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games and words and places to be
Feb. 20th, 2011 04:52 pmI have almost too many things to write about for this space and so I don't end up writing anything. Paralyzed by indecision. It's how I feel looking at menus sometimes. A habit of a perfectionist streak I've tried to break myself of but keeps sneaking back in under the radar.
Most of the past few days I've played Dragon Age Awakenings. It's about twenty hours of play time, so long enough to be interesting but not long enough to eat up everything else. I play pretty intensely because I get so wrapped up in the story, in the emotional arc I attribute to my character that stopping feels like delaying a good book. I hate stopping in the middle.
I play on the PS3, and the more I play the more I think World of Warcraft was a strange deviation in my gaming habits. I prefer the relative simplicity of console controls, with their attendant limitations. For the most part I like the DA interface for items and spells and what not. I like playing on my television even more now that we have a nice television. I spend a lot of time on the computer because I work there and write there, so it feels good to do my game playing somewhere else.
Tomorrow I'm going to pre-order my copy of Dragon Age II as my reward for completing thirty days of writing. Last month I discovered a website called 750 Words through an article in the NY Times about motivation and the internet. Feeling aimless, restless, and all out of shape in the written word, I decided to sign up. I have written at least 750 words every day for the past thirty days. My total as of this moment is 25,200 words. This doesn't even count the LJ entries I've made in the past thirty days, which would surely add up to an enormous total. I won't lie - the motivation of unlocking badges is a powerful thing. It feels similar to my desire to unlock every possible outcome of circumstances for my characters when playing Dragon Age.
So I write, motivated by badges and the idea that for every month or so of writing I will treat myself to something I want that is not a necessary thing. It helps. Some of it has been private sort of journal that has helped me work out connections and reasons for things brought up in therapy and in general day to day life. I have also used it to write some fiction, to sketch out a story idea that came from a bad dream and a newspaper article, as well as my Fuzzy Five fanfiction piece. (Which I still need to post somewhere.)
Why do I write so much there? Because I need to. Even writing here, even when we try not to be, we're always writing for an audience. More and more lately I see how much LJ is one of those dinosaurs of the digital world in some ways. The culture of LJ has profoundly shifted in different places, from the ownership to the interaction of people here. I cut nearly a quarter of my friends list recently and still I only see twenty posts a day or so. Some of those are only pushes of twitter streams or communities. I think a lot about what writing here gives and takes from me. But that is an entirely other post. One where I talk about web spaces, why I have relented and even like Twitter now while I think Facebook is ruining everything I love about being online.
When I uploaded this icon, I realized I have space for more than two hundred now. I remember when we complained bitterly about only having thirty or so. Hah. Oh internet of 2000.
In other news, I ate some cupcakes this weekend that were pretty good. I've decided though that I don't like constant fillings in my cupcakes. Fillings are a sometimes joy for me, not an always. The weather is really nice right now. I have lots of windows open to take advantage of these rare days when it is actually temperate enough to do so. I should do some chores but I really don't feel like it.
Most of the past few days I've played Dragon Age Awakenings. It's about twenty hours of play time, so long enough to be interesting but not long enough to eat up everything else. I play pretty intensely because I get so wrapped up in the story, in the emotional arc I attribute to my character that stopping feels like delaying a good book. I hate stopping in the middle.
I play on the PS3, and the more I play the more I think World of Warcraft was a strange deviation in my gaming habits. I prefer the relative simplicity of console controls, with their attendant limitations. For the most part I like the DA interface for items and spells and what not. I like playing on my television even more now that we have a nice television. I spend a lot of time on the computer because I work there and write there, so it feels good to do my game playing somewhere else.
Tomorrow I'm going to pre-order my copy of Dragon Age II as my reward for completing thirty days of writing. Last month I discovered a website called 750 Words through an article in the NY Times about motivation and the internet. Feeling aimless, restless, and all out of shape in the written word, I decided to sign up. I have written at least 750 words every day for the past thirty days. My total as of this moment is 25,200 words. This doesn't even count the LJ entries I've made in the past thirty days, which would surely add up to an enormous total. I won't lie - the motivation of unlocking badges is a powerful thing. It feels similar to my desire to unlock every possible outcome of circumstances for my characters when playing Dragon Age.
So I write, motivated by badges and the idea that for every month or so of writing I will treat myself to something I want that is not a necessary thing. It helps. Some of it has been private sort of journal that has helped me work out connections and reasons for things brought up in therapy and in general day to day life. I have also used it to write some fiction, to sketch out a story idea that came from a bad dream and a newspaper article, as well as my Fuzzy Five fanfiction piece. (Which I still need to post somewhere.)
Why do I write so much there? Because I need to. Even writing here, even when we try not to be, we're always writing for an audience. More and more lately I see how much LJ is one of those dinosaurs of the digital world in some ways. The culture of LJ has profoundly shifted in different places, from the ownership to the interaction of people here. I cut nearly a quarter of my friends list recently and still I only see twenty posts a day or so. Some of those are only pushes of twitter streams or communities. I think a lot about what writing here gives and takes from me. But that is an entirely other post. One where I talk about web spaces, why I have relented and even like Twitter now while I think Facebook is ruining everything I love about being online.
When I uploaded this icon, I realized I have space for more than two hundred now. I remember when we complained bitterly about only having thirty or so. Hah. Oh internet of 2000.
In other news, I ate some cupcakes this weekend that were pretty good. I've decided though that I don't like constant fillings in my cupcakes. Fillings are a sometimes joy for me, not an always. The weather is really nice right now. I have lots of windows open to take advantage of these rare days when it is actually temperate enough to do so. I should do some chores but I really don't feel like it.