenly. He went in for a check-up, and two weeks later he was dead. My dad had done a lot of damage to his body over his youth, which was worsened by some serious car accidents he’d been in over the years (many a result of the stupid decisions of his youth). I used to say my dad was stuck together with spit and a prayer, and I wasn’t far from the truth. His time came up and I was left without him just as I was getting to know him as an adult.

As angry as I am at G-d[rel]Yes, I get angry at G-d at times. Faith is a struggle, not a joyride.[/ref] sometimes for my mom’s death, over the years I’ve been far more angry over my dad’s. As much as I love my paternal grandfather and uncle, they aren’t him, and there’s a lot of things I’ve left unsaid over the years because he wasn’t here. There will be more. It is what it is.

I have learned a lot more about my dad in the last 18 years. I have acquired documents relating to his life, essays he wrote for university, letters he wrote my mom over the years. I have built a better picture of him, of the real him, though it remains (and it always will remain) incomplete. I’m pretty sure I have in me a story about the process of getting to know my dad after his death; one day it’ll emerge.

All this said, today isn’t a day to remember his death. Today is a celebration of his life. Today I remember my dad as the guy in the pic above, or as the guy who took his 16-year old son around Miami early on various Saturday mornings to attend some Star Trek or comic convention while he visited from Puerto Rico. As the guy who, though he fucked up during his own youth, more than made it up by helping to steer hundreds of other young kids away from drugs and violence, a good number of them successfully, too.

That is my dad. That is Miguel Angel Perez, Micky as he was known to most; just Papi to me and my brother. Happy birthday.

Ten years ago I woke up to get ready for class. It was a Tuesday. I shuffled half-asleep into the living room and turned the TV on as I walked to the kitchen to get the coffee started. It was maybe 5-7 minutes after the first plane had struck. I’d never been to NYC, never seen the Twin Towers so the scale of the event was lost on me. When they said “plane” I kept thinking “small personal jet” at most. A replay of the events slapped me across the face into understanding. I went to the room to wake up my girlfriend (now my wife) whit the words, “A plane crashed on the World Trade Center.” I walked back to the living room in time to see the second plane crash live on TV.

Today is Sunday. I won’t be watching the litany of TV shows about that day. I have no need to. I close my eyes and I still see those images clear as day in my mind. I can remember without wallowing in it. The best way to honor those who died that day is to live. Live a normal life; live normal, regular life. It’s good to remember but it’s even better to honor by doing the one thing they can’t anymore, the one thing they wanted more than anything that day: to live.

Today I will go out with my wife and we will ride our bikes and maybe hit the beach and we will live. We will remember but most of all we will live. Do so as well.

A link to a page called “How to stop your kids from becoming Atheists” flew around a couple times this morning on my Twitter feed. I decided to ignore it, as it wasn’t aimed at me directly, but then I thought about it and decided to actually respond to it. Or rather, respond to years of such little links and comments read and heard from people I consider friends or close acquaintances. This isn’t a rant, this isn’t a retort. This is a response.

You decided you do not believe in G-d, and I decided that I believe in G-d. Your decision does not make you any smarter, insightful, wise, accepting, or educated than me. Neither does mine make me all that in relation to you. When you say general statements about believers, remember you are including those who are your friends, those whom you respect and respect you, among them. That means me, Daniel, the guy you play games with, go to school with, chat online with, joke with, even sometimes share a true memorable moment with.

I don’t mind that you’re an Atheist. I honestly don’t care because that is your choice. I respect your choice. I will even talk about our choices, how they differ, how they may even be similar in some ways, and not have a problem with it (heck, in many cases I’d welcome it). It’s your choice and I respect it, especially if you are my friend, even if I don’t believe the same way. That goes for Atheist, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or Pastafarians. I only ask you do the same.

I am a convert to Judaism. That means I chose my belief, and I did after a really hard and intense–painful, even–struggle with myself about belief in G-d and me as an individual (and frankly, it’s a struggle I continue to be engaged in every day). But even if I wasn’t, even if I’d been born into observant Judaism (or Christianity, etc), my point remains the same. I am not an anomaly, I am simply an example, just like how you reached your decision to be an Atheist isn’t the same as that of others.

