Writing Through Life

It's been awhile since I've written anything in this space. I started this whole endeavor so I could have a place to be brutally honest with myself as well as work on my writing ability. This past week in a half, I started a new job and I haven't had much time or energy to write anything. That being said, I couldn't stop thinking about writing, not in a pretentious way, like a "I can't stop thinking about writing because I do it and it's something cool and different that I do, look at me" kind of way, but rather in a "I need to fucking do this" kind of way. At work I keep wishing I had more to write, I think I'm going to start teaching myself how to write copy, at home I offer to help my girlfriend's siblings out with their papers. When it first hit me, that I need to write, and this past week in a half it really hit me, the first solitary moment in time when it hit me was when my little brother messaged me on Facebook with this, the blog he created. I was speechless, mostly because it is so apparently inspired from what I did here, but also because it's good, it's insightful and it has opened a window into my little brother Mike's life that I wish I could of had when I was younger. But this inspiration is not without context, this is coming from an area of great conflict for me.

When I was younger I played a lot of video games, entire summers would go by and I would hardly see the light of day. My games of choice were role playing games, mostly fantasy ones, because I loved any game with a good upgrade and because I loved being a different person in a different world. I'm sure any novice student of Psychology reading this is pining to tell me it was to escape, a means of getting away from the real world with locker room bullies and maybe I liked upgrades because I was crippling self conscious of my own abilities. This is probably true on some "sub level" somewhere in my inner psyche, but all I can say is that I thought they were fun. My cousin or my best friend and I would sit there for hours on end playing this massive game that wasn't about beating, but just about playing, about being in a world unlike your own. 

My brother has a very different gaming experience, one that is enveloped in the world of online gaming. When he plugs in, he is entering a world not unlike his own, but one full of his friends, his family (my uncle and my cousin are avid gamers) and a level of comfort that probably only exists in places he deems safe (ie not school). I think he said it best when he said: "it gives me and a lot of other people a place where they can fit in, where you don't have to be judged upon what you look like (unless you're camping in halo, no one likes a camper)". I never thought of them in this way, I only saw my brother sitting in front of a TV screen looking really concerning. It would make me nervous, it still does. It's not that I misunderstand and it's not even really about the video games, it is about his slipping grades and the fact that he doesn't seem to be able to pull away from it in order to take care of his day to day mundane tasks.

Then he shows me this blog. It is genius in a way that I was never capable of seeing in my brother before. The posts are very relevant, he is able to deal truth to himself and others fairly; he knows he needs to play less, but he wishes people could see it more of a balance issue than one of abstinence. He posted a piece on pushing your limits, but never getting lost in the conundrum of trying to be better than others. He posted an incredibly brave piece about the use of the word gay as an insult, something too few high school kids ever actually talk about. Even the title of the blog itself, the double meaning makes my English major blood rush with pride: Gaming through Lives, lives meaning lives in a game or life itself as we live it. What an accurate and fun way to portray what he's actually doing with what people perceive him to be doing. 

I guess what hits me after seeing this, is that my brother looks up to me. He sees me doing something that I love and it speaks to him in such a way that he is inspired to start a blog himself. I realized that I have to write because every day I am inspired by people I look up to doing what they love. I want my brother to get his homework done, to turn his grades around and still game, to be the exception to people's expectation of gamers everywhere. I want my brother to keep writing too, but mostly, I want my brother to game as hard as he can and school noobs and buy upgrades and fight demons and play In the Arms of the Angels over his headset whenever he kills another player's dog in COD. I want my brother to game through life in the most deliberate way he can because I know my brother wants me to write in the most deliberate way I can, which is why I need to write. I hope I can continue to do that for him.

Thanks for Listening,

Make sure you check out his blog too!

Kyle