Edit: I love how butthurt some easily-offended gamers are getting, like some personal choice of mine and reflecting upon how it has made my personal life better automatically translates to "you're all horrible people and should all be more like me because I said so ya tubby sacks of lard."  My lack of response to your commenting...is my response to your lack of reading.

Edit 2: Eh, instead of attempting to defend against words I never even posted, I'll just post these imaginary derogatory phrases here:  "I'm hereby blaming video games for obesity across the universe."  "Videogames make you into gamers, who are the worst people in the world."  "Rick Santorum 2012."

There we go, got all those out.  Since I know gamers with a penchant for dropping comments love putting words in others' mouths for making some arbitrary contention of borderline irrelevance, I'm just saving them time by posting up stuff I never insinuate, but will let them munch on to their heart's content anyway.  Crusade on, valiant knights, but delay not; for I'm sure the Diablo III servers will be back up again in jiff.


This actually is quite a big deal, seeing as weight is something I've struggled with for many years now.

My whole life, it has been a matter of just slowing down the gain, and trying to keep it from nudging any higher up.  If I ended the year only five pounds heavier than I entered into it with, then it was a pretty good year.

However, I took it upon myself last summer, after several nights of nearly asphyxiating myself under my own stupid hulking carcass, that I engaged in a much more active exercise regiment.

The biggest thing I did was stop the video games.  I spend enough time sitting at a desk in front of a PC.  When my work day is over, I'm blessed to have several hours to do something else, and trust me, playing video games isn't that thing anymore.  I feel horrible after playing games, now.  I can barely pick up the controller anymore, I just get this terrible feeling after putting it down, realizing I dumped an entire six hours of my weekend into it.

My co-workers frequently come rolling in on Monday, bragging about their character and advancements in Diablo III or whatever is popular.  Sure, I'm completely depriving myself of the social interaction of jumping in and telling riveting tales about the marvelous cohorts of my cantankerous Witch Doctor or whatever, but guess what.  They spent the weekend in front of a PC, their time to get away from the regiment of PC's lining the office cubicles.  Know what I did?  I actually went out and did God damn something.  Sorry, co-workers, really boring story, I know.  Me?  Oh nothing much.  Girl and I walked Newport Beach, but you wouldn't know her, she doesn't have a Steam profile.  Then roadtripped to some trashy hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant just to try the to die for salsa that comes complimentary with whatever you order, and ya know, just order whatever because it's irrelevant compared to that Godly concoction of tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cilantro...but seeing as that's a real thing instead of some (what was it, purple-colored?  Yellow-colored?) epic item drop, yeah, you guys probably don't care.

And I just weighed in after an incredible work-out at the gym, and am now 35 pounds lighter than I was six months ago.  And that's not even considering the amount of muscle I've built, seeing as I am bench pressing 150 instead of the 40 I started out with, eight-latting 230 (up from 210 last month), got 130 on leg extensions, and can burn about 750 calories on one 35-minute session on an elliptical...but whatever, none of those stats are linked to my Facebook page, so not like we can post those to some competitive online leaderboard or whatever.  And even if they did, I don't even maintain a Facebook page, so who even cares, right?

It's something I've always believed, but could never really put into coherent words until I took last weekend to just sit down and collect my thoughts.  I don't play video games anymore.  I just don't.  I'll say that I need to catch up, that I want to, that I'm excited for whatever title is coming out, but the truth of the matter is that even though I love videogames, I don't need them, and that I'm actually better without them interwoven through my routine.

See, these guys will play Diablo III for the next unGodly number of hours this weekend, churning and burning through the levels and items, and they will consider it ample usage of their time.  The more they achieve, the more they can boast in the coming week, making them the center of attention to my other like-minded co-workers pursuing the same endeavor.  That's fine.  I may sound a bit bitter because I'm unable to fit into their conversation, and that is the partial truth, I am bitter because I cannot fit in.