“But, Daniel,” you may ask, “what about the Westboro people, or the Jihadists, or the [Insert Religious Extremist Group Here]?” What can I tell you, there’s shitty people in all walks of life. What about Atheists that believe all believers should be killed (I’ve actually heard this, don’t laugh)? I’m sure we’re both groaning right now. Listen, these people are out there. Let’s not be like them, then.

I don’t need you to apologize for tweeting that link today if you did, or for any comment you may or may not have made in the past. I honestly don’t. I also don’t want you to police what you say to be politically correct. Just be aware of what you say, what you forward along, and understand you might be hurting someone you actually esteem.

Yesterday, August 8th, was the second anniversary of my mother’s death. I spent it flying, mostly, and getting ready for the fast of Tisha B’Av. To be honest, it almost slipped by me.

Much like last year, the anniversary came during Gen Con, arguably my happiest geekiest time of the year. Last year, however, I was in a very bad place emotionally and personally. Gen Con was an escape, literally, from everything except from myself. It also being the first anniversary, it hit me really hard. I remember being piss drunk at 3AM, the time when she died, and wandering the streets looking for ways to further my descent.^[1]

That wasn’t the case this year. I am a very different person one year later. I went through almost a year of therapy and some crucibles that changed me and made me the healthier person I am now. So when Sunday night rolled around and I was just packing and thinking about the transportation in the early morning to the airport, it suddenly felt like a cold splash/slap when I looked at the clock and saw that it was just past 2AM. I almost, almost, had let it pass unnoticed, unmarked. I kept packing and 3AM rolled around. I did a small prayer and thought about her at that precise moment.

I felt somewhat guilty that I almost forgot about it. The alternative of being like I was last year was not appealing, either. Had I been there at that dark spot, it would’ve meant wasting a lot of therapy and blood, sweat and tears. Not to mention that I know my mom wouldn’t like it a bit. But then again, almost having that moment slip by because I was concerned with frivolities was maybe too much. And I realize I am beating myself too hard here.

The truth is this: it is now two years since my mom died, and I still miss her terribly so. The last two Gen Cons I find it bizarre that I’m not taking a moment each night to call her and tell her about my day at the con. The week before heading out to Indy, as I returned home from work, I had that urge to call her in the afternoon after work, something I hadn’t experienced in months. Though I now go through life normally, there are times when this hits me again, and I just need to power through it and move along. I am ok, I really am, but I also have a hole within me since the day she died that won’t be filled in ever again. I’ve learned to live with it, but sometimes, just sometimes, it hurts.

To my mom, whom I loved and still love like only a son can love his mother. I miss you.

1. ^[1] Strangely enough, it was precisely at this time that I met with Ryan Macklin and he offered me This Just In… From Gen Con for 2011. ↩

I was listening last week to episode 18 of Dice + Food + Lodging Podcast, the second part of a conversation between host Tim and guest Robert Bohl. It was an interesting chat all around, but around halfway through the episode they started talking about innovation in gaming, and my ears perked up.

I have a love-hate relationship with that word when it comes to game design. And I’ll admit up-front that it’s my own baggage, by the way.

As a game designer, I fall squarely in the System Hacker camp; I like to tinker with systems I fall in love with and add fiddly bits to them to make them do extra things that appeal to me. That’s why the d20 era was so great for me. As I started to work on my Vampire rebuild, I very quickly copped to my (self-imposed?) limitation saying that I was setting out to put together elements I liked, not to create the Next Big Thing in Gaming (TM). In short, Hey, I’m just messing with existing parts, not creating new ones. I did this because I have never thought of myself as that kind of game designer: I see some of the really nifty ideas-turned-games out there and I appreciate the elements they add to the general gamer/designer toolbox, but never think I can do it as well. Again, my own baggage for another occasion.

The point is that innovation is this bugbear in my game design highway that I constantly feel I need to be on alert for. So when I hear the topic come up in this conversation, it immediately recalls to my mind all these thoughts and feelings. But this time, there was an extra piece that had never been there before.

