Week 2 of Guest Blog Month or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being a Lazy Blogger”
This weeks blog brought to you from one of my closest friends and someone who has gotten me through some rough patches in life. She has a wonderful insight to the power of media and generally just enjoying things.
So enjoy this. Or don’t, if, y’know…. you suck. Your call, jerk. ~C
Christmas is the time of year I love the most. My mother and I have a tradition of leaving the tree up through January. The same handmade skirt has been under every tree I’ve ever had since my very first Christmas in 1986. Even my cat Sciezka loves Christmas time and becomes extremely grumpy when we put presents on what is clearly the best place to take a nap. Taking down the decorations is always a gloomy task for me. Putting away decorations down early (i.e. when Christmas is over like most people) is downright devastating. It’s not much of a surprise. I don’t tire of things easily. My excitement and joy doesn’t diminish when most others are more than ready to move on to the next thing, something new, something else.
“You’re watching that again?”
“Didn’t you just play that game?”
“Why don’t you try something new?”
In college if I wasn’t at the theatre for rehearsal, in class, or spending time with friends it wasn’t hard to guess where to find me. I was probably in my dorm playing Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2. I’ve long since lost count of how many times I’ve played those games. The same goes for viewings of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. Manga such as Fruits Basket. The Dark Tower book series. Up until recently I would’ve proclaimed these to be my “favorites.”
These are not my favorites. I’m not sure I have a true favorite anything. How do I not have favorites you might ask? I’ll explain.
“You always say that!”
Thanks to The Everything Kid’s knowledge of board games (and his desire to own every last one of them as well as their expansions) I have the good fortune to play some of the coolest games our local comic shop has to offer. These fantastic titles include Takenoko, Tsuro, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Pandemic, Gloom, Dead of Winter, Zombicide, and so on and so forth. With the exception of The Book of Madness (because it was brutal on easy with five people. Come ON!) I have without fail declared each new game we’ve played my NEW FAVORITE. This is something that hadn’t occurred to me until one of my friends pointed it out.
I do love new things. I’m excited to go new places and have new experiences. More often than not I’m overjoyed. I’m outwardly ecstatic on a regular basis. Even over little things like watching a movie I’ve seen more than enough times. Especially when the person I’m watching it with hasn’t seen it before. I’m so happy I get to share it with them. My attention is split between watching the film and their reactions. I’ve realized most of the films, books, and video games I return to over and over again aren’t my favorites. After all I proclaim everything I like to be my favorite. What they really are is meaningful to me.
The media I mentioned above all got me through rough periods of my adolescence and young adulthood. Every last one a story that gave me strength when I felt lost or heartbroken. Tales that made me want to keep on keepin’ on when my emotions were in turmoil.
Without them I’d probably still be pretty isolated. It doesn’t quite do them justice to label them as a favorite when I throw that word around so much.
They carry more weight then that.
So thank you Commander Shepard, Fullmetal Alchemist, Tohru Honda, and Roland Deschain. I wouldn’t be here without you.
Rachel E. Cockrell is a writer, Fullmetal Alchemist wiki in human form, and loves Captain America more than any other Avenger. Because he’s the best. Falcon is also cool.
The Everything Kid 