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Saturday, December 28, 2013

SimCity, Impatience, and (Almost) Full Disclosure

So, since my last post, the overwhelming response has been the following (from the few whom are generous/brave enough to read my ramblings). Here's what it pretty much boils down in their view: you're not going to be alone forever and patience is important in this type of thing ... relax and breathe.

Which is a nice way of saying "Suck it up, stop bitching, and don't throw a tantrum" in my mind. I can't disagree with it. I did, vainly, try to make an argument against my impatience but upon further review, in a lot of areas of my life, I'm quite the hurried person.

And thusly, we bring us to tonight's topic.

*Warning, deep thoughts follow. Profanity likely, brutal honesty all but assured.*
 
Over the last two days I have been engulfed with the greatness (and addictiveness) that is SimCity. I remember, like all gamers do, that on launch this game had more problems than it did solutions. Crippling, backbreaking issues. EA did a fine job of messing it up and even now still continue to screw with it, but it's playable and it's fun. So, so much fun. I haven't had this much fun in a game in a long time and I'm glad that it's the Sims because, frankly, I was beginning to doubt whether I could really enjoy games anymore. They'd just seem to become so unimportant over the last few months.

Part of that, inevitably, is my lack of time to do much gaming. Between work, my conversion to Catholicism, and trying to handle what appears to be a semi-social life (jury is deliberating on that still) there just isn't a lot of time for my previous escapes into fantasy. Writing has even been affected by this. I try to make one day a week where I do something, but even that is hard to accomplish.

Bottom line: I really love this game. But it's by far the best game for the most impatient people. You can increase the game speed to something pretty fast and watch as time flies by. Years in-game go by in hours real-time. In that timespan, you can take a small town to the edge of metropolis. It's really quite fun.

It does, however, prove a point to me that only a game like SimCity can: that I'm an impatient SOB who wants what would realistically take years to occur in far less time. Certainly not hours but definitely months. I like to take the quickest, most efficient route possible. This applies to me when I drive, when I walk through a store, and my navigation through life.

And my last blog post, full of all the emo, drives home the point that I'm fine with projecting. It's living in the present that's my problem. This has been stated a lot by over the course of this blog (now two years old) and the same points that have been made in my last post have been made in other posts. It's not new stuff here.

Same shit, different day, really.

But life isn't SimCity and I can't fast-forward through things to get to where I want to be. I tried to fast-forward through losing weight and look where that got me (hospital, nearly two months with limited leg usage, and a ton of bad memories). I want to fast-forward to the point where I can join the Catholic church.

Let me be frank: watching others get communion while I kneel there is frustrating on a number of levels. I have to endure this for four more months, thereabouts. It's gonna be a long four months. Further, I have to NOT get confession (which, I will tell you right now I'm going to take advantage of like nothing else) and then there's the RCIA class.

Fun? No. Well, in some ways, yes. But overall, not really.

Necessary? Abso-fucking-lutely. I can't recall if I stated it before or not, but this a war for my soul. I don't take this lightly. I don't treat this as some sort of thing to do because it's not a thing to do. It's a tactical decision for spiritual betterment. We should be aiming to be perfect and more like God. We won't get there, let me tell you, but we should aim for it and I haven't aimed high and failed hard since high school.

Some old habits are worth reviving.

One habit/trend I'd like to see retired would be my consistent failure in romantic pursuits. You can't fast-forward through them, either. You can't skip past the failures, the non-starters, or the disappointments. You have to be there.

For every. Single. One.

And I now get to tally my first such failure in many years. I gave a good effort and here's where I (almost) fully disclose the story. As with any such story, two things are required: ice cream and wine. I've had my ice cream, I'm drinking my wine (and might I say I find myself a bit disappointed in it).

It all started with my attempts to learn/experience/be Catholic. I joined up withe local college group of Catholics, housed in a Newman Center (not Seinfeld related), who took me in despite my status as not a college student or Catholic. I've been accepted and treated like one of their own, much better than I deserve, and they'll have my eternal gratitude for that. I admit, I was hesitant about even trying but I figured it was worth a shot.

That shot paid off in spades. I got in, was accepted, and promptly was allowed to dive right in. I did just that and one of these dives led me to a volunteer event with the group. Said event was an early morning baking deal.

And there was this girl. Now, I'm not naming names. Nor am I giving super-specific details. But we hit it off pretty fast and we flirted pretty well. I managed to drum up the courage to ask her to Starbucks, she said yes. I got there first and was pretty sure I was going to be stood up.

Not because of her, but because of my luck. But I wasn't stood up and she showed, we had fun, and we did Starbucks again later in the week. I came away both times wishing to see more of her.

It's easy to jump to a few conclusions here, primarily that I was so desperate for any sort of anything that I was blinded by all the shiny, so to speak. Admittedly, I probably was (and still am a tad). But she liked me and I liked her. In the end, she wasn't looking for a relationship but that's cool. Disappointing, but cool.

But she's a special girl in my mind. A close friend of mine used the word "infatuated" to describe my feelings for this girl and I'd rather say I was (and am) smitten. It sounds more honorable ... I don't want to sully it, you know? Anyways, she's special. You know how I know that?

The list. You see, back in September, one random night in Starbucks, I sat down and wrote out a list of traits/qualities I wanted in a girl. It sounds stupid, I know, but hear me out. As a writer, I do this type of thing all the time with characters. I build characters around traits and, usually, they turn out pretty well. There's always those 5-10 traits that is unique to every person. How they deal with stress, what they drink and eat, ect.

So, sitting there that night in Starbucks, I drew up a character sketch on this girl. What were her traits? What did I see her as?

The answers were pretty unremarkable. She needed to be intelligent. She needed to be creative. She needed to be compassionate. She needed to be physically attractive to me (*sigh* perhaps vanity). She needed to have a good sense of humor. She needed to take care of her health. She needed to be Catholic (I figure if we match in faith, we're already in decent shape).

Now, most of these traits have been established in other girls before. Two, in particular, come to mind. Both I wanted to pursue, one I did (and failed with) and the other was off the market (much to my disappointment). To encounter a third girl that falls into this type, that breathes such rarefied air ... well, I was determined not to lose out.

So much for that.

But, she was special and she nailed that list of traits. I don't know for sure if I completely missed the boat. I hold out hope, of course, and I'll continue to do so for the foreseeable future. She is that special in my mind that waiting for her is an entirely viable strategy.

I just don't know if I should. If I'm judging by my experiences with the previous two and what's transpired in their life since then, I'm of the opinion that waiting is the only right choice here. Because if I wait, if I'm patient, I can have access to someone who is a very rare breed in my mind.

On the other hand, doing nothing is among one of the most unappealing things imaginable to me (almost as unappealing as ketchup, the great red menace). I hate doing nothing. Hell, playing SimCity I'm doing something else that's not game related (at least in my head).

So, I'm impatient and I'm torn. I can be patient with children. I can be patient with just about everyone else but where it concerns me ... patience is not really there.

But, I have it on good authority that my small hands will serve me well in future endeavors. That has nothing to do with anything, but it gives me a sense of comfort in the wee-hours of the morning. As always, thanks for reading folks. 

God Bless.

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