I’m reading now God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, by Adam Nicolson (I need something in the Humanities to refresh my brain from all the science I deal with in class). As it discusses the initial clash between Anglicans and Puritans which the newly-crowned James had to deal with and a petition to meet and resolve their differences, the text says the following about the Puritan petitioners (pg. 39, emphasis mine):

Describing themselves as ‘Ministers of the Gospell, that desier not a disorderly innovation [nothing was more loathsome to the seventeenth-century mind than the idea of innovation; 'novelist' was a term of abuse, 'primitivist' of the highest praise] but a due and godlie reformation…’

That parenthetical was like a splash of cold water. I studied Elizabethan English literature for two years in college, delved pretty deeply into it, and while instinctively I knew the above as true, I don’t recall ever seeing it stated outright. It was an assumption of our classes and discussions; to see it spelled out made something click in me and go, yeah, yeah of course, how didn’t I see that obviously before?

The point is, the modern mind has a love affair with innovation, but this wasn’t always the case. At a time when English language, literature and culture are going through their (arguably) most prolific transformation, the idea of innovation is seen as “loathsome.” Hearkening back to the “primitive,” to the classics, to what already existed, was tested and proven, was the right thing to do. Mind you, within this framework the English renaissance mind still sought to move forward in thought and philosophy, but always with a clear understanding of the classical basis for any argument. The King James Bible will come to be in this environment, where the Translators (they saw their job as such, never as Authors, a term they outright denied and despised) put together a work of religious and literary artistry still used today.

In my new academic field of Science, innovation is highly prized, especially in Medical Science. There is a never-ending quest to revise existing protocols, to dig deeper into nature to uncover more of Life’s mysteries, a mandate (implied, if not outright stated) to evolve in our fields. In my previous academic field of English, especially in my particular concentration of 16th-17th Century England, it is the idea of primitivism that holds court. Even as we ponder texts four and five-hundred years old, bringing their situations, themes, ideas into our modern world, we do so with feet firmly planted in the era that birthed them, and the even older ideas that shaped them to begin with.

My brain is split along similar lines: my scientific brain is novelist, my artistic brain is primitivist. And for me, game design is firmly a product of my artistic brain, not the scientific one. It explains why I much prefer to look at the past to pick my working materials than trying to conjure them in order to do things not done before. This realization is new, and it’s one that I can only verbalize now after years of thinking about these topics and with the aid of these last two catalysts to the reaction, Tim and Rob’s conversation, and the passage in the book.

Understanding this dichotomy will, I believe, help me get rid of my own self-imposed stigmas about game design, and in turn simply let me create what I want to create, beholden only to myself.

I’m not saying innovation is bad; we’ve moved past the Elizabethan and Jacobean mentality to a time when innovation does have its place. I’m just realizing that I’m not that kind of designer, and that, more importantly, that’s just fine as well.

My wife has been teaching herself Japanese for some time now, and in order to get her ear accustomed to the language being spoken, we have been watching a lot of anime. This is a series of reviews about some of the shows we have seen.

The Tower of Druaga

Ironically, I watched this show by myself while my wife was away on vacation, so it’s an odd choice to start a series about shows we’ve mostly watched together. But it’s the one burning a hole in my mind at the moment, so it gets to be the first.

The Tower of Druaga is a fantasy anime available for free online at Crunchyroll.com. It consists of two parts, each part 12 episodes long:

• The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of URUK (Part 1)
• The Tower of Druaga: The Sword of URUK (Part 2)

It is based on a series of Nintendo videogames from the 80s, though the events of the game are only the springboard for those of the anime. This wasn’t a game I knew of, and the reason I watched this show was because I’d seen a trailer for it while watching another anime (El Cazador de la Bruja, a show I’ll eventually review here as well) and this being fantasy in very much a D&D vein, it caught my attention.

I was expecting this to be a fairly standard fantasy action anime with lots of cool visuals of swords and sorcery. Frankly, I would have been happy just getting that and calling it a day. What I got instead was a show with a well-defined world setting borrowing elements from Babylonian and Sumerian legends, a somewhat complex story with not a few twists and turns, a nice mix of action, drama and comedy, and an idea generator that has taken residence in my brain and is making me start a new game.

