Video Gaming

About seven years ago I shared a house with five guy friends. We had a Playstation One, which was obsolete even then. We only had one game we liked to play, but it would never save your progress, so as soon as you shut the machine down you'd lose everything. We'd leave the console on for weeks at a time, but our old house was apt to power surges that would kill the box, so it was an unreliable method. One night I stayed up until 5am trying to beat the game, and I found myself in existential crisis. Would beating this game make me any happier, I wondered? The only answer I could find in the pre-dawn light was "No." Well, I went to bed and a power surge knocked out my alarm clock set for three hours later as well as the game. I never beat it in one sitting, and looking back, I now know that that night this could have been a landmark in my life. And since then even the stupidest late-night task has held a greater degree of importance. I'll never know what it would have felt like to beat Hogs of War in one night. But I do know what it's like to show up at work four hours late with the worst excuse in the world.