I read so much I died

"Guess this is Tumblr or myspace while I don't have internet. A journal for the writing process. I wasted the past few working days rushing to beat the first two Fallouts again, cuz I have to do that at least once a year. It's usually this time of year where I just get the itch. Maybe it's the weather outside that makes the ingame desert so appealing. It's open, explorable, there. Fallout 1 is gutted; there's more world than people, and that's what makes it great. It's really just wasteland with pockets dispersed throughout it. Analog 2 in Junktown and Necropolis. Shady Sands on mom's loveseat in Fayetteville. That was the summer of 2012, which feels early but I know it isn't. Tandi reminded me of her, a California kid with dreams a lot bigger than where[ever] she was. She probably should have stayed there."

I started this post on a computer without internet access and it felt like freedom. I don't have to look at what's going on to know everything that can happen here. The friends are gone and I miss them dearly, but at least the box still lights up. Not having reliable computer access has been as isolating as moving back home. Don't tell Neal Stephenson, but I am dependent on OSes, specifically Windows. Don't tell Jason Scott, but it feels like home - really. LXLE works for certain purposes, and that laptop sure can bootup, but it isn't anywhere I want to be. It's not where Raise Your Weapon reverberated out and changed a kid's internal life forever. I'm closer than I ever was to how these things are made, where they come from, but it's nothing like living in it. There is a life for the audience.

Between June of last year and the moment I first booted up this old Windows machine, I felt very alone. There are other things that affected me and my mental presence, but losing this place to come to was real. There's plenty of criticism there, don't worry, I've been doing the self-reflecting and realizing. But, in a country where the only viable forums are Facebook, Xwitter, and people you already know, it's nice to have somewhere you can put things down and think outside of the 280 character textboxes laid out for you. I shut this [that] computer down in June of 2022, and it has since been untouched. I'm actually transcribing this post from that computer to another because I can't directly transfer and I refuse to connect it to the internet. In any case, this [that] computer has always just been a place to keep old games. They're the only kind this [that] thing can run and they're the only kind I play. New Vegas, Civ 5, and HOI4 are the only games past 2010 that I'm interested in, and it'll likely stay that way. Civ is comfortable, HOI is momentarily engaging, and New Vegas is like Charleston - where I'm alone with the world.

There have been a lot more books than games since 2017. A lot more music, people, and experiences. I got out of my room (twice). There have still been games, don't get me wrong, but they're increasingly dispersed. I simply can't play them as much as I might want to; I don't have the gear. Computers break and get repurposed. It's just not an option. I played the someguyseries of New Vegas mods for the first time in the summer of 2020 and it was genuinely one of the best times of my life. My favorite game made fresh with interjections of the new things I cared about in life by a damn good mod. Though it feels like a different world, I sat where I am right now and played for days - took me about a week - while I soaked up foliage-tinted sun and set a new soundtrack to it. I felt young. It was a good precursor to that fall on myspace93. I could play New Vegas five times a year if I wanted to and not get bored. I haven't touched it since.

Mom got this [that] computer for $300 in 2018 from a friend who built computers and made the cheapest thing possible. He didn't score her a deal, just put in the legwork. Thanks for the labor, but it isn't what she thought. That is what counts and the money matters; I am grateful. But it's not what she oughta do. She doesn't have to buy things, she coulda just been around. Settled down. Took a deep breath and said "okay". Maybe she wouldn't have had the same place as she might think would exist, maybe that maw inside would still scream at her, but, that's what this all is, Ma. Her absence is where all this percolates.

I put the games down because after the third playthrough, they're escapism. It's anxiety management, dreams of the past, suspension of the present. I'm doing it so that I can do nothing. Because I don't want to do anything. Because that basement illuminated by open windows and filled with friends and music and freedom and memories was all I needed, and going back to it is so sweet. It was a good life. I had an inkling of myself and it was all I needed. There was love. The handful of times I've stepped back and gotten the ocular orbit spinning, it's like I never left - I can't see my thinning hair and crosscut lines in the screen. It just is, and it always will be, and if I'm not careful, I could die there. Because nothing else stops. It keeps going. You can never step into the same river twice, and you might not even step out onto the same bank. You have to decide where you're going to be.

A professor explained that to live up to the highest expectations of a Yale student and acquire a true political education (as an American), one must read Plato, Montesquieu, Machiavelli, and the Federalist Papers. After that, you needed to read the "deeds and writings" of America's greatest thinkers, specifically Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt, followed by our greatest jurisprudential minds: Marshall, Holmes, Brandeis, and Frankfurter. After that, you would need to read about the great world leaders from Pericles to Churchill. After that, you were worthy to enter politics - whoever the hell you might be, because it won't be anyone you or anyone else knows.

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