The Graveyard: A Tale of Tales

Five minute computer game. Walk through a graveyard to a bench, listen to a nice song, and walk out again. More of an art piece than a game. The paid version is exactly the same, but it adds the possibility of death.

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108 “lifehacks”.

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Stephen King vs. the Violent Videogame Bill

King’s thoughts on Massachusetts’ controversial “games as porn” House Bill 1423.

It’s a roadmap of your life, a milestone, memory or interesting fact for every year.

Age 0: Our hero is born.
Age 1: Our hero shows his genius at a young age, by teaching himself to use the potty. Rumours of him using that newly found quiet time to solve the New York Times crossword puzzles in pen are unconfirmed but likely true.
Age 2: Our hero is introduced to a new member of the family: Tigger (tee eye double grr err), a lazy orange cat with whom he will spend many an afternoon planning world domination and playing with string.
Age 3: Our hero moves into a new house, which will be his childhood home until he moves out on his own. Most of this year is spent waiting for games on his VIC-20 to load.
Age 4: Our hero is imbued with a love of fiction after his father reads The Hobbit to him.
Age 5: Our hero begins his schooling and foolishly believes the next twenty years of education will consist mainly of nap time, lunch time, play time, and art time. He also joins his first soccer team.
Age 6: Our hero is given a Nintendo and Paper Boy for his birthday. He someday dreams of being a paperboy himself.
Age 7: Our hero has to keep a journal in school. Little did he know that twenty years later he would be writing a public journal that was widely read by at least five people around the world.
Age 8: Our hero is suspended from school for the first time after flashing his entire class in a joke that wasn’t fully thought through.
Age 9: Our hero and his classmates are split into two groups in school: the wise owls, for the students with decent reading comprehension, and the ignorant lizards [possibly not the actual name - our hero's memory is not very good], for the barely literate. In a very Harry Potter and the Sorting Hat moment, he luckily finds himself placed with the owls. This is a pivotal moment in our hero’s life, as it saved him from an early life of drug use and self hatred. It also taught him to hate those stupider than him. After meeting a computer geek friend within the wise owls, our hero spirals into a deep sea of geekdom from which he will never return.
Age 10: Our hero has his first acting gig: a baseball player in a school play who must continually hit foul balls until a song is finished, when he finally connects with a fastball for a home run. He had no speaking lines, but being greatly skilled in the art of mime, he still manages to steal the show.
Age 11: Our hero begins to play the clarinet in the school band, rocking out on Hot Cross Buns. This love lasts for but a short eight months.
Age 12: Our hero’s teacher requires the students to write a creative short story every week. He discovers that some find his stories to be humourous, decides to write a novel, and immediately begins procrastinating.
Age 13: Our hero begins high school, and when speaking his first word in front of his classmates to answer a teacher’s question, his voice breaks. This begins a long line of humiliating moments he will suffer during the next five years.
Age 14: Our hero’s French teacher tells his parents that he’s an ignorant idiot for lighting a match in class. Parents become outraged at the teacher for calling their son a name and completely forget to discipline him. Although scoring a victory at home, our hero is forced to spend the rest of that year’s French classes sitting in the desk at the very front of the room, past the teacher and tucked behind a television. He leaves this class knowing one phrase in French: est-ce que je peux aller à la toilette?
Age 15: An English teacher is somehow able to make grammar interesting, causing our hero to become a full-fledged grammar Nazi.
Age 16: Our hero decides he hates his Photography teacher, refuses to do any work, and receives his lowest grade ever: 1%. His teacher says to him, as he hands him his term review, “the only reason I gave you one percent is because the computers wouldn’t allow me to give you a zero.” Our hero feels strangely proud of this. School isn’t a main priority for our hero, as he is focusing most of his attention on the Discworld MUD, a massively multiplayer text-based game modeled after Terry Pratchett’s novels.
Age 17: Our hero’s English teacher is his Photography teacher from the previous year. This worries him deeply, as he feels he will be treated unfairly, but he finds the teacher to actually be a decent guy if you put in an effort. This makes our hero feel like a bit of a tool.
Age 18: Our hero enrolls in some random university courses and works in a few food stands around the city. He also spends too many late nights eating appetizers at Denny’s and becomes quite fat.
Age 19: After spending some time trying to decide whether to pursue an English/Philosophy degree or a Computer Science degree, our hero decides to choose the economically wise choice and begins his two year Computer Systems: Operations and Management diploma.
Age 20: Our hero finally moves out of his parent’s basement and works for eight months on Vancouver Island in a couple of technical support positions and a Java development position.
Age 21: Our hero returns to Kamloops to finish his diploma and work for a summer in a technical support position.
Age 22: Our hero begins his Bachelor of Technology and Applied Computer Science degree and works in yet another technical support position for four long months in Williams Lake.
Age 23: Our hero spends six fantastic months studying in Austria and traveling around Europe a tiny bit.
Age 24: Our hero graduates from his degree and moves to Victoria for a Java development position.
Age 25: Our hero frantically tries to think of something momentous to do before his next birthday, in case he has to write anything like this again.

Wow, that was actually a little more difficult than I thought it was going to be. Thanks Amanda, for forcing me to look at how pointless my life has been. I’m going to go sulk for a bit.

I tag anyone whose fancy has been tickled.

I also spent that time thinking about where I am in life and where I’m going. I haven’t really felt like myself this last month. It’s hard to explain, but I just feel unsatisfied or unfulfilled or…bored, really. I think it has something to do with my current stationary state.

I’ve been living and working in the same place now for nearly a year. I know that doesn’t seem like a big deal, and it’s really not, but this is the longest I’ve stayed still in the last five years. While at university, I was moving and starting new jobs every four to eight months. That may sound horrible to some people, but I had grown to really enjoy it. Every move, or new job, felt like a new chapter. Life always felt fresh and progressive. Since finishing my degree, I feel like I’m just drifting motionless. This is the first point in my life where I haven’t had a sketchy six month goal and a neatly-packaged four year goal. It’s a strange feeling.

Don’t get the wrong idea, my life is actually quite good right now. I really enjoy my job. I work in a fantastic, casual office that embraces creative solutions and produces results without much bureaucratic nonsense. I’ve made good friends here and have a decently active social life. I’m in better shape than I was in high school, which, to be truthful, isn’t really saying much. I have a single apartment in a nice part of town, so I have a calm, cozy place to live. All in all, everything is going quite well.

I just don’t have anything to strive for right now. I’ve met most of the goals I’ve been aiming at for the last decade. I still have career ambitions, and I’m learning a lot in my job, but advancement takes time and experience. Apart from working hard and continuing to learn, there’s nothing I can really do to speed up that process.

I’m not really excited about anything right now, nor am I unhappy with anything; I’m just mildly content. I’m medium, warm, neutral, gray. I’m floating in the middle of the pool, constantly out of arm’s reach of any side. Contentment was never one of my goals. It’s just watered-down joy. It halts momentum – a covered pit on the path to real happiness, and it’s easy to fall in and never get out again.

This contentment has left me in a creative slump. I’m uninspired, as you could probably tell from that manuscript introduction I posted. I’m in a position now to focus on personal projects. The path I was on this last decade was a ride. It was like a playground slide. Once I pushed off, I didn’t have to focus on moving myself forward. It was just a matter of stopping myself from falling over the sides. I guess now I just have to find a new slide and start climbing those steps.