Guild Wars 2 is the new Prozac

Well, here I am... posting after way too long of a break. As excited as I was to start this blog, I thought I'd keep up with it better. But life can suck you into a whirlpool sometimes and I find myself wondering how I got in the water in the first place.

By no means have I lost interest in Guild Wars 2 or this blog. In fact, I'm still following the game obsessively and although I missed most of the last beta, I'm keeping up to date by watching the various youtube videos and reading all the interviews, blogs, etc. My heart is still in it, my mind is a whole other ordeal.

It's been a crazy year for me; I got married, lost my job of 4 ½ years, took a trip to Southern California, had a few medical emergencies for our dog, and I am still desperately searching for a job. That's just the gist of my life currently, but what really makes it hard is my depression.

Now it may seem odd for me to talk about my depression in a blog about gaming, but lets be honest, depression has a deep impact on the lives of people it affects. I've had to deal with it my whole life, and games have served as a distraction from the pain and the darkness that can occur from depression. For this reason, gaming has always been very important to me.

Anyone dealing with depression knows it can be hard to function at a normal level. Once more, it's a fairly taboo topic and many people shy away from talking about it for fear of appearing whiny or being a “downer.” This fear only adds to the loneliness that is a symptom of depression. For me, makes it hard to post a blog entry while this deep pressure of emotion is weighing on me and I'm trying not to show it.

Now that the cats out of the bag, I'm gonna give it a toy to play with. The toy is called Guild Wars 2. As I said before, gaming has helped me with my depression throughout my life. It's not just that you're in a fantasy world that distracts you from reality, but that you have goals to reach and reaching them gives you a feeling of accomplishment which helps you feel better about yourself. Moreover, an MMO, especially one like Guild Wars 2, allows you to have social interactions with people, and diminishes the loneliness you may feel.

What I wanted from this blog was to portray a more personal perspective of a gamer and I can't do that while hiding an major aspect of my life. Truth is, I'm an introverted, empathetic person who feels things deeply, but tries to hide it so I can fit in better with society (I owe a lot of that to my many customer service jobs). But from here on, I'll do my best to embrace it. After all, you cannot spread awareness, you cannot unit others like you, if you hide what you are.

That guy sure is a character!

Throughout my life, I've used entertainment, like many Americans, as an escape from reality. As I'm nearing age 30, I've spent more time questioning that effect on my life. Is this escapism creating a false sense of reality in me and is it in turn affecting my expectations in life?

What makes fictional stories so different than reality? I thought about this a lot the other day, as my wife was watching Office Space on Netflix, a movie about a disgruntled office employee. The main character goes about life in a careless way, with everything falling into place even though he'd given up all effort to be productive at his job. I could never be late for work everyday and skip the days I don't feel like coming in, all while having a “I don't care” attitude and tearing down my cubicle, without the consequence of losing my job. But this character did, in fact he got a promotion, and it made for a great story.

The difference is, I have bills, 2 cats, and a wife. However, there's that part of me that desires more chaos in the world and a bit more freedom. It's that part of me that wonders if these characters are truly so far fetched. It's not that we can't be outrageous, it's that we won't. Pressures from society and fear of being different, or abnormal, save us from potentially making fools of ourselves. That is, unless you live in Berkeley, CA.

A good story has colorful characters, each with their own flavor. The problem with real life, at least in American society, is that we're so caught up with fitting in, that the the lines of individuality become thin. When someone acts out of the norm, such as owning a flock of cats, or tattooing feline spots on their face, they're looked at as freaks. But at the same time, many people suppress their desire to stand out in fear of being ostracized. Where's the fun in that?

So I've come to the conclusion that many of these fictional stories, that masterfully transport our minds to a place more colorful, are not so out of touch as we are from life. People can, and should be eccentric, they should take chances, and their appearance should reflect how they feel inside instead of adhering to social pressure. Remember that character is defined as the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing. Do you have character?