I've been pretty well-off the last couple of years from a financial perspective. I lived with my mom and worked a shitty retail job, but having no real bills aside from my cell phone, I was able to build up a rather substantial savings. Of course, things such as these change when one opts to stray from a mediocre life and dive into college. Suddenly I've found myself in debt to the government, carousing lots for a shitty used vehicle, and becoming increasingly aware of just how expensive a hobby gaming really is. The moral of this introductory paragraph? Growing up is hard, but at the same time it can be ridiculously exciting.

Last night I pulled each and every video game I own -- with the slight exception of a couple I haven't beaten, and a couple more I often play online with friends -- and hauled them to GameStop. That in and of itself depressed me; I'm disgusted by everything GameStop stands for, from their outlandish prices on semi-new used games, to their shoddy trade-in values, to the way they treat their employees. Nevertheless, I'm not one to be bothered with listing dozens of games on eBay. Call me lazy, but this seemed like the most viable option. And it sort of was.

I'm recovering from an anxiety disorder, and so walking into a small game store with a air conditioner box loaded with around 68 Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii games was just a little nerve wracking. I got a lot of poignant stares, and though the manager who handled my transaction was pleasant and actually sort of excited about the number of games I'd brought in, I knew from the conversation happening behind the counter that he was just about to get off, and that I had just made someone else's minimum wage work day a lot more difficult. Respond with your quips about it being what they're paid to do, but dude, retail sucks, and I do what I can to avoid making it suck any harder for those stuck at that sort of job.

I traded a part of my collection in for cash, and the rest for credit. I paid off both StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and Fable III, and still had $208.91 left to put on my Edge card. I got $229.07 in cash; just enough with which to upgrade my computer's video card. Phase one of Operation: Cheaper Gaming? Complete.

My plan going into the upcoming school year is to take a lot of the cost out of gaming. How? That's pretty simple, to be honest with you. I'm going to be strictly purchasing 30+ hour games. I've begun this process already with Dragon Quest IX, Persona 3 Portable, and the PC version of Dragon Age: Origins. the next release riding on my wallet is Final Fantasy XIV, which releases on September 30. I figure keeping my games lengthy -- and in the case of FFXIV, unbeatable -- will drive down the cost of staying semi-current significantly. It was a hard decision to come to; I'm going to school with the goal of one day writing about games, and not keeping up on the latest releases goes completely against every instinct I have. Regardless, it needs to be done.  

Kicking Anxiety's Ass

As I mentioned before, I've been under the prolonged influence of a rather nasty anxiety problem for the last six years or so. It began shortly after my mom and stepfather got divorced, and escalated throughout high school and well into the present day. I'm not getting any sort of psychiatric help, but what I am doing is choking down a healthy dosage of generic medicine every day and forcing myself into situations during which I know I'll be uncomfortable. This has helped tremendously, and I started the process of learning to drive a vehicle about a month ago. Fast-forward to now and I feel that I'm just about ready to go in for my test.   Just a couple more days of practice with that pesky maneuverability thing and I should be set.

I sold my 15.4" MacBook Pro and accompanying 24" Apple Cinema Display to help build up some funds for a car. Obviously I can't buy anything luxurious; $2000 is pretty much my spending limit. If anyone reading this has any tips for buying shitty, cheap cars, hey, drop me a comment. I could use all the help I can get.

Gaming!

Despite all of this I've found some time for games. My friends and I have been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 since the release of the Engineer update. It's been a whole heck of a lot of fun when the game isn't ridiculously one-sided in a team's favor. I have very little skill aiming with the Soldier's Direct Hit alternate weapon, so I've had to switch to the slower, more area-of-effect friendly rocket launcher. It sucks because I was getting some pretty awesome kills whenever I managed to actually hit someone with the damn thing. But, whatever, I'm back to contributing to my team far more than I ever did using it.

I'm about ankle-deep into Dragon Quest IX, but I'm a little irked with the partying system. I was into the previous game's characters and all, but in this iteration you make your own dudes and set them up to fight alongside of you. Naturally this means they have no personalities or dialogue, and so apart from times when some random guest character aligns with me, I'm dealing with some soulless, mute puppets for the entirety of my adventure. I don't like it, and the game may have to take a back seat until I've played some more Persona 3 Portable.

Speaking of which, isn't the entire Shin Megami Tensei series just rippling with awesome!? Getting into the more dumbed-down portions of this mobile version of the third Persona game -- things like not actually walking about the school, and the removal of animated cutscenes -- took me some time, but man is the battle system so much more improved! I played Persona 3 before Persona 4, and got around halfway through before my PlayStation 3's hard drive crashed and a lost my save. I tried to return to it after finishing Persona 4 something like a year later, but I just couldn't. Now that the game has a lot of the improvements that Persona 4 introduced, I think I may actually see this one through until the end. Who knows? I hope I make it.