Rambling : On Failure

I know this girl that is so lucky; it seems that everything she touches turns to gold. She isn't rich, but she always seems to have a comfortable amount of money. She always gets her dream job and seems to continually find meaning and fulfillment in the things that she does. She is smart, charismatic, humble and interesting. It is enough to make you want to projectile vomit.

There have been times in my life where I have wished that I was as resilient as my friend. I often stand on the sidelines and watch her barreling into the unknown with abundant gusto heretofore unseen and I feel scared for her, worrying that she will get her hopes dashed. Truthfully though, I mostly feel envious.

As someone who is not quite so impervious to the disappointments of failure and who has a veneer that is not quite as hardened, I lay awake at night and wonder if she ever feels heartbroken or downtrodden or just plain, old bummed-out when things don’t work out as planned.

Finally, my curiosity got the better of me and so I asked her about it. I was surprised to learn that she often feels scared when leaping boundlessly into a new adventure. She admitted that she fails more often than one would be lead to believe, but when she does, she almost never dwells on it (beyond a brief requisite mourning time).

I never before realized how hard she works to make things come together. She often spends her weekends and evenings boning up on areas in her industry with which she is not familiar, she works hard to make industry contacts and always goes into an unknown situation with a positive attitude. When things don’t turn out to be in her favor, she immediately seeks the most direct route to turning it around. This isn't to say that she is impenetrable, but she recognizes that dwelling on failure for an extended period of time will only keep her from taking the action she needs to get what she wants.

Thomas Edison definitely had the right idea with respect to failure when he said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

As someone who puts her whole heart and soul into every endeavor, I still can't imagine being so blase about failure. If there is any lesson to be gleaned from the conversation with my friend it is that failure is universal. Even those we consider to be the most successful are no strangers to failure, they just tend to dwell on it (or talk about it) less than the rest of us.

Maybe luck really is where opportunity meets persistence and failure is just another opportunity to figure out what is not working and make it right.

Rambling : The Road to Opportunity

A hale and hearty tale of the bountiful journey west.

My husband and I both arrived at the decision to move out west as if by
simultaneous revelation. After a brief interment in upstate New York, where the winter leaves much to be desired, we were both desperate to get back to some place warm and forgiving. Our decision to leave sooner, rather than later, was doubtless inspired by lackluster accommodations.

During our 5-month stay we slept on an aging, saggy bed in sleeping bags wrapped in the frosty chill air of a house with no heat. I had left the safe confines of New York City with the express purpose of skulking about and reliving the college life while simultaneously my husband took a stab at finally getting the PhD he had been savoring for the past 11 years.

Five months later, having relived the college life all over again with a
bevy of roommates all stepping on each other's toes and fighting about whom used the last square of toilet paper and who should be forced to cough up the 1.99 to buy a new roll, I was thoroughly disillusioned. I loved college, but I have no desire to live like that again. So in the midst of undue angst about who ground flavored coffee in a coveted, 'non-flavored-coffee-only' coffee grinder and buried in 6 feet of snow with no end in sight, I looked at my husband and we both said "California".

When I was 14 I dreamed of traveling the US. My friend Sarah and I would huddle together on her bed over extensive road maps and plan for the road trips we would take when we were grown up and free to see and do what we liked. We planned two-month trips across the whole of the US, visiting nearly every state. We made lists of need-to-have articles for our trip and endlessly discussed our preferred mode of transportation -- a VW bus (of course) with unparalleled psychedelic external decor courtesy of yours truly. We did all this without wondering how we would fund our two-month jaunt through the verdant United States landscape or whether or not we would kill each other on the way. It hardly seemed to matter -– traveling this great country of ours was the stuff of my teenage imagination and nothing even resembling real life could encroach on that dream.

Since then I have had the occasion to travel across country by means other than an airplane 7 times. The first time was in college, when not being offered a prestigious paid internship in Wood Hole, I decided to travel west for the summer. I had convinced a college friend to abandon her summer plans and hop on a train to San Francisco with me. The train ride was long and arduous and the smell at the end of 5 days, completely unbearable, but I fell in love with San Francisco and vowed to return after I graduated college. So two years later, as planned, I packed up my 84 Honda Accord and drove hesitantly through the southeast and then through the southwest, and up along the coast until I reached the lofty hills of San Francisco.

