Day 4

If you have ever been put in a situation where you have to stay home from your regular life and sit in a bed, you will understand some of this post. If you are a geek you will understand some of this post.

When put in a situation that is outside of your normal everyday life, you begin to think different. It can be temporary or permanent, based on the circumstances. Take vacation for example. You are in a different town, staying with family or in hotels, and you are experiencing different cultures, foods, interactions, and sights. It begins to make you think different about things. Sometimes those thoughts are good and sometimes they are bad. Being confined, for the most part, to a bed (hospital or home) for the last 6 days has put a new shade on a few things in my life. I have recently jumped back into playing Magic the Gathering again after about a 4 year hiatus. I missed a lot, but the idea is still the same. Through that, I have meet some wonderful people like Don of Don's Magic and Sundries and Adam Styborski. Great people and great company and I wouldn't trade them for the world. What I have slowly discovered is the darker side and the reason I got out in the first place. Well, not the only reason. The band I helped start began to take off (www.myspace.com/contrastband).

I digress. I began to meet people in the tournaments that were, for lack of better words, bad. Bad in different ways. Mentally degrading to their opponents to get any advantage they could over them. It can be as small as "how many cards in hand" after every play to throw my rhythm off to blatant badgering about how bad my deck was and shouldn't even be in the field. It is a fun game to me, but the competitive side contains degenerates and cheaters. I made a few bad trades on a local casual Magic night. Neither of which I am proud of, but one was done in sheer honesty and lack of checking, the other was a blatant case of being taken advantage of. This is a swinging market and if you do not keep on top of prices, they get away from you fast. That event has caused a domino effect and is changing my view of my place in the local gaming community. I watched as the reports of the thefts rolled in from GP Baltimore while attempting to draft sucessfully on MTGO to pass my bed restricted time and it got me thinking.

Going back in time, I was becoming a pro level players. No, really, I was. I have a top 8 pin and a few high finishes in some major events, one being a second place finish in a PTQ. In that PTQ, I had to play against a child (I use this term here for a 16 year old because he was a child in every other sense) that I, as a level 1 judge, had given him a game loss for cheating just a few months earlier. I lost to him in the final match and his deck was very popular. I had faced 3 of the exact decks earlier that day and beat them with no issues 2-0. Why is this important? I can't prove he cheated, but I had that feeling. That was the feeling that got me out of Magic at that time. I realized that not playing for fun meant dealing with individuals like him and the aforementioned players as well.

I build and play for fun, but I like competitive play. Those two have a hard time living together. It was that way when I was playing years ago and now-a-days it is even worse. Live streaming, instant decklists, net deck copies, over priced Mythic rares, and a whole myriad of different things factor into those two ideas not being able to live together. It is like we all want to hate each other, but we are being cordial until the flag drops. Not everyone fits this mold, but it is looking more and more like that for me. In watching the thefts in GP Baltimore, one think hit me. This isn't a game anymore, it is a sport. The definition of sport starts with "an athletic activity requiring skill of physical prowess." I used to hate when people called things like chess a sport. I have since changed that attitude and think that the definition should change. Let me take a shot:

Sport: Any activity that puts one or more individuals in a competition with another one or more opponents with a pre-determined way of deciding a clear victor.

Much better. Magic the Gathering is a sport. I don't think I want to play any more. Or, maybe I am not qualified to play anymore. Either way, the consideration is in my head to back out now while I can and salvage my affection for what the game once was to me. I don't want to be made to feel stupid for trying something new or not remembering what a card does or not making a good trade, either way, I just want to enjoy the game.

That is not the bottom line, but it is weighing heavily on my mind and I am sure with 5 more days confined to a bed for sure, that more will come out of it.

The geek part? Well, if you are into Magic the Gathering, that is geeky enough, but I will share the nostalgia that surfaced while sitting with my son and watching Spiderman the movie.

I grew up reading comic books with friends. I had a subscription to about 15 titles each month and even worked at the comic book store to pay for some of them. It was a world of wonder to put yourself in the shoes of Spiderman, Batman, Superman, or even some of the odd books I read. I read Watchmen when it was a monthly book. I cannot tell you how nerve-wracking it is to have to wait for a month to find out what is going to happen to the Comedian. I miss that. I bought the first Magic the Gathering comic book the other day and I have also been reading a free subscription I got my son to Batman and Robin. Both have put me back in high school, traveling 20 miles with my friend Patrick to pick up books and stop at McDonalds on the way home to read. I am a geek through and through and I am lucky enough to have a great geek wife to share my life with. I tend to look for those things that make me feel nostalgic on a regular basis and I know this is one of my weaknesses. I think that is why I am so enamored with the current rash of comic book movies until they are over and I think "man, what a great story. It would have been better if I had to wait a month for each section of it." Lets face it. We are in a fast world and we all want to be spoon fed with a shovel.

Maybe what I am learning from this confinement is that things are going on quickly around me. It is cliche to say that if you don't slow down, you might miss it, but isn't that what cliche is for? I mean, it doesn't make the sentiment any less important, it just means it has been said before. So, I am taking the time to do those things. To absorb slowly the things that are going on around me. To not rush to the next best thing to buy or place to be. To appreciate the small things that made me "me". If it means digging back to who I was from time to time to be nostalgic, I will and I will NOT feel bad for it. If it means creating a Magic deck that is purely out of fun and taking it to a level 5 tournament, I will and enjoy the looks. If it means sitting with my son and reading his comic book to him and watching the look on his face when I tell him "you will have to wait till next month to find out", I will and I will explain why. If it means I begin to remove myself from things, places, people that make me feel less that who I should. I will.