The Tower of Druaga is the story of Jil, a noble-hearted, idealistic and inexperienced warrior who wants to climb the fabled Tower of Druaga, a massive vertical monster-ridden dungeon that rises into the clouds and which is guarded at the top by the demon that gives the tower its name. The Tower was once climbed, and Druaga defeated, by the hero Gilgamesh (or Gil). It is now 80 years later and Gil’s feat has not been achieved again. A new Tower has risen since, engulfing the original one, full of even more dangerous creatures. As the story starts, Jil is part of a group of Climbers, the name given to adventurers who brave the Tower of Druaga for fame and fortune. Unfortunately, Jil is off to a bad start.

Warning: the first episode is all a dream! It is a parody of a number of anime tropes, and roughly recounts the events of the Tower of Druaga videogame. I almost chucked the whole series aside but for some reason decided to stick through to the end of the episode, for which I am glad once I saw it was a dream and the show was not in the same tone. Watch it if you want, but just know that it is a dream and has no bearing on the actual story. Or skip it; I don’t think you’ll miss anything important at all.

Along the way Jil meets Kaaya (an Oracle of Ishtar), Ahmey (a warrior with a wicked lance), Melt (a storm wizard with a superiority complex) and Coopa (Melt’s retainer and freakishly strong) and together they set off to climb the Tower during the Summer of Anu, a recurring time during which the monsters of the Tower are weakened and thus easier to vanquish. Jil also has ties to another parrty of Climbers consisting of Neeba (archer extraordinaire and Jil’s older brother), Utu (a warrior in full-plate armor), Kally (a first-caliber rogue) and Fatina (a fire mage with a “shotgun”). In Part 2, the druid Hennaro joins the cast as well. Though they seem to be competing at times, these two groups are constantly crossing paths and characters from both become fairly important to everyone around.

You can find reviews of the storyline of the show online, so I won’t try to recount it here (besides, I want you watch the show). Instead I want to tell you, with as little spoilers as possible, why I liked this show.

First of all, I’m a sucker for reimagined Earth mythos, and Tower of Druaga grabs bits and pieces of Babylonian and Sumerian legends and uses them to build a new world that feels fairly complete beyond the scope of the show. Uruk, the kingdom ruled by King Gilgamesh and mentioned in the name of the show’s two parts, is the result of the fusing of former nations of Babylin and Sumer, and this comes into play during the story, as factions from the former Sumer want to see their nation reinstated (post-colonialism in an anime!). It helps lend the setting an air of consistency as it draws on legends that are fairly complex as its source material.

I liked the mix of tones: there was action, comedy, drama and they all worked well in order to move the story along. Given the fairly large cast and the limited number of episodes, the characters are fairly well-rounded, especially those that take center stage. Even some minor characters that suddenly show up and are fairly one-dimensional get a chance at dramatic depth here and there. For the main characters, this results in protagonists that are well defined, have a variety of goals and ambitions, navigate a complicated web of interpersonal relationships,  and at least to me, never feel boring or old.

The story actually surprised me at times. It seems fairly simple at first glance: all groups wanna reach the top of the Tower to claim the Blue Crystal Rod which will grant them a wish. That works in a videogame because it’s one character, but here there are groups of characters and the rod only gives one wish, period. That alone is a source of conflict within a party, let alone among all the Climbers vying for that treasure. This becomes a major issue in the story and the seed for a lot of the surprises along the way as people start asking of themselves and those around them: Why am I climbing the Tower for? As soon as answers to this question start flying, so do the betrayals, and boy, do they come from the most unexpected places.

Most of all, I liked that at the end of the day, The Tower of Druaga was actually the story of two brothers hashing out some really troublesome emotional baggage and the effect this has on those around them whom they come to trust and love (if at all). It also is a story about trust, about the complexity of friendships, about family, and about life and death. It is nicely wrapped in a fantasy action package, but it is far more than just a show with magic, swords and dragons.

I liked the anime so much that it has taken residence in my head. The reason? I can see this as a great setting for a roleplaying game. Maybe not an entire game product, but certainly a game or a short campaign. Given that lately I have been smitten with the Dragon Age RPG, this is the game that I would use to bring Tower of Druaga to my table. So I am now planning a Tower of Druaga-based game powered by Dragon Age, and I cannot wait to get started.

Give the show a try (with my warning about episode 1 in mind; also know that episode 6 of Part 1 seems to have problems playing at Crunchyroll – I skipped it and don’t think I missed anything major) and let me know what you think.

