I sit here in the bedroom of my adolescence feeling a familiar feeling. I have long wished for some escape from the waking nightmare which has been my early 20’s. Collage while instrumental in the development of my character left me with a unaccredited degree and a semi mini-maxed skillset leaning towards music performance with some personal levelling of philosophy and technology skill trees. In other words, I have no skills that Bob the builder would find valuable for getting a quote “real job”. My biggest skills are my proclivity to divergent thought and ability pick up new skills or facts by relating them to other skills or facts I have mastery over, in short I am creative and a quick study. The down side of being creative in the way I am is that creative ideas are worthless without dedicated action to bring them into the physical. And the down side of being a quick study is that I am a true master of none and all of the new things a learn are often abandoned once something new and shinny catches my crow brains attention I put all my effort into that thing. A slightly more nuanced expiation is that I must understand a new thing in reference to the preexisting thought web of my conception of the world. The problem about this is others people have to put up with me reconstructing all reality in my head every few months in order to grapple with some new thing which ups sets the careful balance. But I see the connections, they are there and I am not crazy just because other people don’t see them–yeah I know that aphnophenia is a warning sign of psychosis but I know that what I see is real because… well I see it.
However, now after holding the world in my mind I feel compelled to stick it to Bob the Builder who mocks me by saying “you have done nothing of real value for the last five years.” I want to do something in the real world with other people using what I see and what I have learned and the educated guesses I have made about how what I see connects with what I have learned. I want to live, an interesting life.
I was feeling this urge distinctly, however on a pre-verbal level, early this year when I lying on my bedroom floor watched the entirety of Pewdiepies let’s play of the Last of us 2. I had never played the Last of us 1 but in my second year of collage I did watch two thirds of it over the shoulder of my floor’s resident cool approachable dude who would happy hang out with whom so ever stoped by to sit on his bed and watch him sequentially play through video games. At my past selfs present moment laying on the floor of my room, given the state of the world in early 2020, I was willing to settle for diet friendship with a side of base dissociation from the world around me. I had few local irl friend at the time since most of them had to moved away, and the fiends I did have either had schedule which did not line up mine or were girls or at the very least had a personal fuzzy relationship with a girl. TLDR, that feel when it’s the pandemic and no GF.
Pewdiepie’s let’s play of the Last of us 2 is heart warming and emotional even for a depressed mid 20’s collage half-drop out. Felix starts the first episode by sharing how video game franchisee has a special place in his heart-since it was, in his eyes, the popularity of his The Last of Us 1 let’s play that catapulted the success his career. He had heard the SPOILERS, which had been leaked by a disgruntled doggy notty employee, but had set out into the game world with a decidedly open mind. In my own attempt to not spoil major plot points allow me to speak nebulously. The game experience of TLU2 is a game, with things about it which were good-and other things bad.? but as it went on Felix, a man with GOD LIKE sway over of a quote “army of nineteen year olds’ started to voice disappointment and continued down to the very end voicing disappointment. I did not share this sentiment. The Last of Us 2 let’s play by Pewdiepie’s left me hungry for MORE. I did not own a Playstation of higher numeral than two and was being as frugal as possible-unsure of what other disasters the future held–so in lue of going out and buying The Last of Us 2 and playing through it myself, I started to live in a waking dissociative world of The Last of Us youtube review content. Meanwhile my subconscious world was populated with icons of death and suffering. I Meditated long and hard about how in a real. brutal world. suffering is inevitable. I saw how so much human suffering comes from one person or group of persons seeking to regain the un-suffering they once had, oft by seeking out “justice”–in the verb sense–on those who at this time un-suffer. I then realized that there is no such thing as justice.
Socrates defined justice as “each getting what they deserve”. Which is an elegant definition, but could any person be said to deserve anything? In the west the an individual said to have self evident inalienable rights and freedoms. But these inalienable TRUTHS were imposed by us, average day folks, we want to live in a world where Justice is real so civilization has made it a project to game-ify reality to try and create enough structure of rules–or said another way–laws that a zeitgeist of Justice can exist in between and above the laws. Which to be clear I am happy about because it seemingly allowed me to live a mostly peaceful nation. However Justice is like the tuning of a lyer, it only exists so long as the lyer is tuned and in working order. Should the lyer be broken in half the string loose their tuning and with them the chord of the lyer sesese to exist. And this can happen to Justice in the event of civilization being broken in half say by a, zombie apocalypse.
While down this philosophic vision quiet I stumbled upon a youtube video review done by a man who charismatically asserted that his name was Tim Rodgers, and I was immediately consumed.
I immediately began to watch all of The Action Button, at time of writing I have watch all of The Action Button youtube channel videos some of Tims personal channel videos and have read some of TheActionButton.net’s articles. and to finish this aside I would like to state that I will complete my quest.
Recently a friend ask me on stream if quote “Is Tim Rodger’s your man crush?” to which I responded in the negative. However I would LOVE to go to a fancy cocktail bar that had genuine flippy cocktail shaker mixologist with Tim and then proceed to get to know him through proceeding conversation over appetizers–time files and we are walking down the street still enraptured in conversation, we pick up a pizza as we head back to his place–I sit on his couch a discuss with him the finer points of ape escape 3 as he–Tim-san–plays it on ps2 and I watch until my eyes grow heavy. I wake to being handed a blanket and offered to sleep on the couch, I accept. I listen to him and his girl friend do the dishes and appreciate their comfortable domesticity, a domesticity I admire and yet do not covet. I fall asleep. While this personal fantasy would be delightful I would not say it is a quote “man crush” because I do not simply want to have Tim Rodgers in my life rather I want to be him.
When I was in my teens I felt that, based mostly off of my consumption of anime, anyone who was in their 20’s was old. My father would “encourage” me saying you have till you are 25 to establish your currier, that seemed like forever away. Now I am 25 and I don’t have anything on my resume that is related to jobs I would like to work let alone a quote “currier”. I did have a intuitive sense of the kind of life project that most fulfilled me on a spiritual level, my techne as writer David Foster Wallace put it in his essay “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart”, or as Auston kleon my Amateur spirt to do a thing–to peruse a thing–just for the love of it. But unfortunately I struggle to put this “intuitive sense” into words just yet, which makes it hard to make progress in my life. Tim is over 40 years old, that is the same age my father was when he and my mom had me. Tim is open about the mistakes of his life and the wrong turns he made along the way. He didn’t go to school for computer engineering, despite the fact that deep down he wanted to make video games. It was not till he was 26 that he started to learn “anything about programing”–and I am 25 so heck maybe I can go to japan and do somthing cool rather than sitting or lying here or their on the floor kinda sad a definitely bummed that I am not doing anything. I think this may be the best expression of why I Love Tim Rodgers so much, but I can’t be sure at this point.
I will continue to expound on my dissection of my Love for a man on the internet that I have never met in person in the subsequent posts but I wanted to try and express what is felt in words just to get something down. Please excuse incoming self contradiction as I inevitably come up with counter statements to ones I have just made with certainty. I was born stupid, however I will not die hungry. Tim Rodgers forever. DefBln.