Old Gray Man...
What's happening to me?I remember just a few years ago, I could stay up all night. I'd play games from sun down until sun up and it wouldn't phase me in the slightest.
I could go from an all-night gaming session straight to class and not even blink.
Not any more.
Thing is, I'm not even old or anything. Yeah, I'm not 20 any more, but I'm still in my twenties.
Hell, I should be up until 5 am baying at the moon.
I honestly have no idea what that means, but I should be doing it.
Instead, as soon as the clock hits midnight, I start going narcoleptic. My eyes start to drift closed whenever I sit still for more than a minute.
This may or may not have something to do with the huge sleep deficit I've built up over the years. By my calculations, if the average person sleeps 8 hours a night, I owe roughly three years of sleep.
That's a big freaking deficit, let me tell you. Especially when you're paying it back in twenty second blackouts while you're trying to eat your cereal.
The worst is playing FFXI late at night. If I'm not totally rested, there's a pretty good chance I will pass out while playing.
Back when I first started playing, staying up late was nothing. I'd hunt NMs or run through quests until light started to creep over the horizon.
I even joined a late night Dynamis LS. We'd run Xarcabard until 3 am and I'd be there until the last mob fell.
Or until the White Mages could raise everybody.
But now... Now, I'm pretty much dead weight after 1 am.
I'd blame getting older, but I'm guessing part of the blame may belong to the tiny human I live with that insists on waking up with the sun every morning.
EVERY.
MORNING.
She's like a cute little alarm clock.
Possessed by Satan.
The only extra sleep I get is the very few blessed mornings that Susan lets me sleep in.
Ironically, I usually stay up even later the night before because I know I can sleep in.
Basically, I'm seeing just how far I can run this body into the ground before it just stops functioning. I'll be walking down the street one day and my eyes will suddenly go all Blue Screen of Death.
All so I can spend so many hours playing video games. All so I can rescue princesses and kill the evil bosses, save the world and destroy ultimate evil.
Now, any sensible person would tell me that is REALLY stupid. They'd say that they're just games and totally not worth losing sleep over.
I'm pretty sure we've established that I'm not sensible.
Sure, I could put away the games and sleep more. I could log out at 10 o'clock and get a good night's sleep. I could wake up renewed and refreshed.
But why would I do that?
I have lived countless lifetimes in these games. I have seen kingdoms rise and fall, eras begin and end.
I have killed the ultimate evil, the Shadow Lord himself.
37 times at last count.
So, I'm sleepy all the time. So, I drift off while driving.
So what?
It's a small price to pay for the countless lifetimes and countless lives I've lived.
Sleep is great.
Gaming is better.
posted by Goblin Smithy @ 7:01 PM
19 Comments:
WIN!!!
epic epic win, but no dying..we'd all cry without our share of GMDave.
Don't ever give up the late night gaming. Some of my most memorable times were when I was playing some game till way too late o'clock. The time I played FFVII till 5:30 am, beating it just before I had to start getting ready for school. I had two exams that day and I had been playing since I got home from school the previous day. Didn't study and I crashed the second I got home that day.
Gaming is a part of our lives. If the norms can't understand it, then tough. Its our lives and our world. They can go jump off some cliff... or whatever they do for fun.
Epic Win, no doubt, win.
Ha. I couldn't agree more. As much as I love sleep, I love not sleeping (to game or whatever) way more.
Getting older sucks. I remember the days when I could spend 16 hours straight in one party.
Only did it once, but it was in the days when I could do it.
And that was a damn good party, we went from Qufim Island, through Kazham, on to Altep, and finished up in Garliage Citadel. And all this back in the day when places were overcamped (both Kazham jungles), every 5-10 minutes was "GOB TO ZONE" (jungles again), and there was no such thing as experience bonus rings, no corsair's roll, no FoV buffs, and nobody PL'd.
Ah those blessed days of no PL and (most) people actually being skillful at their jobs...
That was also back in the day when your PT setup had to be planned out based on what skillchains were available. Nowadays, I've actually had people ask me "WTF is a skillchain??"...
Anyways sorry, I digress, but to keep it on topic, you know you're getting older when you start reminiscing about the "good old days" in an MMO.
