And now on to our feature presentation

Journal of Clarity - #35 – Born to Be a Winner! Born to be the very best!

I’ve had that Pokémon theme stuck in my head practically all week. Ever get annoyed that the Pokémon themes (on average) are not bad, but they’re also really catchy so if you hear it once, it’s hard to really forget it? I know I do because while I like this iteration of the theme song, it’s fucking annoying how it won’t stop playing on an infinite loop in my own personal hell where I’m stuck playing generation V while having to listen to it over and over again… while James from Team Rocket beats me with a Saints Row 3 dildo over and over again.

Anyway… why am I here?

OH! RIGHT!

So this week, including yesterday, could arguably be considered the closing of one chapter of my life and the beginning of an entirely new one on a multitude of levels that I will get into here and now.

First, graduation! Yay! It’s finally fucking happening! I got delayed a year because the academic advisors at the University of Iowa (let’s be fair, the one jackass I got stuck with) don’t know how to do their jobs properly. BUT, here I am ready to walk across a fucking stage and get a piece of fucking paper that says I received an education from the obviously inferior American education system so I’m equivalent in intelligence to the typical Japanese High School graduate. (That really does kind of take the spectacle out of this whole ordeal, doesn’t it?)

But regardless of that, the fact of the matter is that I am done. I’m no longer tied to this school or this city for that matter. I no longer am tied to a job to simply get through school. I mean, I never was FORCED to stay at [shit grocery store] but I felt it was just easier to keep that and not try to find a new job while still in school and needing to still pay bills. Less stress is better, even if it means that I spend 8 hours a day for four days a week at a place I’ve turned into my own personal hell… well… on some days. Other days, I get to work with people like RageQuit (name changed for reasons) or Adolf (same) and the two of them make being there less tedious and annoying. Especially lately because it seems like we’re talking about hanging out more and doing more things.

In fact, while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about my job a bit. Every day, it’s becoming more annoying to be there. Why? Because one thing I took pride in was the flexibility given to me to work on our self-service case in a manner that pretty much gave me free reign to do whatever I thought would help sell stuff. And for a while, that’s what I did and it was a streak of success. But we get a slow period and suddenly we have to cut corners everywhere and guess who suddenly gets that lovely flexibility reduced to almost nil? Yeah.

Here’s my thing, I understand the need to make some cuts on some corners. But I also hold the belief that we should still continue to push new ideas and put out the best product we can make. It’s the same opinion I have when it comes to the game publishers of recent late. I get the idea of reducing risk of profit loss by making homogenized products. I get that you want to copy the most successful thing on the market in hopes of making more money on it. You know what the problem is? Making a game like Call of Duty (for example) is never going to work. Call of Duty reigns supreme in the Call of Duty market and trying to beat them at their own game is a waste of time. And while you chase that CoD money with your knock-off imitator, you’re leaving niche audiences that want horror games, point-n-click adventure games, puzzle games, and other types out in the cold. There’s more profit out there you’re missing out on because you’re choosing to reduce risk on backing products for those people and doing what you think works because you think it’s safe.

Which is funny to think about. Because while I preach this to game companies and talk about how their refusal to take risks and make themselves stand out I feel like I’ve failed to live up to this own standard (for the most part) when it comes to my own personal life. What I mean by this is when I try to meet people or when I’m with someone in a dating/relationship scenario, I tend to be quiet, awkward, and take as few risks as possible to avoid losing that person’s interest. But what I’ve sort of learned recently from experience and from this analogy I’ve cleverly put together to make a segway is that problem I complain about EA or Nintendo doing is the same problem I have with trying to be with people of the opposite sex. And because I’m so worried about losing their interesting in a risky way, I tend to lose their interest because I end up being boring. So, see game companies! I can learn from my mistakes and so can you!

(By the way, first moment of clarity in the Journal of Clarity since it went public! Finally living up to the name!)

Speaking of meeting people of the opposite sex and trying to keep them around, this is news you may be somewhat interested to hear. I recently met an attractive young woman online and we met in person even more recently. Things were a little awkward at first, which I guess would be expected given the situation. But we spent most of the time talking with each other or to the group of friends I took her back home to meet (because this meeting with her was planned entirely last minute and said friends had already invaded my home when these plans were… um… planned). I want to give a quick shout out to Landon (name unchanged) because when we were back at the apartment, he sort of helped poke conversation amongst the three of us (and occasionally four). Yes, I know that isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it’s a helpful stepping stone to future meet ups, I guess.

That said, I don’t think I’ve freaked her out, put my foot in my mouth, or was boring enough to scare her away yet. In fact, it seems like we’ve hit it off quite nicely. We’re meeting up again on Wednesday for what seems to be like a more formal kind of date, which is cool. Bad news is this means delays for podcasting and stuff (maybe pushed back to Thursday). So for those who are involved in that who read this, I apologize in advance for that, but seeing as how I rarely meet attractive single women who will hold a conversation with me longer than five minutes, I think this is one of those things worth changing plans for.

So what makes her so interesting to me that I’m pursuing this venture? Well… a lot actually. She’s an artistic type, really good at illustrating. She’s incredibly intelligent to the point where I’m almost intimidated by it. She’s also a gaming/techno nerd who knows more about computers than I do. Granted, I don’t know THAT much, but I’d argue she could probably even put Wayne (name changed) to shame with what she knows. Not to mention she has her life well organized and planned out. There’s way more to her than that, but I figured I’d hit the highlights here because I could probably spend an entire entry just listing off all the fascinating things I learned about her in a single evening.

With all that in mind and then some, I am under the impression that she’s WAAAAY too good for me. Like, I’ve mentioned her to a few good chums at work and they said, based off what I told them, that she sounds like the perfect girl for me. And while that seems to be more or less true, I feel had we met under any other circumstances, she’d likely consider herself way out of my league and pass on me faster than the Flash could run around the block. So in this situation here, I guess I’m incredibly lucky to have met someone as good as her, but I get a feeling the usual shenanigans of my saying or doing something stupid will occur and break down the truth that I’m not even closer to her level of “awesome”.

No, this isn’t me trying to put myself down. She’s literally done so much more and is doing so much more with her life than most anyone I know, including myself. All that on top of how talented she is and how similar our interests are… yeah… I feel like I’m Batman who also got to keep his parents but is still the most badass superhero ever… (By that, I mean I feel like there’s too much “win” happening here for this to be legitimately happening, if that even makes sense).

But I’ll try not to think about that as much, if I can help it. We’ll see how our first official date kind of thing goes on Wednesday. Who knows? Maybe the next time I post something on here will be when I’m in another committed relationship… hopefully one that doesn’t end almost immediately after I mention that it exists (which seems to be the common theme of recent relationships).

Okay! Enough about that, because I’ve spent WAY too much time talking about that for me to not be jinxed. Let’s talk about something else… um…

So I’m talking with RageQuit about what we’re going to do with future episodes of our Let’s Play shenanigans. He and I are going to start constructing stuff for us to do in Minecraft. On top of that, we’ll have a running series with Smash Bros. On top of that will be our usual Game On videos (hopefully). On top of that is our long running Let’s Plays (eventually). On top of all that is our podcast. I feel like with school out of the way, this should all be more doable. Not to mention it sounds like I might finally start getting help with editing as both Stive and RageQuit want to get the editing software I use and learn how to use it and both (I think) offered to help with that if needed. All of which is awesome. I can’t wait til all that gets going.

And if all that goes well, maybe that job at RoosterTeeth I’ve wanted for so long is more of a reality and less of a pipedream. Only time will tell. Until next  time, later kids!