💭 The dream is coffee and a game
Good morning! This is unprecedented. This is a whole new thing, because for the first time in, I think, the last five years, I am waking up to an empty house. My son and my partner are gone. They went on a dolphin-watching expedition early this morning, and I'm waking up to a house just for myself. I am sitting here with my cup of coffee. I don't have to rush. I don't have to do anything for anyone else. I don't have to make breakfast or change something for someone. The morning is all mine, and I honestly don't remember the last time that happened.
Of course I've had mornings where no one's been home. My son might be at school, my partner away for work. But I don't think there has been a morning where I've woken up, and nothing has been expected of me, because no one is here, in the past five years.
It really just shows that times are changing. My son is growing up. He's been sleeping through the night now, in his own bed, for the past few weeks, which is new. For the past five years, I was always having broken sleep, because I was either going down to soothe him because he was waking up in the middle of the night, or he was sleeping with us in bed. So yeah, it's been five years of not having a full night's sleep, and I'm finally having that for myself, and that's also just changing my whole being, I swear. Five years of sleep deprivation really does something to a person, honestly.
This is one of those moments that I dream of... waking up, no responsibilities, no one to answer to. And I have my cup of coffee, and I'm going to play a game. This is the dream!
So yesterday I had a similar moment. Last evening my son and my partner went out to watch a theater show. Our village does one every Wednesday in the summer. It's an outdoor show at the village square, really fun. Normally I like to go to these things, but I am a woman with a menstrual cycle; I am in my inner autumn (my luteal phase, IYKYK 😉), and I'm also an introvert, so I need to recharge on my own. And we've been having a pretty busy week since the summer holiday started. My French mother-in-law is here, so every day we're doing things, and I constantly have to be "on." I'm a host, and I'm a people pleaser, so when someone's staying at our place, I'm ON.
So last evening I was like, "You know what, I really need some quiet time, I need to recharge." And I said to them, "Hey, I am not going to go tonight." Obviously, totally fine with them. So I stayed home, and I had about an hour and a half all to myself.
Now, this is not something that's never happened before... of course I have had time to myself before. But here is something that happens very often when I have this time. I was very much looking forward to this hour and a half all to myself, complete silence, house all to myself. I was like, "I am going to play a game, I'm going to read a book, I'm going to do something I really want to do." And in the end, what do I do? I'm on my phone. I'm watching YouTube shorts. I'm watching other people play video games. I'm not actively doing anything myself. I'm watching other people do things.
This happens to me so much. I often feel like I am not living my own life. I'm watching other people live the life that I want to live. And I don't really know why that is. I don't know why, when I finally have that moment all to myself, I waste it by going on YouTube or Reddit instead of just opening a game.
And this morning my plan is to write this post with my coffee, then I'm going to open my game, and I'm going to play. That's my dream. That's my ideal vision, my ideal morning: coffee and a game, without being interrupted. And I have that opportunity right now, but part of me is like, am I going to waste it? And part of me is like, probably. Probably the moment I open my laptop, I'm going to end up wasting this moment. The moment I pick up my phone, I'm somehow going to end up on YouTube.
I know a lot of it has to do with the fact that I leave a lot of my gaming to the end of the day. My son has gone to sleep; it's 9pm, and I'm like, finally, it's me time. And what that means is my brain is usually completely fried, and it doesn't want to do anything that requires any effort... and I guess sometimes gaming still requires effort. It requires me to make a choice. So what ends up happening is I turn on my Switch, and I'm just looking at all my games. I don't know what to play. I go on the eShop, and I mean I have a whole backlog list! I've even gone to the point of writing my Long Play list physically on a piece of paper (to try and avoid going on my laptop or phone), so it's always there with me, so I can look at it when I don't know what I want to play. All I have to do is look at this piece of paper and choose one of the games from there. But even then, I can still get stuck in analysis paralysis.
It's really interesting. I'm working on it. I think my brain is just so tired at the end of the day that it's reaching for the easiest, lowest-effort thing. But yesterday I was on YouTube, and — thank you, YouTube algorithm — I landed on a video of this mom coach, and she says something similar about how at the end of the day you just end up doomscrolling. And then she says: instead of doomscrolling, ask yourself what the smallest thing that you can do right now is?
And that managed to snap me out of my YouTube rabbit hole. I was like, "Oh, I guess the smallest thing is I can just open my 3DS." Because right now I'm playing Radiant Historia on my 3DS, and I am loving it.
