Video Games And Big Life Changes Save Us All
Welcome to the July 2024 edition of...
What I'm Into, What I'm Up To!
#48
What I'm Into
Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
...About how gamers are primed to change the world, how big social games can get people collaborating creatively about the future, and how you can apply gameplay to normal life to get a little happier and a little healthier. I originally wrote a huge essay about this, but I've shortened my thoughts to: this was a great book for me to read. She's got a newer book out called Imaginable which I'm planning to check out next.
What I'm Up To
From your perspective out there on the other side of the screen, not much has changed concerning this newsletter.
It all looks the same, same email address, same style, another weird subject line that doesn't really mean anything and is not working very hard to pull in potential readers on the verge of not opening another long-winded email.
On my side of the screen, though, it's all different.
Well, the laptop is the same. Same trusty 2015 Macbook Pro I've been using since my friend let me borrow it back in 2018.
But, otherwise, it's all different. I'm sitting in the sunroom of our new house in our new neighborhood in our new town up the road from the biggest city in our new state. This is my favorite room. I think I'll be spending a lot of time out here.
I could attach a bunch of photos, but I'm a writer, so if you'll indulge me for a few minutes, I'm going to describe how lucky I and my family have been to land here using words because words are the raw material of my chosen and enormously-profitable trade/hobby. (Sarcasm.)
In this room are six windows and one sliding glass door facing out (another window faces into the house, along with more doors than necessary). So I have a great view of our backyard. The backyard was my first stop when we looked at this house (we looked at it again before we decided to buy, then a third time with the kids, then a couple more times before we closed on it—Wendy was not sold on the house any of those visits).
We looked at a whole bunch of houses before this one and I realized after the first four or five I should start with the yard before looking inside the house, because that was what I really cared about most. Many houses looked great from the street and on the inside but when we finally got to the backyard, invariably I would be like, oh, okay, that's... nice. Most of them were fenced-in postage stamps and I would imagine myself spending time out there, writing or reading or sawing or eating, staring at the fence, wondering if the world outside still looked the same as last time I had seen it.
Wendy didn't care as much about the yard, she wanted to be close to her work. She has lived as far away from work as a half-hour drive without traffic/an hour with, and as close as fifteen minutes without traffic/twenty-five with, and in order to spend more time at home and less time on the road, she wanted to be even closer this time.
The photo of the house on the info page the realtor gave us was uninspiring. A single-story ranch in faded baby blue vinyl siding with a small driveway and a brick walkway up to the front door, modestly but nicely landscaped, white picket fence around most of the small front yard (Wendy and I told each other on what could be considered our first date that neither of us wanted to live the traditional American dream with the two point five kids and a white picket fence—funny how things work out). We were not super interested but we were committed to looking at every single non-foreclosure, single-family, standalone house in our price range in the area.
When we pulled up in the driveway, the house looked just as boring in real life as in the photo, but it was not on a busy road and the area seemed quiet. Both big pluses, and both things we quickly realized on our search a photo would never tell us.
I walked around the side while the realtor got the code for the front door and I think I might've actually stopped breathing for a second when I got to the backyard. Like, it took my breath away.
The neighborhood is high up on a hill, which we did not know until driving up the steep street to get to it. The backyard slopes down quite a bit. It's not giant, although definitely bigger than most of the other backyards we looked at, but the slope makes it look bigger and on top of that, the view past the yard was incredible.
We saw the house in April. The leaves were getting green but hadn't filled in yet as densely as they have now. I could see past our yard—which is completely encircled by live trees, fallen trees, shrubs, vines, and all kinds of natural debris pushed to the outside edge of the neighboring property—and it was like a scene from a movie. Like The Sound Of Music. Or an oil painting in a museum of a scenic, pastoral, country landscape—rolling hills of cut grass dotted with trees and ancient buildings.
Across the little valley below the bottom of our yard, up on another hill, was an old and giant three-story stone building with a a parking lot. Beyond that, an old barn and silo. Behind our house, at the bottom of the slope, a path meandered into woods past another old stone house, two story and decrepit with boarded up windows, but looking more scenic than scary.
There were a couple rabbits in the yard eating grass and birds singing in the undeveloped lot next door. I had this deeply peaceful feeling as I stood there. Wow, I thought, my writer brain ready to churn out inspired expressions of beautifully crafted prose, This is cool.
On the backside of the house, because it's on a hill, the basement is exposed and it looks like a two-story. The sunroom seems to have been a deck off the back of the house that was enclosed at some point, and is the only feature of any interest whatsoever on the outside of the house.
After seeing the backyard and the view, though, I was willing to make allowances for any shortcomings the house had to offer. And it did have a few.
We were not thrilled about only having one and a half bathrooms for the five of us—we had gotten used to having two showers in our last home. We didn't like the countertops, or most of the appliances, or the ugly siding. We didn't like the wall between the kitchen and dining room. The fireplace was in a weird spot. There were ugly drapes and wallpaper and two weird Greco-Roman columns between the dining room and living room. The basement was giant, but unfinished, and had the stale, wet smell all naked basements have.
I believed we could fix or overcome or just get used to all those things. Wendy wasn't so sure.
The house was only an 8-minute drive to work, though, so even though she didn't love it, she had to accept that it was no worse and probably even better than all the other houses we looked at, and we could probably fix some of the things we didn't like—maybe put another bathroom in the basement along with a guest room or extra hang out space.
We asked a few questions about the house ('are those columns important to the roof not collapsing or....?') and made an offer. Despite all our doubts and fears, everything fell into place, like dominoes falling into each other in slow-but-not-really-that-slow motion.
And here we are.
We've been painting, opening boxes (so many boxes), cutting out part of that wall between the kitchen and dining room, building IKEA closets, getting to know neighbors, trying to keep our kids doing more than just watching TV and playing video games all day every day, getting library cards, changing addresses on everything, registering for schools, hunting for thrift store treasures, naming the local wildlife, and exploring.
For much of this year the future felt scary and uncertain and super uncomfortable to think about. It has been sometimes exciting, sometimes painful, but always necessary to go through everything we've gone through to get to where we are now, and it feels good to have gotten to this point—somewhat settled, somewhat comfortable, and very optimistic about our future here. Every day, we find new reasons to like where we live.
If you're ever in the greater Baltimore area, let me know.
Til next time, good luck and Godspeed!
—Nate
