Sitting here at work watching the clock. In about an hour and 30 minutes I have an appointment with a surgeon. Hopefully a surgeon who has skills far greater than the ones I displayed playing Operation as a kid.
For most of my life, I have dealt with stomach issues. More recently, I have decided to get to the bottom of these issues and have since seen a gastroenterologist. After a bunch of fun tests, my doctor has concluded that my gallbladder is the problem. So today I am seeing a surgeon to see what can be done.
Part of me is nervous about having another surgery this year; the other part of me just wants the pain to go away in my stomach. Time seems to be slowing down as I get closer to going to this much anticipated appointment. I have to stop looking at the clock…
Update 9/30/11
My appointment went well. I will soon be parting with a not-so-valuable member of my body.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your Life.
The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t. -Sunscreen by Baz Luhrmann
Best road trip ever.
When I was in elementary school, I wrote in my yearbook that I wanted to be a horse trainer. At the time, I was taking horse back riding lessons- I learned to ride bareback- and thought that that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. My passion for the American West and my constant consumption of Louis L’Amour novels further fueled this childhood dream.
Our career ambitions seem to change with age and the overall passage of time. By high school, I was convinced that I wanted to work as a killer whale trainer at Sea World. My love for the ocean, deep sea exploration, and the thought of living a laid back lifestyle in San Diego pushed me to actually check into this position. In my research, I learned that you have to be a certified scuba diver as well as an amazing swimmer. A degree in marine biology or psychology would also help with the selection process. Three things pushed me away from this potential field however:
I am not the greatest swimmer.
Outside of being a Sea World trainer, a degree in marine biology pays next to nothing. The only person I knew at the time, with a degree in marine biology, worked in a hazardous materials department due to pay.
I took a marine biology class at the junior college and barely passed. The class ate my lunch! The only reason I ended up passing was due to a girl I was sitting next to. Thankfully, she could easily follow along and was more than willing to help me. Lesson learned: Always sit next to the smart one.
Now I won’t lie, whenever I visit Sea World I still want to work there. Maybe not as a killer whale trainer but in some sort of deep sea explorer capacity. They have a department for that, right?
Did you know that it is dark outside at 6am? Couple that with the freezing air conditioned air and you’ve got a certain someone who is not willing to surrender his blankets. This morning though, I got out of bed earlier than normal and ate breakfast with my wife. She had made a wonderful breakfast cake that tasted quite good! Afterwards, we dove into Proverbs 27. As we were reading, verse 20 really stuck out to me:
20 Death and Destruction[a] are never satisfied,
and neither are human eyes. (NIV)
Every day we hear about the latest death tolls and destructive forces menacing the planet. Death seems to have an unquenchable thirst. Think about this for a moment, every seconds 2 people die. In the time it will take me to write this over 1,200 people will have died. Weird to think that that many people can die within a ten minute span.
Destruction is also something that is constantly surrounding us. Places that have been untouched for over a hundred years are now experiencing the destructive forces of hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes. When destruction isn’t being caused by nature it is unfortunately being caused by fellow humans. War and terrorism seems to be a staple in our modern society. If it isn’t the United States fighting somewhere in the Middle East, it is some African country screaming out in pain under the latest warlord of the month. Death and destruction are universal, two forces constantly at work in our world.
So think about verse 20 again:
20 Death and Destruction[a] are never satisfied,
and neither are human eyes. (NIV)
Have you ever wondered why you’re never happy with the stuff you have? In the beginning you thought that, “If I just had this” you’d be made whole or at least happy. As you’ve grown older, you have discovered that this is not true. Just as death and destruction are never satisfied, neither will your desires for more. Ultimately, we can only find satisfaction in the Lord Jesus Christ.
11 The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail. – Isaiah 58:11 (NIV)
25 I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint.” – Jeremiah 31:25 (NIV)
As I was reading an article by Syp over at BioBreak, from this past week, I suddenly had the urge to start collecting video games again. Different titles and systems paraded through my mind in all their 16-bit glory. I could see myself engrossed in games that I had loved playing as a kid.