Since that initial car trip, I have taken a staggering three more trips
(this included) across country. Once to drive with my then boyfriend, now husband, when he decided to seal his fate with mine, once to move to Manhattan to attend graduate school, and finally, this time. I guess that makes me an old pro.

On a cross country trip, time becomes frighteningly distorted. Hours and days run together like water. Some days pass like the blink of an eye and others drag on endlessly in a way that makes you think someone must have set the clock back just to fuck with you. Time inevitably passes and before you know it you find yourself in some small town in Arizona with one stoplight watching the most beautiful sunset you have ever seen.

Even if you have a host of activities planned to fill the long hours of your trip, you will still come up with a dearth of things to do. After three days on the road, you will have listened to every book on tape, talked through and discarded every philosophical breakthrough and covered all the states in your game of "License Plates". At this point in the trip, you must find creative ways to occupy yourself, so you spend countless hours dividing the various legs of your journey into "the good" and "the bad". Imagine for example, that you are driving the northern route, where "the good" is writing your name in small stones in the milky, white salt flats outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, a surprise visit to a casino in Elko, Nevada, the red rocks of Colorado and sunsets that will knock your knickers off. "The Bad" is Nebraska. I am not talking about just one part of it, but the whole dirty lot. Endless miles of featureless flat land with no discernable qualities. You cross the Nebraska state line and three days later you are still in the same state feeling suicidal and stuck in a time blip. I have done the northern trip 4 times and as a result I felt a change was in order.

This time we would grab 40W which is an expansive stretch of highway running from the eastern part of the country all the way through till California. On 40 there is the promise of endless delights such as running parallel along "the Mother Road", Route 66, where you can only but imagine the hardships that American families endured as they made their way west on the "Road to Opportunity". There is the allure of road kill in the form of armadillos, instead of raccoons, as we see in the north; there are southern accents and then there is Nashville.

After an incredibly grueling winter in upstate New York where a forecast of snow is the norm, it was wonderful to reach the 76-degree weather of Tennessee. We spent the night in Nashville proper on Music City row -- we ate at a small open-air country and blues bar and chowed down on cornbread that looked (and tasted) like a pancake. I had a desire to stop in Memphis, to go to Graceland and the Martin Luther King museum, but it rained so hard all the next day that we pushed on to Oklahoma City. On day 4, we landed in Santa Fe, just north east of Albuquerque where we embarked on a search for the perfect Native American pottery to place on the landing in our new home.

The different tribes in the southwest produce a myriad of different kinds of pottery. Perhaps the most well known are the hand painted ceramics covered in carvings and southwestern motifs. I was on the search for the beautiful pots, which are twice fired in a pit full of horseshit and hence are coated in the black of carbon and then burnished shiny. This sounds revolting, but the yield is quite a beautiful, unique and distinctive work of art. If bought in a gallery in Santa Fe, one piece can run you upwards of $350 for something barely big enough to store a pair of earrings in. Your best bet is to travel to smaller towns just outside the Navajo reservation and hunt for off-the-beaten-path stores and galleries. Interestingly enough, the res itself does not carry a large selection, due, I can only assume, to the lack of tourism.

The weather outside of Albuquerque is changeable and so we drove through intermittent bouts of snow and sunny weather. It was on this stretch of road that we experienced a phenomenon completely unknown to us Yanks -- tumbleweeds.

On the stretch of expansive road between Albuquerque, NM and Flagstaff, Arizona we were pelted with an onslaught of misguided tumbleweeds. What else could we do but pull over, hop out of the car and try and catch a few? Catching the little buggers was easier said than done, as the wind was blowing at a high clip, thus sending a bevy of tumbleweeds into a frenzied orgy. They were in their glory -- feisty and illusive.



After dawdling the entire day on catching tumbleweeds, visiting Indian reservations and buying horseshit pottery, we had haul butt to make it to Flagstaff by sun down. Another beautiful sunset, another small hotel room with no wifi or even an adequate roadside restaurant. I was already starting to wish I would wake up in California.

