I started playing Baldur’s Gate 3 in early November. The game itself was a present from the Big Bad Con staff, and the time to play it was a present I gave myself. I promised that after I stepped down from Big Bad Con, I’d give myself time to recreate and play a video game.
For the next two months I played it pretty fervently. At first confused, but muddling through. Then confident and pleased with my clever solutions, and then trepidatious about decisions I thought might have major consequences down the line. I romanced all kinds, make a lot of promises I broke, completed most of the personal quests, and felt good being a hero of the people (I played Will). I also accepted nearly every opportunity for power and watched as my character’s appearance reflected the choices I made (black veins, devil horns, blood red eyes, full tentacle face, you name it!)
Toward the end though, I could feel my interest waning. I was rushing to finish and skipping through the dialog. It wasn’t because the game was no longer fun, but because I felt like as long as I was playing it, I wasn’t really doing much of anything else. My days of being utterly consumed by MMORPGs are over (Asheron’s Call nearly caused me to lose my business. Everquest merely consumed my life, and finally World of Warcraft only occupied ALL of my free time) but I still felt like I was letting things slip that I would rather not. I also felt like I was hiding. Hiding from the world, the election results, the work I had put on pause for Big Bad Con and wasn’t ready to start back up.
A good friend of mine told me after Big Bad Con that I was reaping the fruits of my labor and that I should respect the seasons of my life. I had passed fall and it was now time to winter. To rest and to reflect. I’m not sure if I had any epiphanies while plotting against demons but i did recharge some important creative batteries and made decisions about maintaining boundaries around my commitments.
I don’t know if I’ve ended my personal winter, but it is feeling more like spring to me. In the last few weeks I’ve done game development on three different EHP games, playtested Tom Raider and Tiān Dēng, written some AP reports, connected with peers, seen my mom and my kids multiple times, followed up on game reviews, gone to improv classes, introduced a friend to Fiasco, got my ass whooped by Sherlock (Consulting Detective), configured a new server to host VMs, made progress on SSO authentication for a service at work, completely reorganized my office, started the setup for two Zoom Room configurations, started our Windows 11 migration (I know, cutting it a bit close), prepped my Blades 68′ game, caught up on the news (thanks KQED), hosted the first Dice Pool interview (Thirsty Sword Lesbians), configured the Hunter’s Journal pledge management, checked in with friends, explored the campus option for hardware support (“Berkeley Desktop”), and caught up on all my support tickets for both Cal and Evil Hat. I’ve got good energy and the inertia that held me back from starting (or continuing) some of the projects feels lifted.
Like everything else, this is cyclical. I’m not going to hold onto this energy forever, but I’m glad to be using it now. The dark thoughts that filled many of my past reflections posts have abated some, and I thought it was good to recognize this moment of mental health.
Thank you Ross, for your wisdom and care.
