New Year’s Schmresolutions: Family
Ah, resolutions. I enjoy setting goals and working towards them, it must have something to do with my athletic/competitive/psychopathic upbringing. Even though I could easily set a goal at literally any point in the year, the New Year gives me an opportunity to reflect and plan for the next 365 or so days. So we’ve reflected on not being too critical, enjoying what you have before indulging in more, committing to your craft, and whatever it was that Pat talked about. All great resolutions. And I’m sure that as the year goes on there will be plenty more challenges and things that we all want to be better at.
— but that shit can wait until 2015
So in 2014 I’m going to focus on family. Specifically, my new family.
In the latter part of 2012 and into 2013 I had quite the dramatic swing in gaming habits. It used to be that I would come home watch the Daily Show, make dinner, and then either watch a movie or game until I got tired. Letting your girlfriend move in with you has a tendency to change things. My girlfriend/fiance/wife doesn’t abhor video games, she just doesn’t like when I overindulge, and doesn’t really understand that when I say I’ll be done in a minute, I don’t really mean A minute.
a minute isn’t really a unit of time anyway… it’s more of a suggestion
Through all of this, I managed a very rough outline of a routine.
And then she tells me that she’s pregnant.
After the euphoria of realizing that I’m going to be a parent, the confusion about what we are going to do about our wedding, and the terror of realizing *I* am going to be a parent…I began to think about what I’m going to do about my vid-geo gamez timez. I had just developed the outer frame work of a plan to propose a routine for my gaming time, and now I had to go fuck it up by getting my life partner preggers. I thought babies came from the stork anyway, WHAT LIES HAVE I BEEN LIVING??!?
LIES!!!!
When starting this whole resolution task, the biggest things I wanted to do this year in terms of gaming was to be more diverse and more social — however, after thinking more about it, I decided that I really want my family to be more involved in gaming. And by doing that I can take care of my other two goals.
Being more diverse means playing games that I normally wouldn’t play. I’m a caveman and haven’t ever really used Steam for anything. Which in all honesty, is unbe-fucking-lievable. That will most definitely change this year, and hopefully I can open up my gaming pallette with it. I also want to get more involved in multiplayer action with friends, family, and complete strangers. So…diversity and social-ness.
Where does my family fall into this trap…err…equation? Well, my wife already loves Steam. I told her that she could play The Sims and that they often have sales where things are heavily discounted or free, and that *may* be why she is now pregnant. I downloaded DLC for Bioshock Infinite on my PS3 the other day (because I had a Christmas gift card) and she said, “Ugh. Why don’t you just get it off Steam?”
🙂 God, I love her.
Seeing as how she has been so accepting thus far, I don’t see it being that far of a stretch for her and I to both get involved in playing more games. Papers Please and The Stanley Parable jump out as two amazing games that I know she would enjoy quite a bit. This also tackles the other point of being social. I’m a single player kind of dude, but if I can get the lady to occasionally join me on my adventures, I’m all for it.
If she gets to the point that she wants a headset and to talk shit to 13 year olds on the internet while she is thoroughly skull fucking them (metaphorically, of course) then even better.
I know that my habits will continue to change over the next couple of years, what with an infant and all. So, I figure getting my family involved in my addiction pastime will bring more harmony. They don’t have to be diehard fans that can’t live without games, but I would like, at least, a small bit of understanding, appreciation for what games can be, and to view them as not a diversion from family time and responsibility, but something that can actually bring us together.
so we can be diverted from responsibility as a family
And although we are less than a month into the New Year, I believe that I’m already making so headway. My wife loves The Little Mermaid, and when I told her that you can run around with Ariel bashing shadow monsters with a giant key she asked me where we need to go to get this game. We were at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago, as I oogled the PS4 display and then fired up Octodad: Dadliest Catch. Instead of saying that the game was absurd and ridiculous, she was giving me directions on where to go and at the end said “If you get a PS4, I’d play that.” And having had, at the very least, a passing curiosity into the world of Bioshock, I asked her if she would watch me play the Burial At Sea DLC — to which she replied “Yes.” So far so good.
Now if I can only bring this kind of acceptance to watching sports this might end up being the perfect family.