The next day we drove down the twisty, turny road to Sedona, which is a coniferous respite from the desert that bristles and breathes outside the car window. We followed the road down 20 miles, which seemed more like 45. At the base, we were surrounded by red rock canyon walls and found ourselves in the little town of Sedona proper where unfortunately dressed tourists can take jeep tours of the canyon, grab a helicopter for breathtaking views or do simply what we did, which was to walk around in the sunshine and scarf down a breakfast of huevos rancheros. At this point, California seemed but a stone’s throw away from our present location, but the reality is that California is a big state and we still had two more days of driving.

The two of us shared the driving -- he, driving more than me. Often times we sat in deafening silence, trapped in the sway of our own thoughts, punctuated only by a single volley: tired? Yeah. K, I’ll drive. Then we would pull into a gas station and swap seats. One would drive while the other sat in the passenger seat staring out the window, passing the long hours by combing the roadside for small animals, or talking about one’s childhood, or new business ideas or nothing at all: just watching the ever-changing landscape slip by for hours ad nauseum. And so we drove, and we drove and then when we were nauseously sick of driving, we just kept pushing on. We drove toward mountains, which we could have sworn were 20 miles away, but which we never seemed to reach.

By the last day on the road, we were itching to reach our destination. Our legs were stiff, our necks were cramped and I was starting to think I would go nuts if I had to sleep in a hotel one more night. When we finally got to our new home, I was so grateful that I practically kissed the front stoop.

Each long journey ends with roughly the same sequence of events culminated by a promise to stay put for the rest of eternity. Inevitably though, in a few years, wanderlust creeps back in like water into a badly patched ship and I find myself in a car making my way across the great United States filled with the promise of a new home and a new beginning.

Rambling : Caught Up in the Business of Real Life

Okay, so, I was swallowed whole by a rare and particularly vicious species of woman-eating monster (right after the dog ate my homework). I swear.

Actually, I really was. About 3 months ago the new version of Everquest was released and my life just hasn’t been the same since. I abandoned my blog, put my freelance work on hold and buckled down to do some serious gaming. Three months later I am starting to feel a little rotten to the core. Three solid months of doing absolutely nothing productive (unless of course you count having three 23+ level characters and close to a platinum piece in your virtual bank, productive) and my head is spinning with self-abnegating thoughts. Now, I am coming up for air. I have actually disconnected my PC so as not to be a temptation. After all, I have plans for my life and sharing an umbilical cord with my computer is not one of them.

My chief problem is that I am having a not-even-close-to-mid-life crisis. Don't laugh. I am serious. I have lived in all the desirable major cities in the US and I am just not sure where to go next. For half my life I have been living like a quasi-nomad, afraid to get too attached to any one place for fear that it would suck me in. I have lived in a slew of city apartments adorned only with Sauder furniture and the mountain of books I insist on lugging all over the country. Now here I am, wondering what to do next. I don’t want to stay where I am, but I can't think of where to go. I am perpetually tormented by the state of my career (and career choices) yet I am fighting hard against the current that seems to be sweeping up all of my peers and colleagues: the children-house-dog-white picket fence current. So the question is: what's a girl to do?

If you asked me what thing I am most afraid of, the answer would be: atrophy, lack of enthusiasm (maybe exuberance is a better word for it) and getting my hand caught in the garbage disposal, in that order. It seems so many people settle into their careers, become good at what they do and stop challenging themselves. They come home from work, turn on the tube (or the computer) and wash the day away. I can actually feel myself becoming dumber just thinking about it. In my life, I am very fortunate to have a few role models who continually impress me with their intellectual prowess at a time in their lives when most of their peers have sublimated into the average. These are people whose continual quest for knowledge and learning have humbled me time in and time out causing me to repeat to myself the mantra of "I want to be like that".

The unfortunate part of mental atrophy is that it is an uphill battle. If you are not in a career which propels you away from atrophy (for example an academician) than you will lapse into the comfortable state of un-thinking -- it is inevitable. That is, unless you devote your free time to working out your mind. I don’t know the best way to do this. I am an avid reader -- I read what I am interested in -- not quantum physics, but genetics, WW2 history books, theories of evolution. Still none of my extra-curricular reading seems to even come close to pushing me the way I was pushed when I was in school. I find myself struggling to remember details of a book I read two months ago.

