Words Fail Me

                Many of my friends told me that when I was younger their mothers were never fond of me when I came to stay over. Not because I was obnoxious or rude but because I was a picky eater. I was the kid that certain mothers would apparently fret over because they didn’t want me going home on an empty stomach and therefore make them look like bad parents. My friends told me birthday parties were the worst because I was never a fan of cake or ice cream or really any of the staples found within the spread put out at kids’ birthday parties. Apparently this would drive their parents towards the brink of insanity. I heard tales of lunch room reconnaissance missions being carried out in order to find out what I ate so they could prepare it for me. Only to lead to hair pulling moments when I would politely decline the peanut butter and jelly sandwich the parent had made for me.  And I’ll admit, after hearing this, that I took some perverse pleasure in imagining parents around the world meeting clandestinely in order to curse my name. My friends brought all this up to me in order to explain that not only was I picky about food but I was picky about everything.

                It is important to know that I believe within every person who is particularly picky about what they consume (whether food or entertainment or anything in between) there dwells a defense mechanism that allows them to justify their behavior.  Coincidently this mechanism usually surrounds the part of the person that knows that on some level they are being unreasonable and are just making life harder on those around them thus never allowing it to escape and become cognizant within the brain. This mechanism usually takes the form of the ability to rationalize and eloquently explain why they enjoy or, more importantly, have disdain towards certain things. And yet, when it comes to explaining what I enjoy about video games and why, or even how, they became my hobby of choice I’m always at a loss for words. It has flummoxed me so much that it’s grown into a fear that video games will be brought up in casual conversation and I’ll have nothing to contribute except to curl up in the fetal position in the nearest corner and hope the subject would change soon.

The best I can explain my unease in writing about video games is that when I was younger my class went to a factory in which we learned, literally, how sausage was made. Whilst most of the minutia was lost on me at the time I’m fairly certain that to this day I’m still able to explain not only what sausage is but also how it is made. Unfortunately my mind didn’t find stuffing salted and seasoned meat offal into intestine casings all that entertaining and instead glommed onto video games as its hobby of choice. This has always struck me as the wrong choice because I still have that knowledge from the sausage factory (and still enjoy sausage to this day) and yet I’ve never been able to properly explain why video games appeal to me or why I still play them after all these years.

I remember about a year ago someone messaged me over Steam asking if I liked what I had played of Dawn of War II and if they should buy it. I may be exaggerating but I’m pretty sure what I wrote back was something like this; “Yes because it is a tightly polished game that is both immersive and visceral”. Upon sending that message I finally empathized with those parents whose food I declined all those years ago. As I looked at that “peanut butter and jelly sandwich” of a testimonial I understood how bad those parents felt when I kindly rejected the food they made for me.  I looked at something I had written and was supremely disappointed. It made me want to never write about video games again.

For an individual who hopes to make a living as a writer this is a terrifying problem to possess.  It has led to a fear of writing about anything. Too often when I put pen to paper all I think about is my inability to properly convey why I like video games, then pen leaves paper and the warm call of the fetal position returns.

Experts seem to agree that one of the best ways to overcome fear is to confront it. So this will be my battleground against this fear. This is where I put into words what I enjoy about video games so that others can read and judge it. And no matter what people think about it I’ll be able to say at least I wrote something that truly reflected how I feel about video games.

Alright, here I go.

I’m going to write just you wait.

Are you ready?

Nope, nothing is coming. And I really thought I had something going.

Well, I at least got this far. That should count for something, right?