Something stopped me though. I felt this weird sense of deja-vu. I have been down this road before. Now, I’m not saying anything negative against Syp, I think that it is great to collect different things that interest us. For me though, collecting video games became more of an identity. It was who I was. In fact, I wrote about it back in January of this year as copied below:
The Collection
Once upon a time, I collected video game systems and games as a hobby.
Please note that my collection never looked like this...I wish!
I slowly built up my collection over time. A SEGA Saturn here; a random game there. Often I would plug in a misc. system and play some of the games I had for the fun of it. As time progressed, however, I found that my collection was gathering dust. Mt interests had changed. I mean, I still liked playing video games but didn’t feel the need to collect them anymore. So, I started to sell off the mounds of hardened plastic I had accumulated. I remember that upsetting me at first. No longer would I be able to play Panzer Dragoon for the heck of it. The collection that had been everything to me was being dwindled away into nothing.
We all find our identity, who we are, in the things that we believe and do. For a long time, my identity had been as a video game collector. With the selling of my collection, that was a title I would no longer bear. Perhaps this was a good thing though. Collecting chunks of plastic, consoles and games, only to let them collect dust and ultimately not be played makes no sense. It’s like me going into the public library, buying all the books up, only to never read them or let anyone else read them for that matter. “Captain it is simply not logical.”
Since the great video game purge, I have tried to limit my video game library. I have done this by becoming an avid user of Goozex, on online video game trading site. This has allowed me to obtain $60 games by getting rid of games that I no longer play. This has occasionally led me to slight dilemmas of which games to get rid of -the inner collector in me wanting to keep them all!- . As I stated above though, this makes no sense. Especially when I can take a game I no longer play and trade it in for something I actually will.
A long, long time ago, I remember a controversy that surrounded Modern Warfare 2’s “No Russian” mission. As of today, after finally playing it, I am able to comment on a bygone Internet hiccup. Enjoy.
As an American military officer inserted into a Russian terrorist cell, I stepped off an elevator and proceeded to mow down innocent Russians in an airport. Under the context of “maintaining my cover”, I slowly shot at those that had raised their hands in surrender and those that withered on the ground in pain. Fighting my way across the tarmac later on, battling with armed FSB agents, I found it odd that my survival instincts kicked in. Sure, I had just committed a terrible crime against the Russian population, but I still had to protect my own butt. After dispatching more than a few agents, I ran with my fellow terrorists to the escape vehicle. It was there that I was shot.
Ah yes, the bigger picture. The terrorists had known all along that I was a mole. Made me feel stupid for killing all those innocent civilians under the guise of “cover”. I now wonder if I could have walked through the entire mission never firing a bullet or lobbing a grenade….
When I first loaded up Modern Warfare 2, the game prompted me by asking if I was okay with playing a particularly graphic mission. I quickly pressed okay because I knew which mission it was talking about. I really think, that this mission was okay given the context it was presented in. Although, I do think that there was something a bit sick about the slow and methodical way the terrorists made their way through the airport. Reminded me of watching an accident scene…except for the fact that I was actively participating in causing the scene.
I am amazed where video game narratives are able to go in this day and age. No longer are we having to deal with simple stories of princesses needing to be saved but instead having to deal with stories that feature moral “gray” areas. I am also amazed at how sucked into the narrative I was. I seriously thought I would blow my cover if I didn’t shoot people. Only afterwards did I take a moment and realize that I could have shot into the air.
As a Christian, video games are often difficult to approach. Though I didn’t feel personally convicted over this game, I do wonder in retrospect just how “active” of a participant we are to be in situations like the one painted above. While the context of the mission may have been okay, I have to ask myself to what benefit was there in mowing down virtual civilians? That brings to mind an entirely different topic of killing in video games. We’ll tackle that one another day.
JohnnyBGamer 