Ava Jarvis: Back from Hiatus, and Balancing Gaming with Life

Some of you may have noticed a serious lack of BilboAtBagEnd presence around and abouts on BGN and BGG.

I’m returning to serious gaming with A Gathering of Friends this year. But that’s likely the only bit of serious gaming I’m going to get until BGG.CON later this year.

Now, this situation---of not getting into serious gaming outside of conventions---is actually rather common.  Trying to strike a balance between gaming and life can be difficult, especially between work, family, and other hobbies.  And for each person, the process of striking that balance---and what comprises that balance---will be unique.

What am I going to do about it? 

Hmmm.  I’m getting flashbacks to Knizia’s Lord of the Rings.

Drowning in Hyperludica

It’s been ages since I’ve done any serious gaming.  And a bit of a while since I’ve done some family/casual gaming.  And actually quite a short while since GiftTrap---which is really a great game and all that, but you can overplay just about anything. And while I love Haba’s bright yellow boxes best of anybody I know, I think I’m going to sit out for a while (except for Maus nach Haus, which is pure fun and thus never wears out its welcome with me).

I miss BattleLore.  Heck, I even miss Heroscape.  I miss Knizia and especially Blue Moon and Through the Desert.  I miss GIPF.  I feel like a huge game of Carcassonne with every expansion cobbled onto it.  I could go on and on.

Now, I used to suffer from a severe case of hyperludica, which was then succeeded by a sudden outbreak of a case of hypergraphia (the nigh-uncontrollable urge to write, as opposed to lud-something, playing games).  I absorb knowledge like a sponge, and can remix it all into pretty words.  To me, that’s pretty much the definition of fun; I enjoy it more than playing games, even at the height of my hyperludica.

And now I’ve washed up on the shores of reality check---as in, I can’t do everything at once. Where do you go from there? I wondered. 

So now I’m left with trying to figure that out.  That’s one thing I can’t learn about easily.

Walking the Beach of Balance-Seeking

It’s kind of peaceful here, away from the gaming nuttiness. Sometimes people care a little to much, you know?  After a while I got very tired of that.  I wonder what drives other people away from the fields of meeples and various sizes of wooden cubes.  I’ve joined a club of a sort.

Now, I hate balance.  Before, there was nothing to balance---it was gaming and just gaming, man.  That was my fuel to keep going through a life where I felt adrift; it was my anchor, and when you’ve got a total of one rock to hang onto, obviously it’s time to get intimate with that rock.

Then the tide changed.  Life happened.  I found out new things and new skills.  I got a house, got into a position at work where I could enjoy my kind of job to its fullest, and discovered that, hey, I can write stuff other than technical specifications and gaming articles.  And do it ... fair.  I’m not going to say well until I pass a few more milestones, but I’ve gotten through a couple in various branches.

So now I have a whole host of things to deal with.  The last thing to complete my set of spinning plates (especially in one of the new areas, working up to professional blogging/web publishing) would be a family (not gonna happen, there’s a blessing).

Where You’ve Been Is Not As Important As Where You’re Going

I like to brood on the past.  The problem with this is that when I do that, I’m not facing forwards, looking at new horizons with new eyes.  So to spin all those plates, I’ve found that I need to stop brooding and starting doing.

This has been interesting.  And I’ve taken approaches that clearly mark me as writer, but just as obviously mark me as not a traditional writer.  That’s a bit like loving Knizia and Heroscape at the same time.  Somehow I’m not surprised.

I don’t like taking the path less taken, or not taken at all.  It’s lonely---very lonely.  I always want to look back at everybody else on the wagon train, until I can’t bear it anymore and just look away.  Dealing with that means forgetting the envy and just accepting that I walk with Robert Frost. Sometimes literally.  And looking forwards.

I want to look forwards in everything.  Gaming included; to stop dwelling on the past, and pretty much ignore everything else that says I must treat my life a certain way.  So what if I only seriously game a few times a year?  There’s a part of me that loves the social connection involved in gaming far more than gaming itself; which is to say that I have a hard time gaming without relationships involved somehow.  That’s why The Gathering and BGG.CON are where I want to do serious gaming. 

And everywhere else?  Bring out the bright yellow boxes, man.

(I will get people onto Elfenland, damn it.)

Who Are You?

I’m having what they call a quarter-life crisis these days (because obviously just one crisis in your life is not enough).  I’m a gamer, but I’m a casual gamer.  I’m a writer, but I’m much more a blogger than a writer.  (Oh, I never thought before that blogging could be serious.  But it can be, and you can get paid.  It’s the new field for non-fiction.) I enjoy work that I shouldn’t be enjoying---I’m enjoying a serious job because it’s serious, which is very zen. 

I don’t plan to subsist as a fiction writer only, which means to most people (like agents...) I’m not serious about the art/craft; after all, I’ve got a job I love right now.  I can have fun, although that means mostly I’ll be working on short stories and serials.  I can do funky stuff that no writer working for a living should consider for a large part of their time, e.g., exploring online opportunities, maybe even go the path of Creative Commons.

This is not stuff that I should be doing.  This is not how I’m supposed to be facing life.  These are paths of the foolish and unwise.  We’re talking Tarot Card Major 0, baby.

And yet perhaps this is where I’m happiest, most productive, going. 

Does BGN need a casual gamer columnist?  I’ve got no idea.  Maybe it’s not needed, and it’s best if I just fade away, watching the tides roll in and out, and thriving on the VERY odd Hasbro find that works (thank you Voltage).

Now, Gathering Stuff

I’ve acquired a kind of blogging view of the world, although you wouldn’t know it from Googling my name.  I keep the various plates in my life on different sticks, because they keep spawning subplates, and sometimes plates are incompatible. 

It’s the kind of view where you start believing in the goodness of social media and networking.

To that end, Bilbo at Bag End exists on Twitter.  And I’ve already started Twittering about the Gathering---although right now it’s restricted to Getting the Heck Across the Dang Country. Are you on Twitter?  Then follow along.  Or stick the feed into your favorite RSS reader.  Or just visit a lot.

I’ve also got a StumbleUpon account that I need to start using (it’s got no favorites at the moment.  Aww). 

Now, I have responsibilities I attend to other than gaming, but at conventions, I can be JUST about the gaming.  Such is the pleasure of finding that rock again, washed clean by the surf, and sitting on it to watch the sun set.  Or rise.  Or something.  Really, it’s like one of those Despair.com posters, only I’m not sure what the caption should be.  And I certainly am not really in despair, apart from still being uncertain about the paths I’m looking down. 

I hope to be around more often.  We’ll see.

In the meantime, Peace Out.

© 2008 Ava Jarvis

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