treasure type n

I’ve been enjoying being home so much, I haven’t made the time to sit down and write. Even though I want to write all the time and make lots of stories and stuff happen, I also sort of needed a vacation to just … exist, for a little while.

So I have produced many words (mostly on my stupid Tumblr thing), but I haven’t put them together into stories. It’s turning out to be even more difficult than I expected to switch gears from the long hours and specific demands that go with being an actor to the different hours and self-discipline that go with being a writer.

But I’ve been doing some stupid creative stuff on Instagram and Twitter, I guess, which is sort of goofing off and like eating junk food instead of preparing a healthy meal.

Still, I’m going to give it a try.

I was moving things from my office out into my game room, and one of the things I was moving was my original AD&D Monster Manual.

I don’t play that edition anymore, but I will never get rid of my books because they mean so much to me. Indeed, just holding one of them can take me through time to uncountable days in my childhood that I spent sitting on the floor of my bedroom, designing dungeons, creating characters, and having adventures with them.

I was such a weird kid. I was shy, I wasn’t confident, I wasn’t coordinated, and I was more comfortable inside my own head than I was anywhere else. I didn’t know it then, but I know now that I wasn’t the only Gen X-er who grew up feeling this way, who found comfort and companionship between the covers of books.

So on my way out to the game room, I stopped for a minute and just looked at my Monster Manual. I flipped it open, and looked at a few of the creatures it offered me: the Bugbear, the Carrion Crawler, and, of course, the Owlbear.

I felt a lot of feelings, all at once, in an explosion of … I guess it was … a sort of ennui? Yeah, let’s go with that. There was some sadness, some longing, some joy, all of it in the faded Kodachrome of 80s childhood nostalgia. I want to play AD&D in theory, but I’m just not entirely sure that it will be as much fun to play now as I remember it being when I was in elementary school. This is one of those things where it’s probably best not to collapse the waveform, I think.

I haven’t done much gaming since about August, and it wasn’t until I was looking at my Monster Manual that I even missed it. After three straight seasons of Tabletop, and a super upsetting experience this last season, I was super burned out on games and gaming. I felt like I’d taken something I loved and turned into a job — which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but I’d totally wrecked the work/life balance — and I haven’t been Feeling It, as they say … but when I held my Monster Manual, felt its weight and the texture of its covers, looked at those creatures inside — even the incredibly stupid Piercer — I remembered why I love games and gaming.

I still need my vacation from gaming for work, but I now feel like I could spend at least some of it gaming for fun.