simpleek

Challenges don’t really scare me. I take them on because I’m either trying to prove something to myself or there’s something I want to accomplish. Video game challenges are obviously smaller and won’t have a huge impact on my life, whether I finish them or not. Yet, I keep doing them because they’re a fun kind of challenge and it keeps me focused on completing one video game at a time. Unfortunately, I may have juggled too many balls in the air for almost two months to get my current challenge done.

Two months is a reasonable amount of time, at least I thought it was, to finally mark Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations off my list of backlog games to finish. I made good progress in the beginning. I finally finished the case entitled Recipe for Turnabout and moved onto playing the next case Turnabout Beginnings. As I tried to dutifully keep playing this game in the Ace Attorney series, between going on vacation and then coming back to readjust to regular life again, a number of things started coming up that has a considerable impact on my personal life and others that are less than so. Let me explain.

I’ve reached a profound epiphany of sorts in the past few months. Maybe it’s the symptom of getting older and reaching a huge milestone in the aging process, but I’ve been taking stock of my life and thinking about where I want to go and how I can take steps in achieving those goals. Among those goals is writing and finishing a novel. Writing has always been a passion of mine ever since I discovered I really enjoyed writing stories when I took a stab at writing my own Sailor Moon fanfiction in my mid-teens into my early twenties, a time where the fandom was still at the pinnacle of popularity.

I can’t say my writing was particularly good. Looking back on it, I think it was pretty awful. This still didn’t stop me from enjoying the process of creating new stories and listening to the feedback I got from readers who read what I wrote on the fanfiction websites. College afforded me to take creative writing classes and potentially consider creating my own original stories without using something already created as my base, while constantly practicing and improving on my writing style in the process. After I graduated college, I began writing a novel but the hardships and reality of life when you’re no longer a student began to catch up with me. I shelved away the novel I started writing to deal with the difficulties I had at the time and those struggles eventually sapped any ounce of motivation and passion to continue doing anything remotely creative. The very thing that once made me happy barely was enough to sustain that desire to continue with the goal I wanted to accomplish and see where it would take me when I did. This didn’t mean I hated writing. The spark was still there, and it eventually led me to creating this blog in the first place, but I really had no clue how to find my way back to writing until it was all I ever thought about. Creatively speaking.

When I took the time to reflect on what I have achieved in my life and what I still wanted to achieve, it ultimately led me back to the novel I started writing about six years ago but never finished. I realized if this is a goal I still wanted for myself, why am I still holding myself back from trying again? It’s easy to answer that question. I was scared, really out of practice in using my imagination to write the world and characters I envisioned, and a little lazy. What I’m trying to say by being really honest and personal, dear readers, is I’m currently getting back into being serious about writing this novel and it will ultimately be a challenge to make time for video games and other leisure pursuits from now on.

Achieving this goal is no easy task and I’m still trying to work out a strict and consistent schedule to keep the writing an important part of my daily routine. However, this blog is still important to me too and I’ll do my best to keep updating and writing the kind of content you enjoy reading from me every Monday evening.

The other factor playing into why I failed at completing my two month challenge was being distracted by another video game. This is where the less profound aspect of my failure comes in. I received Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor for the Xbox One as a birthday gift a few months ago. Staring at the unopened video game and remembering how one of my friends enjoyed the experience of playing the game, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to just load the game and play a little just to get a feel for the game. This turned out to be a bad idea. I instantly LOVED the game. I found myself playing the game a little bit each night and this led me to completely forgetting about the challenge I still had to finish before it was time to write this report. Shameful, I know. Around the time I began playing Shadow of Mordor, I’ve also been dealing with some personal issues, which I won’t be openly writing about here. The last thing I really felt like doing to cope with them was to play Trials and Tribulations. Shadow of Mordor offered me aggression and infinite amounts of stabbing and assassinating Uruks to help me through what I needed to deal with. See, and people say video games are a waste of time. It’s a fun kind of therapy when you need it!

This leads me to what happens with video game challenge number eleven. I’m aware I’m actually close to finishing Trials and Tribulations. To give up on even trying to finish it now is not in my nature. I said I’m going to finish it, damn it, and I’m gonna make good on that promise! Doesn’t matter if I keep failing a hundred times over to get there. I know I will succeed. I’ll be extending the challenge into August and this time I’ll be more focused.

Thank you for putting up with my off the tangent, strange video game report this month. I decided it was better to be honest and actually write something that goes beyond, “Meh. I failed at completing this challenge. Who cares? Move on.” My readers deserve better than that and it’ll inspire me to do better next time. Wish me luck!