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I rarely fire up my desktop computer at home any more. My laptop is a better computer, and with a wireless network in the house now, I don't need to sit at the desk where the LAN cable can give me access when I want to surf the internet.
I turned on the desktop a week or so ago to keep an eye on the Woot-Off while doing some woodwork near where my desk sits. During a break, while waiting for the Gorilla Glue to set, I thought to check and see if my old Ultima Online account was still active.
I started playing UO back in 2000, as something of a distraction from a death in the family. We played for a couple of years on the official servers, and then switched over to a player-run server that didn't charge a monthly fee.
My wife and I both ended up as staff on the player-run server, and I eventually landed in the position of Admin on the shard. As such, it was no surprise that my account was still there, since I had set it to not decay while still staffing.
It was a bit tempting to hide in the game again. My father passed away on October 18th, and the project I was working on that day was the wooden box that will hold his ashes.
Dad would have been 71 the first week of November, and I'm not sure it has still quite sunk in that he's gone. The game would be a good place to escape from the realities of a world without Dad, just as it was eight years ago. My characters there have skills and resources, and death is not a permanent condition in the game.
The problem is, I remember too well what hiding in the game is like. The real world continues on without me, and when I finally resurface, time has passed by and cannot ever be recovered.
I didn't spend much time writing when I was playing the game. I didn't spend nearly enough time doing much of anything else, outside of work, when I was playing the game. It was too easy hiding in it.
It was nice to see my character again, but I find I really don't want to spend much time with him any longer. A week after Dad died, I went hiking with my wife and son to find a geocache in the Catalina Mountains near our home. I've played games with my wife this week. I've worked on outlining my story for NaNoWriMo this year. I've joked with my daughter about politics (I think we disagree about which candidate we're going to vote for, but that's okay. I'd rather she had the confidence and intelligence to make her own decisions than to blindly follow my preferences). I called my brother and teased him about turning 50 (he has to wait a year to tease me back on that milestone). I taught my dog to climb a step-ladder to get up to my lap (she's the only one of our dogs bold enough to do so, so far).
Games should be an appetizer or a dessert in our lives, not the main course. It might be tempting to escape from life inside a game, but life is too short to waste it with empty escapism. The best games to play are the ones that bring us closer to those we love. If you get together with family for Thanksgiving this month (for those that celebrate Thanksgiving in November), make sure to turn off the television and invest some effort into enjoying time with your family. Dig out a game that will get you all laughing and enjoying yourselves, and remember to be thankful for even the weird relatives that you'd rather not admit to knowing.
See you next month.
Frank Higginson, November 5, 1937 - October 18, 2008. Zikhrono livrakha - may his memory be for a blessing.
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