My husband swears that the way to battling atrophy is math. We spend long car rides doing long division in our heads struggling to get faster and more complex. I don't know if this works, but I suppose it can't hurt. In a few years I will be as fast as a blackjack dealer.

My second fear is lack of exuberance. What is it about age that saps our vitality? It is as if living is terribly tiring and over time our capacity for joy becomes diminished. I have known people who are no longer excited to be living. If excitement is just a luxury of youth, I hope I never grow old. Unfortunately, I can feel it happening. For the first time in my life, I am not excited about anything and I don't know why. I don't want to be like that.

A close member of my family is what I would categorize as the epitome of exuberance. Despite the fact that she is almost 55, that she can and has traveled everywhere and done so many things, she still manages to maintain her childish enthusiasm. She will try anything and embraces life in a way that is truly admirable. I want to be like that.

So, I guess it is time -- time to find something to be excited about, time to try something scary, time to come up for air and time to get back to the business of real life.

Art + Design : The Difference Between Science & Art

It's a wide, wide chasm -- I assure you.

I consider myself a scientist. In college however, I took many art classes. I drew lots and lots of naked people, which was exciting and liberating -- for them. For me it was about blushing in the light of ignominy while the professor critiqued the lack of detail in the nether region of my drawing of a male subject. "Look at this drawing, class -- you will notice that the subject doesn't have a penis..."

It didn't take me long to figure out that the art department was a helluva lot more entertaining than the science department. For example, there were long-haired art professors who chalked up their career in art to youthful enthusiasm and were happy to make you vegetarian bean stew provided you were attracted to father figure types. There was the annual pumpkin carving contest in which the negative space pumpkin inevitably carried the prize year after year and there was pot smoking, underage drinking and lots and lots of angst (pronounced aaaangst).

So, when I decided to get my graduate degree in art instead of science, I expected a whole lot more of the same -- I expected dirty hippies, I expected marches on Washington, I expected negative space pumpkins, but most of all I expected to be good at it. After all, I had already 'been' a scientist and science is harder. Silly me.

During my first week of graduate school, when I received my first (design) assignment, I did what any good scientist would do -- I did research. I covered all the angles; I looked at what had been done before and then I spent late nights basking in the glow of a desk lamp creating what, given all empirical evidence, could only be a veritable masterpiece.

Unfortunately, my instructor felt differently. When I got up in front of the class to show off the product of many a late night labor he told me that it was crap (he used those exact words). In fact, he told me for about 15 minutes while I stood there in the middle of the room twisting my toe into the ground willing myself not to start sniveling. I guess I had a long time to contemplate failure while standing in front of the class for what seemed like days. In the end though, I didn't get it. He asked me to design an object and I did. There was a problem and I solved it. How could that be misconstrued as failure? Clearly, art school wasn't for me.

In my previous scholastic efforts, the amount of work I put into my studies was directly proportional to how well I did, which by the way, is clearly not the case with art. Working your ass off is no guarantee the populace at large is going to like (or buy) your work. Thus a 'good designer' is not defined by the amount of effort he or she puts into his/her work.

Designers like to talk about right and wrong. In a field so marred by subjectivity, designers scramble to draw some lines in the sand to provide a benchmark for 'good' designers and 'sucky' designers. For example, there are rules of aesthetics, typography, composition, and color to consider. As designers we can't just follow our own whims willy-nilly; we are beholden to clients, which means that we either take it on the chin when our clients tell us to change the color of our design to hot pink or we go down fighting. Designers are not just mere artists, but 'visual scientists' with an uncanny sense of how to make objects not only beautiful, but useful as well.

We in the design world often speak of 'solving the problem' as in 'designers are just problem solvers'. When you ask a contemporary designer what he/she thinks is more important: form or function, you will only get disdain. Every designer knows the answer to that question is that both are equally important. If one must be sacrificed for the sake of the other, than it is aesthetics (function before form). Like, duh -- just take a look at Apple --yummy-looking desktops, laptops and iPods, but competitor battery life is twice as long, you can use a Mac laptop as a space heater it runs so hot and don't even get me started about the overall cludgeyness of the iPod (although I have to admit it is getting better...)

