Unfiltered

Isn’t it sad that I remember so little of this weekend? I wish that I could say I worked all weekend, and I did, but how much work is playing video games? When does the line between entertainment and work lie?

Isn’t it the dream to do something creatively for a living? I’m not exactly paying all my bills by playing and developing video games, but hey, it’s a start. This is one of those who-ya-know industries anyway, where reputation takes precedence over actual workmanship.

But of course, the people who produce are those who get the rewards. And I’ve been producing awhile.

Sunday I did the wonderful task of completely destroying a machine on the verge of collapse and converging its two meager hard drives into the other box nearby.

The inside of that case would make children weep. Or at least, IT administrators. Have you ever seen IDE cables just pulled to the point of no return? Where plastic and wires become one as the tension on them is tight enough to snap?

This post is trying so hard to be free, unfiltered thought, but I still find myself filtering myself. See, I even wrote badly (using myself twice in a sentence) in an effort to let it all hang out and all I can think is I need to replace that other ‘myself’ reference. I’m freakishly obsessive about my work, even stupid blog postings.

I guess you could call it egotistical. Which, to me, is ironic. I grew up a massively depressed kid. Seriously, I had few friends because I was not a joy to be around. I made everything worse. Some kids just say that, but I lived the life. I don’t know what I’d be classified as, but manic depressive seemed to fit pretty well.

On a trip to Walt Disney World, the center of fun in the whole fucking universe according to most, I was so depressed I could barely move. This was in the 8th grade. I was bullied relentlessly, and I kept everything inside myself. It isn’t hard, just don’t talk. Those feelings and fears and voices that speak only discouraging things get louder when there’s no other conversations to take place and drown it out.

I always hoped one day that I’d get over it and I guess I’m there. I was so depressed as a kid that my mother would buy me things to cheer me up. I always played along and, for that moment at the store, was happy. I never have buyer’s remorse. Back then I just had remorse which settled in like a dark cloud after the sun shined through. As if money and sunshine could even be equated to one another.

But at some point I just stopped caring what other people thought about me. It may have been around my senior year, when I began to speak up more and be more defiant. Though my depression reached its height in the first year of college, I wish I could go back and find the moment where I began to care about myself and what I thought. My wife tells me, over and over, what a huge ego I have. But it didn’t get there overnight. There were many years of abuse that kept it from flourishing, and that same ego keeps others away or offended.

You can’t fix yourself. You can only change. And I changed. And it’s strange that I can’t see much of the new me, I only see the old me in strange new clothes. Scars are covered with self confidence. The light that shines in my life, my family, my friends, my work…they keep those old scars hidden, and that self confidence high. Everytime I create something I’m excited to show the world, and I’m excited to pull myself a little bit further away from the darkness that I once encapsulated.

You know that darkness. At least, the nerds do. We seemed to have all shared it sometime in the past, in the dark, alone with our machines, desperately seeking one another, stumbling over cords and wires and modem connections in the dark. The internet has given the depressive geeks of the world solace, and at the very least we should be grateful.

And solace is not to be taken lightly. Solace can save lives. I’m sure it saved mine, somehow.

This post is dedicated to Tony, who writes better than I do.

Billboards quoting things you’d never say
You hang your head and pray for Jesusland