I recently started playing it after having finished Cat Quest at the beginning of July. I really enjoyed Cat Quest. It was one of the games on my Long Play list. It was a simple RPG, but the sense of progression throughout the whole game just felt really, really good. It was easy to pick up; the story is cute, not very complicated. As a mom at 9pm, that was just a really easy thing to turn on, play, and then go to bed.
So I felt good. I had some momentum again; I finished a game, I wanted to finish something else, and I was really feeling like I wanted to play a JRPG... especially because I'd played the Adventures of Elliot demo and was really into that, but didn't want to buy it because I have plenty of games already. So I looked at my Long Play list. I've got a few JRPGs on there. But I didn't want to go into Persona... I just wasn't ready for that. So I thought, okay, maybe I'll do Cat Quest 2. But I started it, and it was just Cat Quest 1 in a different story, and I didn't want that right now.
So I decided to try Sea of Stars, because I keep putting it off and everyone I know says it's an amazing game. So I started a new save file... I already had about four hours on a different save file but didn't remember anything, of course. I downloaded the free upgrade for the Switch 2, which comes with an extra cinematic that I don't think was there before, and it's really pretty. The game itself looks really pretty; I'm not going to lie. And I want to like it, but I just can't. Every time I think about opening Sea of Stars, it just feels like such a chore.
I got to the pirate village, or the place where you're supposed to meet the pirates for a boat, and along the way I had moments where I was like, enjoying it. But I constantly feel like it's a chore to get through the game. I don't really enjoy the battle system, and I don't think I fully understand it either.
So I messaged my friends, and one of their partners said, "Hey, maybe you should try Radiant Historia." And I have a modded 3DS... yes, gasp. But with Sony cutting down on disks and Nintendo shutting down the 3DS eShop, what do you want me to do? It's very hard to find some of these games. So yes, I have a modded 3DS, and yes, I download certain games onto it. I also own 3DS and DS games; I still have the physical cartridges... but sometimes I can't get these games any other way.
(yes this probably breaks the no buy rule even though i'm not exchanging actual money I am adding to the list of games I own...I know, I know).
So I started playing Radiant Historia, and I'm already about five hours in, which is around the same time I was in with Sea of Stars by this point. Time feels like it's flying by when I play it. It was immediately engaging. I like that I can play it like an action RPG. The version I'm playing, Perfect Chronology, has a few changes from the original; one of them is that you can walk through the overworld and slash up enemies, bumping into them without going into an actual battle sequence, if you don't want to. I love that I have that choice. On an evening when I'm really brain-fried, I can make progress in Radiant Historia by slashing through enemies without actually doing the full combat.
And then the combat itself... at first I was worried that this was going to be way too complicated, but actually it's really engaging. It's a little puzzle: you try to get everyone on the same square so that when you hit them, you hit them all at the same time. I'm really sitting there like, okay, I need to move this guy to the left, and this girl this way, and push them all to the back so they end up on the same square. And I really enjoy the little puzzle. I feel rewarded for exploring the overworld and the maps. And I really like the characters. I like Stocke. I like Raynie. I like Marco. I like that Raynie has a little crush on Stocke, and every now and then it comes out in what she's saying. I like Kiel, who's not necessarily crushing on Stocke but is kind of in awe of him. And Marco just calls everyone out on it. I love it.
So I'm really enjoying it. And it made me think... was I feeling like Sea of Stars was a chore because everyone online seems to really love it, and so I feel like I have to really love it, and then it starts to feel like a chore? I don't know. For this moment, I am putting Sea of Stars down again. But I still have hope, because Dragon Quest 11 has become one of my favorite games of all time, and it is also a game whose demo I tried like five times before it actually clicked. Maybe Sea of Stars is the same. Maybe I need to play it five times before it clicks and it becomes my favorite game of all time. But for now, Radiant Historia is it.
So, I opened up my 3DS, and ugh just the physicality of it! I love it, and I wish Nintendo would bring something like that back. I love the physicality of the 3DS and the DS... opening up that clamshell, seeing the two screens, contained in this thing. There's no notification of people coming online or what they're playing. It's just contained within that thing. It's almost a ritualistic thing, where I open it up, I turn on my game, and that's it. I'm engulfed in this little world on my 3DS.
So that was a little trick I used, thanks to that YouTube video. The smallest thing I could do was just open that clamshell. And I did it, and it snowballed from there, and I was off playing until they came back home from the theater show.
I don't know what I'm trying to say with this post, but I guess... I'm just realizing that sometimes what we think is the easiest lowest effort thing (going on YouTube to zone out) isn't the most rewarding thing. The easiest thing is the smallest step toward the thing that feels the hardest (opening the 3DS clamshell). And once that small step is done, you're off on an adventure!
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