So if function is as important as we say it is, then why is it we go crazy over beauty? It sounds great to say that form comes before function (it is so purist), but in the RL (real life) it simply is not true. We are all suckers for a good-looking piece of ass. As a result, the designers who got the highest accolades in my graduate program were not the ones with the best ideas, but the ones with the most beautiful work.

That is when it hit me. Art is about subjectivity and science is about right and wrong. When I paint a picture it is open to interpretation to everyone. You can hate it or love it -- you can tell me you hate the color, the medium I used, or the subject matter, but in the end it means nothing. Who determines whether I suck or not? If I do a math problem it's a different story. It is hard to deny that 2+2 doesn't equal 4. In fact, you can argue until you're blue in the face or until you prove me wrong, but until then I have the solace of knowing I am right -- end of story.

The problem with art is that it has a low barrier of entry. It is hard for the average person to tell a rocket scientist that (s)he sucks at being a rocket scientist, simply because the average person is not sufficiently versed in rocket science. Art, on the other hand, is open for discussion. To have eyes, ears and the ability to voice your opinion is all it takes to make a value judgment about the relative skill of an artist.

So, if art is about subjectivity, than who determines what is good and what is bad? We love to say that each person decides for his/herself which is good art and which is bad art, but on a large scale that is simply not true. Whether a piece gains notoriety goes beyond individual taste and more into the realm of popularity which starts to feel a little cheap, if you ask me. Once artists were seen as ultra-hip, long-haired freaks on the forefront of popular culture when in actuality they are all just homecoming queens competing in a popularity contest. That's depressing.

So, if science is about right and wrong and finding the truth and art is about winning the popular vote, then where the heck do I fit in?

My crossing over into the land of subjectivity was not an easy one. For the past two and a half years I have struggled with finding a happy medium between science and art. I wanted the effort I put into my work to be related to my development as a designer and artist. I wanted to be a 'good' designer. Grad school made me realize that the difference between 'good' designers and 'bad' designers is nebulous; that I was a good designer all along, regardless what my professor said.

Being a designer is a little bit like walking a tightrope -- you never feel entirely secure. You spend your profession doubting your ability and your talent -- you are dissatisfied with your work, you work like hell, you push a piece of type one pica to the left because it feels 'better' there and you have no idea why. This is what makes a better designer. The best designers I know are self-critical, introspective and they march to their own drum regardless of what the popular voice tells them to do.

Art + Design : Naked.

What's the big deal? We are all naked underneath our clothes....

I went to Queens last night for an actual BBQ. There was an actual backyard, with an actual grill and we were eating actual tomatos from an actual garden. You are probably saying to yourself "big deal, who cares?", but when you live in Manhattan the closest you get to an actual BBQ is passing by a herd of rats having their weekly shmorgasboard on trash night.

The reason behind this suburban love-fest was the screening of a documentary called "Naked World" which featured 2 + hours of naked people ripping off their clothes and posing for contemporary photographer, Spencer Tunick. Tunick, whose technical skill and aesthetic sense as a photographer are obvious, has traveled all over the world convincing passersbys to strip down and hit the pavement for the sake of art. He gets on a ladder, yells through a megaphone and directs a sea of nude people as they arrange themselves in an artistic configuration while he snaps a photo. The bodies often resemble a land or seascape and are set against natural or historical backdrops.

I will be the first to admit that I find the photographs compelling. It is, no doubt, impressive to behold the sheer number of people (at most 4,500 I think) that are willing to bare it all for art. However, the facade lasts right up until the moment when Tunick speaks. Twenty minutes into the film Tunick launches into a diatribe about how it is his calling to do something radically different.

Hey now, wait a minute! Since when is taking pictures of naked people different?

