It seems to happen often enough that Pie and I get engrossed in a game and we hit this wall that prevents us from getting past a certain point. Inevitably we come across a branching path which necessitates some decision, and I self-impose an approach that is, as I frame it, full of the utmost care and precision. At times it is to optimize party makeup or character efficiency; other times it's in order to make things, ostensibly, more fun or interesting. Nearly always, however, it becomes an unsolvable riddle that has innumerable permutations for me to settle on. Okay, maybe even when numerable and manageable, I will somehow distort it into being unwieldy. It's gotten to the point where I can't help but pull back from the situation and wonder what sort of larger implications this trend illustrates.

Pie and I have recently gotten through with remodeling our living room and pairing down a lot of our old belongings. It has been an immense burden lifted having so much of the clutter that had once occupied emotional as well as physical space freed from our shared area. A big push to do so came from Brie, who has begun living with us as of about 6-weeks ago. It helped make her feel more at home to have more open space and it helped Pie and I let go of things that we were hanging onto for no real reason. I wouldn't say we were hoarding, but the level of clutter was cumbersome at best and debilitating at worst.

Along with cleaning out old things, it gave me time to reflect on my life up until this point. All the changes that have happened and, as one friend put it, how eventful my life has become. In the course of LiA, Pie and I have moved 3 times, my romantic life has expanded to include Brie and then Kat, Brie and I broke up for about a year somewhere in there, Kat has come to live here from North Carolina then moved out to her own place here in LA, Brie moved out here from Michigan. I've flown to and fro numerous times to be with them and of course have gone through gender transition in the last few years. I've grown and changed and been through countless ups and downs and even struggle to find footing to this day. There has been so much life...and so much aggro x3

But my life has changed. My goals and my focus has changed. And so too has the way I approached my gaming. Whereas when I was younger, I may have been more focused on playing a game to completion, now I focus on the experience and how it enriches me; there is so much more focus on the journey and not the destination. I think that being spoiled with any number of amazing games at my fingertips now versus only a game or two for months on end when I was younger has a lot to do with it as well, but I really do think that it mostly has just been a shift in who I am... and it's something I want to learn to embrace.