Time, time, time, see what’s become of me…
If I could save time in a bottle…
…But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do, once you find them…
…Like the red rose of summer that blooms in the day
Time passes slowly and fades away…

Here we sit on the downhill side of summer. August snuck up on me. As you will see from the song lyrics I quoted, time passing is a theme both in my life, and in the amount of time I can lose while playing a good game.

While I won’t be doing the full blown Blaugust challenge that one of my fellow Twitter crazies is organizing (look up @belghast if you want to join in the merry fun!), he just wants to see more of us writing and doing so more frequently, so I agreed to at least step up the pace a bit.

This has been a summer of introspection for me. It has not been much of a summer of gaming for me, but that was partly a deliberate choice, partly a lack of gaming inspiration. I know how much time I can lose to games. I chose to stay away from them as much as possible so I would spend more of that time looking for work, taking online classes, and working on projects around the house. Just as time passes when I’m gaming, time has flown by while I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about my future.

It has been something of a blessing that none of the new games that have come out since I was laid off have been of interest to me. None of my old standby games have had new compelling content either, and the games I know will suck me in to lose hours of time (Dragon Age Inquisition…oh yeah! have you seen their gameplay videos?!), won’t be out for several more months.

Unexpectedly, I lost hours of time writing a book. I hadn’t intended for it to be a book, but once I started telling my story, it grew and grew and time passed until it was over 52,000 words. I don’t know if anything will become of it. Maybe I will self-publish, maybe I’ll submit it for consideration, maybe I’ll just let my friends read it and gently (or not so gently) tell me not to quit my day…. oh, wait… 🙂 I do know that my story isn’t completely finished. I already have page 1 of the sequel written.

My computer and I, we spend a lot of time together. Even my highly durable Logitech G510s keyboard has had its “s” and “d” keys worn into blobs of blue light. I got one of those super expensive comfy computer chairs a few years ago. It was a great investment. Some might say, ‘well, if you had a less comfortable chair, you wouldn’t spend so much time in front of your computer!’ Those people aren’t gamers, computer nerds, web developers, or writers. Since I am all of those, I’d sit in a comfy or horrible chair for hours on end, regardless.

When I was working from home, I would spend as much time (or more!) in front of my computer as I spent in bed each day. I would work there, then in the evening, I would play there. When my life changed unexpectedly this past spring, which galloped into summer and (hopefully not!), may continue into fall, I chose to step away from the computer more.

Speaking of which, my shaggy lawn is dry enough to mow now. Yes folks, more time passed writing this post than I had intended. My computer is the ultimate time machine!