In the history of Western art, the nude body is prominantly featured in a plethora of distinguished (and some not-so-distinguished) works. Initially painters were commissioned to make portraits of naked women for prominent men to hang in their private alcoves. The pictures were not seen as art, but rather as little more than pornography. Paintings of unclothed (naked) women (and men) are now hung in museums and referred to as 'nude', which has entirely different connotation from 'naked' in the modern art world. Naked is a description for the display of the human body in an overtly sexual way and nude, a description for the unclothed body shown through an artistic lens. Painters have been painting pictures of nakedness long before art was art.

The idea of nudity in art is not new, neither is the idea of using nude bodies as landscape. The idea of assembling nude people outside for a photograph is also not new, so what is so special about Spencer Tunick's work? You got me there.

An artist may achieve originality by inventing a new medium, by mixing old medium in new ways, by experimenting with a new subject or exploring an alternate way to view an old subject. Many artists achieve originality through meaning. This is to say that they have a philosophical treatise which lends weight to the visual work.

It seems that Tunick is lacking in both. The meaning of his work goes something like, "I have always known I was going to do something different. I always knew I was going to be famous". Uhhh...check please.

The most interesting part about "Naked World" is observing the way people from different cultures react to the idea of getting naked for a photograph in public. In England, Melbourne, NYC, Montreal, people come out in droves while in Japan, South Africa, Ireland, Scotland and Russia, Tunick has trouble convincing even one person to pose for him. People are definitely touched in some way by the experience (although in what way I am not sure...) and you have to give Tunick snaps for putting his balls on the line by approaching total strangers and asking them to drop trow.

In summation, I am not sure what place Tunick's work will hold in contemporary art (probably not much), but I can say his work is visually arresting if that is all you take it for and maybe that's enough.

Confessions of a Gamer Grrl

Everyone has a dirty little secret, here's mine.

I am an addict.

I am sure the word addict conjures up all sorts of squalid visuals. I am the little blonde with track marks on my arm, spending my free time vacuuming up all the dust and cat hair in my Manhattan apartment with my nose, in search of a few lost granules of utopia. In this, I am sorry to disappoint, but I am an addict of an entirely different species.

My addiction has its roots back in the days of Atari and stand-up arcade games where I spent a small fortune pumping quarters into a machine for the mere thrill of getting my initials on the scoreboard of Space Invaders. When my brother was young his first word was a phrase, which was something like "want supanintenda". Before long, we had our very own machine and our family room became a den for late night matches and the slaying of a wide range of evil-doing foe.

In college I digressed. I spent my free time getting high and swinging from bright pink uvulas to avoid the peril of hungry crocs that were waiting down below. Little did I know that I was basically an addict waiting to happen; a mere woodland sprite skipping through the woods not at all aware that my downfall lurked in the form of a nice boy and a predisposition towards game addiction.

Four years ago I met my demise. When my new guy mentioned to me that he was quitting a computer game called EverQuest in order to spend more time with yours truly, I stifled a yawn. When he told me that the deletion of his 50th level character, Igbot, had prompted some tearful posts from absolute strangers and many a long-winded eulogy, I was sure the relationship would be short–lived. What could I possibly have in common with such a geek?

Two months later when I received my very own copy of Everquest and I realized this man was no fool. After all, a girl can get between a man and his gaming.

My addiction started off slowly as addictions are wanton to do. First, there was the timid foray into weekend gaming and then the adamate denials. Finally before I knew it, I was in over my head staring dimly at the wavering image of my once-productive life at the surface. I played at night until I could barely keep my eyes open. I played in the morning until I absolutely HAD to go to work. On weekends I holed myself up, disconnected the phone and didn't leave the apartment for days.

I realized early on that my addiction to this game, Everquest, was not a topic of conversation to be had with anyone other than those as equally addicted. Still, I persisted doggedly with trying to get outsiders to see just how compelling it is (See, I am not such a freak after all). I would begin by explaining the social aspect of the game -- you are playing with thousands of people from all over the world at any time, you formed friendships, unwritten codes of behavior and new methods of communication in game. I would then extol the virtues of its complexity -- the monsters have a thing called faction, which determines their level of love or hate for any one PC (player-character) and the game keeps track of each player's individual faction. Finally, I would discuss the topic that I was sure would win any mortal over…loot.

A female friend once asked me what the appeal was. It went something like this:

ME: Well, you kill these monsters and then you loot their dead bodies and you get stuff. It's exciting.

