cybergeisha

I came up to visit Seattle for Christmas. I sure chose a crazy time - the entire city is BURIED in snow. When I flew in, it was surreal - huge snowflakes rushing past the window of the plane. The runway dusted with a light snowfall. When we were waiting to taxi up to the gate, the snow was falling furiously. I was totally astonished.

On the drive back, when my mom picked me up at the airport, the road - the freeway was snowy. That never happens in Seattle. And then we got to the house. Out in Redmond, it was completely, totally blanketed in a foot and a half of snow, with more falling. When I woke up Sunday morning, indeed, there was a ton more snow.

It’s freezing. But it’s pretty. Here’s some pictures!

…or, my life in San Francisco as a game metaphor.

San Francisco is HARD. I feel like I’m playing a video game with the difficulty set to “Legendary,” even though I’ve only played once before. You probably know the feeling. It just maes you want to throw down the controller or push away the keyboard and say “The fucking game is broken, fuck this noise, I quit.” That’s how I feel whenever I go to one of these interviews and it’s like… “sorry, we aren’t hiring,” or get the “sorry, we went in another direction and you didn’t get the job.” It’s how I feel when some douchebag parks taking up two spots on the curb and I have to walk 4 blocks with two armloads of groceries. Somehow it’s all made worse by being in San Francisco - like I wouldn’t be as stressed out if I wasn’t here. San Francisco is the difficulty level.

That’s how I feel when I get so frustrated by the game being hard, or rather, the game being hard and me not knowing what to do, or especially when I play with people who do… frustrated and angry and I just want to give up so I don’t have that feeling anymore. I just want to stop playing, even though I know it’s a good game. And it’s a fun game that I want to play.

And then I you pick your keyboard back up, think “I’m not going to let those bitches pwn me, time to show them who’s in charge.” And then you keep playing, getting killed or keep dying or keep losing at the game, and join in with the “dude, did you see how hard I just wiped I can’t believe I just RAN INTO THOSE GUYS!” A sense of humor goes a long way with how you play games. And eventually, you get good at it. And you realize one day “Holy shit. When did I get good at this?!”

That’s happened to me with LotRO - when I first started I was a total n00b. Not just to LotRO but to MMO gaming in general. So I was confused and bewildered and frustrated by ***EVERYTHING***. And I just wanted to STOP but Kurt was very, very helpful and soothing to me - and willing to play a low-level character with me so that I did not feel like “the big kids” were just leveling me up. And now I know what’s going on in the game, and what’s more, I can *seriously* hold my own, and I realized “Hey. I’m good at this!” That’s a good feeling. And then you STILL get a glitch like I had tonight, where I spent two hours doing an instance with Kurt, and we won, and were turning in the end of the quest items with the end guy… but instead of finishing the quest, as soon as Kurt left, I was taken out and was not allowed to talk to him and finish - so I didn’t get the prizes, experience points.. nothing. One of those “Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” moments, when you want to just leave and say “fuck it!” But you get over it, say “that sucked, but I learned something from it, and here’s what it is: ___________.”

That’s what I want here. I’m at the level in life where I constantly want to throw down my keyboard and say “Fine! Fucking fine! I’ll never be good at it and this game sucks anyway!”

What I say in real life is “I can’t believe this bullshit! Why is it so hard?! Why?! I hate it here! Who set the difficulty level? EVERYTHING IS WRONG. EVERYTHING IS WRONG AND I HATE IT HERE. Someone turn it down to NORMAL please!” But they won’t and I want to give up…

But I won’t. I know it doesn’t suck. I know it’s what I want. I know it’s the best game of the season and everyone loves it and I would too if I was better at it. I’ve just got to stick with the frustration and difficulty of being the n00b until I can realize that I’m good at it and I’m enjoying my life.

I feel whiny.

And I’m not going to give up trying to get a firm grip on a life here.

No matter how much it feels like I’m getting pwned over and over in Halo 2.

I swore I’d go to bed early tonight.

You can see how well THAT worked out - it’s 4:30AM. It started at 1:15AM when I looked at my site and thought “Wow. I haven’t updated my webcam picture in MONTHS!” So I did. And then I thought “Hmm, well, I don’t use The List anymore, I might as well take that out.” Which led to some updates and pruning of my external links.

And then I started writing a new profile for myself. And then, and then, and then. And then, it was 4:30AM.

Since I’m proud of my tenacity in bringing Cybergeisha up to date, I’m writing a post about the update, instead of going to bed. I figured that the 1.5 people who read this would be on the edge of their seats in anticipation of a new post, and a new post on the site.

So, here: new material. I’m going to try and write here more - I’ve got a lot going on here in San Francisco and I’m sure all 1.5 of you would love to know about it.

I assisted in the Thunderdome quite a bit this year - every night I was there I ended up theatrically handing out weapons to the participants in the fights.

About two hours after Kurt and I had arrived arrived at Burning Man, dome fights started. Kurt gave a speech, someone grabbed me, said “Hand out weapons,” and I started doing so. At some point, Kurt ran over and put his hat on me. I just kept doing what I was supposed to be doing, and somehow, I ended up in this photo.

I almost didn’t recognize myself wearing a hat - I found the picture browsing Flickr for Burning Man photos. Actually, for a second or two, I thought it was a picture of Kurt.

This is me, Kurt, and Robert at Burning Man. We were standing at the base of “Babylon,” a 150 foot tall tower/art installation. We never actually went up to the top of it, there were a LOT of stairs and a lot of people. We were also out driving around in Vector and decided to drive out to the edge of Black Rock City instead.

The picture was taken by Kurt’s friend Richard, who I met for the first time while eating sausage on top of the Death Guild scaffolding. There’s no better way to make a good first impression on people than meeting them with a summer sausage in your hands.

I seriously like how Kurt and I are being all badass, and Robert looks like some sort of bodyguard.