At 1:00 PM today, October 12, I turned 36 years old; I know it will take a bit for that to sink it, just as it did when I turned 35 (and 34, 33, 32, etc).

This past year has been, and I don’t think I exaggerate, probably the hardest one in my life. Whereas the year prior to last was taxing because I spent most of it traveling a lot and taking care of Mom, plus eventually burying her and saying goodbye, last year was hard because I had to live with that reality, and the effects it brought on me and those around.

I looked at my journal entry from a year ago and I spent the entire day enclosed in my house, speaking over the phone with just a few people. I did not have, nor did I want, a birthday party, not even a small one; we just went out to eat sushi and then went home. It was almost a non-event. As time went on, I sunk into a deep depression that affected me, my marriage, and pretty much anything related to me in any way. I did start my Nursing studies in January, but even for that first semester it was a struggle to remain afloat.

Eventually I started seeing a therapist (thank you FIU for providing this service to the student population – seriously, thank you) and she helped me to deal with a few key issues I had been repressing hardcore for a long time. My mom’s death was a big part of my mental trauma, but there were more basic problems that went deeper. She forced me to challenge myself to climb out of the hole I had dug and lain in to let life pass me by. It took more than a few proverbial tumbles, falls and brawls with people close and important to me for me to realize some errors I had been making and how these were affecting others, but in the end that served to improve me, to make me stronger.

Am I well now? Hardly. My last session with my therapist was just last week; but I am better, and improving. F0r over two years I had been hovering around the 340-350 lbs mark, and this was affecting me physically and emotionally. When classes started, 7 weeks ago, I started going to the gym at school and have continued to go almost daily since then. Yesterday I weighed myself and was at 325 lbs, the first time in at least 2 years ( maybe more) that I have been under 330 and able to use the Wii Fit that was my birthday gift 2 years ago. I just punched the third makeshift hole in my belt. This is huge, cause I never though this would happen. This change in my life alone has given me a new energy, a new desire to live, a new passion for what the world has to offer.

To some 36 may seem like a lot; let’s not kid ourselves, it IS the mid-30s. But I don’t see it as a lot. At least the new-Me doesn’t. I see 36 as the start of a new chapter, especially coupled with the changes I have gone through thanks to therapy. I don’t see myself as 36, but instead as twice-18. When I was 18, I was naive, shy to a fault and afraid to see and experience what the world had to offer. This time around I can be 18 but tempered by the extra 18 years of experience I have on that version of Me. I can be 18 but banish that naivete, exile that shyness, dispel that fear that left me paralyzed for over a decade of my life.

That is my gift to myself on my 36 birthday: to become a Me that is twice-18 who experiences life knowing well what he likes and doesn’t, but unafraid to live beyond that as well; who enjoys the awesome that the world has to offer without paralyzing fear; and who is true to himself first and foremost, because when one is true to oneself first and foremost, only then can one be true to others as well. This is my new manifesto. I’m not saying I’ll live up to it every single day henceforth, but it will certainly color my life from here on.

Bring it on, 36. Bring it on.

Throughout this year, I have had one little mission. While my mom was in the hospital last year, she had a total of 12 pints of blood transfused into her at various times during her 4 months in the hospital. I decided that I would repay those 12 pints and donate them myself. So far during 2010, I’ve donated 5 pints, the most recent one being yesterday afternoon (it would’ve been 6, but last time I went to donate, I tried to donate red blood cells but my vein got infiltrated and it had to be scrapped). That means that I’ll be done with my mission at the end of next year. But I want to do more.

On Oct 12, I will turn 36 years old. In Hebrew, the number 18 is pronounced “chai,” life, and thus I’ll be turning two-times-chai. I’m running with the theme of “life” a bit and have decided that for my birthday, instead of gifts, what I would like is to host a virtual blood drive. Given that today is my Hebrew birthday (26 Tishrei), it seems like the perfect day to launch it.

36 FOR LIFE

I’m looking for 35 other fine people who will commit to donate a pint of blood during the month of October. Just let me know in the comments that you’re signing up and later let me know the date of your donation. That’s it.

