What Am I Doing? Divorce and MMO's.

$399 to have a court file some paperwork. $399 to just type some shit into a computer, run some papers I filled out myself through a scanner and put a stamp on a couple of them. At least I didn't have to hire a lawyer, they wanted a starting price of about $400 to just fill out the paperwork that took me less than 30 minutes to do. There's a lesson there by the way. If you don't have assets to split and don't have children, do the divorce yourself. Now, I'm not a professional in the area of divorce, I've only ever done this all the way through the once and only in the state of Nevada, but damn... took the people behind the desk 5 minutes max to get their shit done and then ask me for my credit card. That's almost $100 a minute!

Can we take another moment to look at 2016? I know the absolute pile of garbage that was that year has been well discussed over a multitude of outlets, but I can do what I want, so :-P (was that a text emoji? Did I just use a text emoji in my writing? I'm out of practice).

2016 was a rough fucking year, not only for its celebrity deaths, the dumbest US election of all time where we got to see the country elect a Cheeto colored man child with baby hands in what can only be described as a nation wide fever dream fueled by the self hate caused by a shitty 2016, but also for the cavalcade of shit that it seemed to unload on the individual lives of so many people. An interesting tidbit I found after I came out from the solitude of my divorce infused depression was that in the month of November, not only had I split from my wife, 3 other personal friends of mine had also started their own separations from their long term significant others within days of me. None of us talked, none of us knew that each others relationships were struggling, but there it was. A total of 4 newly single late 20 to early 30 somethings.

Since we all had something very big in common that all seemingly happened around the same time, what did we do to bond together and support each other? Nothing! Adult life is hard.

I myself decided to drop one commitment in favor of another and picked up an MMORPG, because I hate myself apparently.

For those not in the know, an MMORPG stands for Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Game, or addiction incarnate, or the community of mutual bonding through murder-hoboing. I had certain goals I wanted to attain once I was handed a level of freedom and the ability to focus only on myself. While that level of freedom wasn't something I wanted, it was what I got and I ran with it by making sure I got sucked into a little big world full of so many intricately designed modules of lovingly crafted addiction centers. I make wonderfully good decisions. You see, an MMORPG lives and dies based on getting its players to stick with the game for multiple hours a day over the course of multiple years. In order to make this goal a reality it needs to design its features around capturing the imagination of its players through content that can often take a few hours in a single sitting to complete and make it fun. It is actually very impressive, and even more so when one is done so well. The game that ended up capturing me was Final Fantasy 14. You see, I grew up with Final Fantasy, the first game I remember being addicted to and running home from school to play endlessly until I completed it and then starting over to do it a second time was Final Fantasy 6. That game turned gaming into a hobby that has followed me all the way through adulthood, and has now become an outlet that has captured my fun centers in ways I can only describe as obsessive.

I even went about buying a couple of my friends a copy of the game so I can sustain something resembling a social life. It has worked pretty effectively as I've bonded again with one long time friend that decided to move to another state in 2016. It has given us a way to communicate and do something together. That's pretty cool, right?

While we agree the game is a lot of fun and we appreciate the social aspect of it a lot, we also agree that real life productivity has gone down in a measurable way. Life is about balance and prioritizing what is important. The needs vs the wants, the cooking a healthy meal vs putting some corn dogs in a microwave, the being in a healthy and loving relationship vs getting married in a game to your other straight male friend because you get a cool looking pony thing you two can ride on in game.

Freedom and adulthood comes with a great amount of responsibility and plenty of avenues for distraction. In this modern age, those distractions are intricately crafted and beautiful other-worldly experiences. For fucks sake, have you all seen what VR is like? That shit is going to ruin lives A.K.A make them fucking amazing.

What I'm saying is, Final Fantasy 14 is a great game and everyone should play it. Do it, and come find me, I need more people to make bad decisions with.