As for sleep, like I said, back in the day, I could go 16-20 hours straight. These days, because I'm getting older as well as for some other reasons, I'm lucky if I can stay logged on for more than 4-5 hours. and I don't mean just logged on, I mean awake. Sadly right now I can't even commit to any endgame activities because I just have no way of knowing when I'll be awake.
I feel your pain, Dave! My son was the same way... every morning, coming into my room... "Mommy, mommy! The sun's up!!!" I'd roll over, groan that I knew because I had just gone to sleep.... we'd get him breakfast and start the day...
Hear hear! Spoken like a true gamer, Dave. Blue Screen Of Death is a small price to pay, methinks.
I'll be over here racking up my sleep deficit. I figure I still have about six years more before old age starts creeping in at 25.
Well, now you can add Poetic Bard to your résumé. May Aurora, the rosy-fingered dawn, creep over the wine-dark sea to warm your slumbers, O Dave.
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Hey GM Dave, here's something for you to try.
Go out and buy posterboard. One really big posterboard.
Big enough to cover a window.
Then, go home and tape it over your child's window. Use black electrical tape so that light can't leak in through the cracks around the edges.
My parents did this to me when I was little, because I too had a habit of waking with the sun. The first night after they covered my window I slept until 10 AM.
29 and feeling your pain. I have to take naps now so I can stay up late without getting my Elvaan killed in embarrassing sleep deprived ways. I'm not old yet dang it!
I remember my insomniac days(preffxi) when I could go for weeks on absolutely no sleep. At about the age of 28 I realized that those days were ancient history. If I don't get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep per night, the creature from the black lagoon looks like an angel next to me. I'm not 29 and if I have to work the next day, I'm in bed by 11pm, no exceptions. Just moved in with my fiance and he comes to be around 6am. He's 3 years older than me, but I think it's cause I use to have this drinking problem that he never had. Apparently alcohol makes you age faster. Who knew?
"Sleep is great.
Gaming is better."
And work sucks donkey d!c#...
/sigh
if only they'd lay me off so I can collect unemployment and get my THF to 75...then I wouldn't have to be poor in both worlds.
Man, I can stay up all night if I want to, easily. It helps that I've ALWAYS been a big night owl.
Now, staying awake during the day, on the other hand...
amen to that.
hey dave, i saw an interesting tidbit in the system message about the tell spammers. it asks to report the NAME of the individual who is sending you tells with websites... then it says something to the tune of "the gm call logs will now have even more traffic, so please be patient".
wait... you mean to tell me that SE is actually ENCOURAGING players to piss you off?
i hope i get to read an entry about this soon...
Oh god, people actually report those still? If I reported that to a GM everytime I got one of those, I'd be nonstop sending GM calls. Seriously. I left my mule out the other night with his bazaar up and forgot I had him out. I went to work, and came back home. It seriously went in alphabetical order when I looked at my /tells. There were about 20 of them, all started with F, not a single one was a name, just all random letters. All with the exact same message.
Dave, this is why old people like you usually play World of Warcraft.
I mean, roll a Hunter, turn on autoshot, and let the eyes roll back until you hear the loot being called.
(in WoW's defense, even Hunter's haven't been quite that easy in a year or two now).
But yeah, I start fading something serious around 12:30. I'm gonna blame my daughter, too. ;)
as much as I agree with you on the "I'll sleep when i'm dead" ideology. just one thing you might want to take into account.
as long as the earth is still rotating around the sun and there are still video game consoles out there, there will probably be a new final fantasy game... seriously, its like the freaking hydra at this point just growing more heads as the previous ones die.
I mention this because the longer you go without sleep the more you hasten your inevitable blue screen of death. and the sooner you go up to meet the great controller in the sky the more final fantasy games you will miss out on.
sure it might not seem like much, but there is only so much content they can pack into those games, and with how long it takes for a new one to come out you will probably have time to experience all the content of the previous one AND get a good nights sleep before the next one is released.
given that, would you rather a) go without sleep for days on end and die right about the time FFXXVIII comes out or be able to get a few good nights sleeps in here and there and live to see FFXXXIII(insert additional roman numerals and necessary)
if you will excuse me now, I need to go and drink some more so I can ignore the irony of me having posted this at 7:30 am without having slept since some time... err... some time ago...
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