Donating blood can be tricky, and sometimes the best intentions are foiled by physiological realities, so I’m willing to account for a small percentage of failed donations, though my ideal goal would be to have all 36 pints be successful donations.

To find blood donation sites, check your local listings for Red Cross offices, or for any dedicated blood donation organization (for example, in South Florida we have the Community Blood Centers of South Florida).

I hope that you’ll join me (and if I get more than 36 participants even better) in this good deed. I can tell you from experience and without the shadow of a doubt that donated blood indeed saves lives. Let’s get together and do that, shall we?

Addendum – 11/01/10
We didn’t reach 36, but I’d rather focus on what we did get, that being a few donated pints of blood that will help someone keep having a chance at life. That is what is important, and that is what I take from this.

Thanks to all that pledged and donated during October. Also thanks to those who pledged during October, right in the nick of time, and will donate in the near future. Thanks to all who wanted to donate but for whatever reason could not. Thanks to all who now may consider donating at some point in the future.

Serious post/conversation following. You’ve been warned.

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“Um, Hi. My name is Daniel and I’m an Escapeoholic.”

Seriously, I am. Let me backtrack a bit.

During Gen Con, some stuff happened that made me face this fact face-against-the-wall-on. It’s not something I did not know, to whatever extent; it’s been a trait of mine for as long as I can remember. I am the kind of person that retreats into his own little, mental world and stays there for extended visits. I am an escapist, and my escape is my hobby (gaming).

Well, to call it a hobby right now would be a misnomer; I let it take over to the point where it began to dominate a huge chunk of my life, with all the repercussions that brings in regards to real-world dealings. I’ve tried to escape my escape at times in the past, but I end up slipping back into bad habits very easily.

To provide a little context: I had this dream of being a professional in the hobby gaming industry. Not a bad dream to have, per se. To this end I applied all that I’d learned in years of gaming towards creating a name for myself: I did some freelancing, formed my own company, networked, created a couple of blogs, wrote for free, created a couple of podcasts, spent time forging that persona that Daniel M. Perez would be in the industry. This in and of itself was a full-time job effort for little to no reward; I saw it as paying my dues, as laying the groundwork. But the truth is that after almost 10 years after deciding to purse that dream I am nowhere near it. Yeah, I have some amount of recognition, but I haven’t capitalized on it, either because I have not gotten the opportunity or because I didn’t pursue them hard enough.

I did what I did because I saw it as part of a master plan, and that’s fine. But last year my life changed drastically. The loss of my mother was a slap in the face by Reality, and I made a decision to change my life and pursue a new goal, thus why I am now pursuing a Nursing degree. That day my dream changed, my goal changed, but deep enough I did not grasp that this change needed to include a revision of the previous one, and all the work that it entailed.

Now, I haven’t done bad in my studies so far, but I have continued to retreat into my fantasy world where I am a relevant part of the hobby gaming industry/scene, which is total bullshit. Don’t get me wrong: I value what I have created, and the connections I have made along the way, but I had not faced a simple truth which I was now forced to stare in the face – all that was not important anymore, not in the same way.

I continued to delve into my escape, almost with the same amount of effort as before except for whatever I was using for my studies. But it really should be the other way around. I need to turn my hobby back into my hobby, not my (not-leading-anywhere-significant) life.

It’s a struggle, I won’t lie. I have an addictive personality and escaping into gaming became my addiction (and not even the actual act of playing a game, but just the actions related to gaming, which is probably the saddest part). Thus my introduction.

I am working on relegating gaming (and all it’s satellite activities) back to the proper place a hobby should have. As a friend told me over a beer at Gen Con, “This is all fluff. And fluff is nice, but it’s still fluff.”

Maybe I’m revealing a bit much here, but I cannot be the only one who has fallen down the rabbit hole. Maybe there are others who’ll derive some benefit from my experience as well.

I’d love to hear from others out there on how they maintain the balance between real life and the hobby, between reality and fantasy. My peer-models for too long have been guys whom I love a lot but have gotten into holes deeper than mine, and that has affected me. I’m looking for new points of view from those who have maintained this balance. I know you’re out there, so help a fellow gamer out remain a gamer but in the proper context in relation to Life.

In the meantime, I continue to work at my 12 steps back up from escapeoholism.