Hey guys. Not really sure what brought this on, or how I decided to do this, but I figured I would write something up looking back on 2013 as a year. Not to talk about games, specifically. That's what The Moosies are for, and those are still a work in progress. I am making progress, I assure you. It's coming along well, but probably won't be up for a few days.
2013 has been a weird year. In terms of stuff like games and movies (and I realize I just said I wasn't going to discuss games), it was a pretty great year. Well, I guess it was probably only an average year for movies, because there were a handful that I really loved (Furious 6 (RIP Paul Walker), Pain & Gain, Thor 2), a bunch that I thought were good, but not great (Lone Ranger, Star Trek, The World's End), and some stuff that was outright bad (Man of Steel). And don't get me started on A Good Day To Die Hard, which is quite honestly one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Oh my god, that movie is horrendous. Maybe even in my top three for most hated movies of all time. Maybe.
Even the PS4 has been hit or miss. I got mine, as you well know, and I think it's a fantastic piece of hardware (for the price at least, don't even start with PC Master Race nonsense). Conversely, the games for it have been kind of not what I wanted. Resogun is great, and I absolutely love Assassin's Creed IV, but that's a multiplatform game. But Killzone Shadow Fall? Disappointing as a whole. Need for Speed Rivals (again, multiplatform)? Great driving, but again, kinda disappointing. And even the interface and stuff on the PS4 is lacking. Whatever happened to standby mode saving where I was in a game? They announced that the say day that they announced the system itself! Well, hopefully they get that working soon.
But outside of entertainment stuff? 2013 was pretty bad. Part of me wants to praise Giant Bomb for all the incredible content they've done this year (BioForge, Load Our Last Souls, Breaking Brad, Unprofessional Fridays, various random streams), but on the other hand, Ryan died. I know I don't want to reopen that wound any more than anyone else, but I do want to take a moment to applaud the GB crew for doing as well as they have in the months since then, because as much as we GB audience types felt that loss, I can't even imagine what the main crew went through.
Really, now that I'm on the topic of death, probably the best thing I can say about my life in 2013 is that no one I know personally died. At least not yet, there's still hours left for someone to die before the end of the year. Really hope I didn't just jinx myself with that.
So what happened to me this year? Well, I graduated from college. At first glance that seems like a good thing, and in a lot of ways it is (because I don't know if I could have taken any more college (and I used to really like school)). But on the other hand, due to poor decisions that I made during the course of my four years at college, I wound up with a degree in Political Science. And I'm not badmouthing PoliSci, because it's definitely something that you can get a good career out of if you know what you're doing, but of course I did this in such a haphazard and sloppy way that I didn't.
Instead I've been back home with my dad ever since, trying my best to work on my second novel, even though my first one has been a colossal flop that has only served to help crush my hopes of being a successful author. I mean, at this point, I'm way too deep into Space Cops 5000 to give up entirely, but I can't keep deluding myself into thinking that it'll magically be a huge hit that will allow me to never have to have a real job. In 2014 I'm going to have to face that truth and actually get a job or something.
And that's not even the worst of what happened (and let me tell you, working so long on something like a novel only to have it fail is really crushing). At some point I had a small encounter with someone that I was...close with in high school, and that led to a solid month or more of spiraling into depression and reliving all sorts of stuff I did in high school, trying to think of what I should have done, instead of what I actually did. Looking back on that now, I'm angry more than anything else that I let myself fall into that spiral, but whatever. I've always been prone to bouts of depression, even if I don't talk about it. No, I'm not going to a psychologist. I don't have the time, money, or interest in doing that.
Luckily I broke out of that spiral before anything bad happened, and I am (emotionally) in a much better place that I was a few months ago, but of course that couldn't be the end of the bad stuff for the year. Nope, my body decided to just have a 7 cm abscess on my intestines that resulted in lots of pain, and almost a week spent in the hospital, during which I had great experiences like being on IV with only a sponge on a stick to wet my mouth (couldn't even drink water), during which the other guy in my hospital room kept waking up in the middle of the night wondering where he was and causing nurses to come in and calm him down (I don't blame him, he was old and very confused). I've been out for a bit now, and feeling much, much better, but I'm not where I used to be. I still can't even lie on my belly without it hurting. Sure, it doesn't hurt a ton, but it still sucks. I have to wake up at 2 AM to take an antibiotic that I have to take every 8 hours (at least my other antibiotic is every 12 hours, and that I take at 6 AM and 6 PM). That's almost used up but, but man, it sucks.
And it's not even over yet. I have another appointment for a couple weeks from now, and that's going to at some point lead to a colonoscopy, so that should be fun. Granted, by that point it'll be 2014, so that will be next year sucking instead of this year sucking, but conversely, I could say that's just 2013 taking out its vengeance on me by creating a problem that bleeds out into the following year (and potentially the rest of my life if this isn't something simple (and of course it won't)).
I think I've covered all the big things. Though, now that I've written this all out, aside from the hospital stuff, a lot of this just sounds like first world problem whining. Whatever, first world problems or not, I reached some really, REALLY low points this year in terms of my emotional health, and whether that was my fault for overreacting is irrelevant.
2013 was terrible. I couldn't be happier to be out of this year. Well, that's a lie, I could be happier to get out of this year. As much as I've complained (and I think most of it is justified), I did have a lot of fun moments with friends and family this year. Highlights, you ask? I had that small party (two friends over an a pizza) for Divekick. I went to a PS4 launch thing with a couple friends (well, a friend and a friend of a friend). Thanksgiving was fun, The Fourth of July was fun. I started playing D&D with a couple of old friends from high school (though that didn't really help with the whole, reliving stuff from high school stuff), I got a new TV, and it's easily the best TV I've ever had, so that's rad.
Really, though, I feel bad for Luigi more than anything else. Of course he got stuck with such a terrible year. It's not his fault, I mean, he's a fictional character that has to bend to the whims of whatever Nintendo wants him to do, and in this case, it was to take the fall for all this terrible stuff.
And hell, I haven't even gotten started about how messed up Congress was this year, and I won't, because I think this has gone on too long as it is.
So, 2014? If I had to come up with a New Year's Resolution, I guess it'd be to figure out what to do with my life? I don't know, this stuff with my belly could turn into something really serious or crazy, and that may end up consuming more and more of my life. I hope it won't, and I don't think it'll be that bad, but who knows.
I'm going to keep working on Space Cops 5000. I know I wanted to get it out by the end of the year, and then at some point I said the end of January. Can I get it out by then? Probably not. Who knows. Once this is done, I might not ever get around to writing another novel (even though I had planned for this to be a trilogy, but don't worry, Space Cops doesn't end on a massive cliffhanger or anything, in case I don't write part three). Or maybe I will, I don't know. I certainly have plenty of ideas for it, even if all those ideas wouldn't ever come together into a cohesive whole.
At least there should be some great games next year, right? Metal Gear, inFAMOUS, Dark Souls, The Witcher 3, and other stuff should all be great. If nothing else, video games have always been there for me, even at my lowest points.
Which is not to say anything against my friends, or the GB crew and the GB community. I'm just saying that video games are cool. And you can quote me on that.
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