SHE: What kind of stuff? (she looked excited about the possibility of getting stuff too)

ME: Well, it depends. Sometimes you just get money. Sometimes it's like, just copper, which sucks. But other times you get clothing that you can wear or items or random things like trolls heads or faerie wings.

SHE: (vaguely disgusted now) SO??? Then what?

ME: Weeeeell, then you sell them and make more money and buy more things to wear or use or eat etc. (Like, duh!)

SHE: (perking up) I see, so basically the game is all about shopping!

ME: Um...yeah, basically.

But it was about more than shopping for me. I had this close-net community of friends who played every waking moment they were not at work. And when we were not playing we were TALKING about playing. We would spend countless hours trying to think up what we called 'sploits'.

*******

Main Entry: sploits
Function: noun
Etymology: Modern gaming slang
1 : actions that a gamer takes that result in something that happens for his or her own benefit, but which the game designer did not mean to happen.

*******

Usually these sploits indirectly involve shopping. Or leveling your character, which results in more shopping. It is an endless dance between gamer and game designer and it keeps things interesting.

We also spent time discussing those poor, unfortunate fools who were swallowed up by their addiction (we would never be so foolish). For example, that guy who lost his job, his house and his wife because he refused to do anything else but play EQ (poor slob). There was also the dude who said that he was quitting the game for good due to an altercation with his wife that landed him in jail. It seems she was sick to death of him ignoring her and so she unplugged his computer while he was slaying a dragon and so he threw a vase at her head. She called the cops. They divorced eventually and he was back online within a month. Pretty much everyone knows about that poor sod on 20/20 who killed himself because he lost all his armor and couldn’t find it. Never mind that he was mentally ill to begin with.

But that being said, there is no denying that the game is thrilling and scary. I can't tell you how many times I stood toe-to-toe with a dragon or some other equally as formidable nemesis and I was actually physically frightened. I am not kidding you. My heart was beating, my mouth was dry and I actually felt fear.

So why is it that this game is so compelling? What is it about Everquest that glues people to their computers, causes divorces and draws hundreds of thousands of people to congregate every year in a different location for the sole purpose of discussing this stupid game?

I surmise it is in a largely due to the relatively short order in which lasting goals can be achieved, in game. Think about it, in your RL (real life) you can be the fattest slob with no family, friends or job and no plans to rectify this situation during your lifetime, but in game you are the cat's meow. You have the broadest sword, you are tall and handsome and courageous. In addition, you are making in roads daily to being even more of a force to be reckoned with. If you want to take up blacksmithing, with a few clicks of the mouse and several thousand platinum pieces you can be a master blacksmith. You can monitor your progress per click while watching your skill go up. As you kill monsters you watch your experience level rise and when you sell items, you can deposit the money in your bank account making it easy to be a saver.

It makes you wonder why, since the game parallels life in many ways, productive gamers are not necessarily productive members of society. I suspect it is because saving, learning lessons, advancing in skill is predictable and takes less effort than it does in RL. Thus you can be relatively sure that when you take up a new skill, say pottery, you will not fail. You are equal with everyone else for the most part. If you put enough money and enough clicks into the mix you will come out a master at everything you choose to do. Everquest provides small attainable goals and a way to be exactly what you might not be in RL -- courageous, handsome, skinny, athletic, a saver, a doer, a leader a deal-maker, whatever. And when you are done attaining one small goal, there is always another to try your hand at. In many ways, it is just psychological masturbation.

Canceling my subscription to Everquest was tantamount to breaking up a serious relationship. I wasn't sure I should do it and I was worried that I might not find another game that I would feel as strongly about. Every now and then I still go through a sort of withdrawal where I reminisce fondly about a specific zone or a daring venture and I worry that maybe I made the wrong choice. My new game, City of Heros, doesn't seem to measure up in complexity and excitement and I worry that it won't have the staying power of EQ.

After all, Everquest was more than just a game. It was our alternative to television, our connection to friends, and a mutual activity for my husband and I. Like any other addiction though, it was sure to run its course or destroy its host. In this case it ran its course. After 4 years we retired the game and got back to the business of RL...or something like it anyway.