Category: Family and Musings

Gaming

I am 35 years old and I have been playing video games almost as long as I have been reading.

35 is in fact the average age of a gamer in the world (according to Google). As an industry, gaming has in my lifetime grown to twice the size of movies and music COMBINED….think about that….combined!

And yet I constantly have doubts and questions around gaming:

  • Am I too old to play games?
  • Why do I enjoy games so much?
  • Is there any art in video games?
  • How much is too much?
  • Are they a waste of time?

I think the driver behind these questions is my new young family, and the fact that playing video games is still a relatively new hobby compared to reading a book or even watching a movie.

Responsibilities, and taboo work away at my conscience.

However, as a pastime it still delights and amazes me. Not gonna stop. Nope. Sorry….Moderate yes….Stop, no.

Drawing lines in the sand

Imagine you got rid of all the worst things in your day-to-day job. No more commute with the masses, no more mind numbing meetings or menial tasks, no more annoying co-workers who you are forced to share a room with. No more awful boss nagging you. Imagine all of that was gone – now what would be left?

I bet the answer is that you would be alone with yourself and a blank slate in front of you to fill with….something. It’s a liberating and terrifying thought.

As human beings we crave freedom and we crave fulfillment in our work. The flip-side of our condition is we are inherently fearful beings. We don’t naturally seek to make our own rules. We like to be part of a tribe with someone to follow.

So to be free we must draw lines in the sand. If we are stuck somewhere we don’t want to be, we must define why we don’t like it and plan to eliminate the negatives from our life. If we have all the freedom in the world, but spend all our time being unproductive, then we need to draw a line in the sand and make a change. Maybe sell all your time-wasting devices. Maybe buy a new device ONLY for stuffing around.

We draw our own lines in the sand, or we follow someone else who draws them for us.

Priority 

The different phases of my life have been strongly linked with different priorities. This is not always a conscious choice. Over the years I have been focussed on school, girls, sport, music, partying, and starting a family. Not one of these were conscious choices, but choices nonetheless and the knock on effects are huge.

Having realized this, I now find that many of my larger choices are more conscious. I realize I have never prioritized my career. I realize I want to change things. I want to write things down to make them stick. 

Books

I just completed J M Coetzee’s Disgrace. On to the next one. I haven’t finished this many books since high school.

Read 10 minutes each night before sleep and you finish books! It’s a rad discovery.

Monday music

I have eclectic musical tastes. My father worked in the music industry for a long time in the 70’s and 80’s so I have a lot of old school rock in my collection. My mum loves classical music, and my grandma was a great pianist so I listen to some choral and baroque classical music – and my personal passion is blues and soul. Old school. I have also recently started listening to hip hop.

A look at the charts – the top ten on Google Play – is fairly meaningless to me now. Nobody is pushing the boundaries of any genre, and art is scarce when the aim is to appeal to the most number of people possible. When this is the case, inevitably the songs start to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Safe bets are placed like the countless sequels in the cinema.

That said, I like Rihanna and DJ Khaled’s song, Grateful. Also, Charlie Puth’s Attention is pretty good.

Web strategy

Unfortunately, we don’t have one by default.

Whether we are publishing, socialising, photographing, working – our default setting seems to be to just use a device as it is given to us, and without discrimination to pay attention to any and all notifications that show up on the screen.

The thing is, just like any tool, the internet can be used in the wrong way and achieve unwanted outcomes. Wasted time, wasted money, misinformation to name a few.

We all have exposure to the internet, whether we like it or not. Therefore forming a strategy to turn it to your advantage is worth it. This goes for the individual, the family and the corporation.

Worth noting also that on the internet privacy is dead, so “default public” is the best stance on anything web-based.