But I'm also down 35 pounds, and that's total, not excluding the muscle gained.  I am probably now going to live longer than them, just because I haven't resorted to some trivial video gaming experience as becoming the fulcrum of who I am, and knowing that who I am was some disgusting fat greasy turd in dire need of doing some sit-ups.  Yeah, I'm going to have those weekends (like this upcoming one) where I won't be so outdoorsy, where I'll be hunkered inside playing some music and painting some comic stuff.  But ya know, when I took it upon myself to do artwork, I always made it a part of my mindset to gradually shift out that whole video gaming part of me with the artist within.

After all, just think...in those 50+ hours you sunk into Call of Duty, imagine how much more developed your human anatomy drawing would be if you spent it on some sketchbooks instead?  Protip: Every prestige level you are...equals two full sketchbooks you could've scratched up instead.

Oh sure.  You wouldn't be able to boast about your awesome murdering talents to your family, or about that amazing evening you shattered some twelve-year-old's soul so badly he spewed a David Duke caliber diatribe of vehement racism against a spontaneous ethnicity he just assumed you were.  And those nights are WONDROUS!  But stop and think.  How much better an artist would you be...if you just focused on art for those fifty hours?

Now let's look at all those other games you actually devoted fifty hours to.  Then the ones you gave about...oh, only twenty hours to, with much sarcastic emphasis on only twenty.  Now average it out, and say five hours multiplied by the number of those boxes lining that shelf beside your XBox, the Steam keys stored in your profile, and all those receipts from Gamestop for trade-ins assuming you actually keep them you crazy OCD weirdo.

Think of all the games you played.

Over all these years.

It adds up.

Horrifically.

Over this last year, I took the forty hours required to play every Mass Effect, plus the extra twenty for multiplayer, and made four-digits doing freelance comic work instead.  To me, just as fun, and similar in concept.  Churn through the work, develop your own character's traits, experience the adventure of each project, and get a nice reward in the end.  I love doing artwork, and feel great after doing it.  I feel like I achieved something, and unlike video games, that I made somebody else quite happy as well.

Tell me, has anybody's face ever ignited with glittering praises...because you beat Mass Effect?  Look at games nowadays, they hold your God damn hand every stupid step of the way, there's nothing impressive about completing a game!  The stuff I grew up with would be slapped with class action lawsuits for being so impossibly hard.  It took my brother and I a collaborative trek spanning eighteen years just to beat Zelda 2.  Do that, gamers.  Unplug your Internet, put away those cheatin' websites, disable quick-save from your NES emulators, and good frickin' luck on that.

Beating a game nowadays does not make you unique, and it does not make you some alpha dog of the schoolyard anymore.  Not like in my day.  The first kid who beat Star Fox on the SNES was treated like a God damn king, tell you what.  Nowadays, games aren't about some sort of absurd accomplishment or a gauge enabling you to prove yourself superior to others.  No way at all.

Games are just time-wasters.

Instead of Mass Effect, I worked on getting my foot in the comics business.

Instead of Batman: Arkham City, I took those fifteen hours, and wrote half a novel-length story instead.

Then, when that half-novel got discovered, I then got commissioned to write a different piece of fiction just because of the writing style I used in it.  So I'm now several-hundred pages into a low-key-for-now-but-just-you-wait literary endeavor...instead of having playing Battlefield 3.

And when the PSVita came out, oh how much I would've loved to fall away into the soothing embrace of the next Lumines game and spend oh just a wee bit of an hour every night just unraveling the stress of the day off me.  But instead, I got a gym membership, and force the day's hostile assault with a vociferous counter-attack of pained grunts and strained groans between the sharp clatter of iron on iron, and emerge every day with just one little shred of additional victory glazed atop a growing pair of biceps that, until three weeks ago, I never even knew I had.

So maybe I won't be able to brag about making the top thousand on the weekly leaderboards for Lumines.  But I can carry a canvas bag with two gallons of milk across the neighborhood with just one arm.

And I can sleep in whatever caddywompus stupid position I want without choking to death from collapsed lungs.

So yeah.  If I can pick and choose my lifestyles, I'd rather one more focused on life...than style.