Where did Crane go? (Part 3 of ?)

Where did Crane go? - a multipart blog series that will explain how I found 2old2play, why I "left", and why I'm coming back ASAP.
Part 3 of ? – How I managed to screw it up

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Right, so where was I…

Oh yeah.  Have you ever gotten your panties all-up-in-a-twist for no good f#ckin’ reason and then shot your mouth off at people who didn’t deserve it and then stormed off in a huff only to realize almost immediately that you were behaving like a spoiled child and then wished you could take back what you said, but you knew you couldn’t, so you just decided to pretend it didn’t happen and tried to forget it, but you couldn’t because you were really embarrassed so you withdrew from the people you had offended and tried to start over somewhere else, but that felt awkward because you knew that the real reason you were there was because you were too chickenshit to just come at it like a man and say “You know what, I was wrong and I’m sorry.  Please forgive me so we can all just move on.” ?

Umm… yeah…me neither.

Except that I did.  Dammit.

I decided not to include the gory details of my transgression because it I have learned just one thing from two years on the internet, it is to LET STUFF GO.  It wouldn’t help anyone (least of all me) to rehash it.  I’ve apologized to the people that need to be apologized to, and I hope they thought I was being sincere.  I tend to forgive other people a lot easier than I let myself off the hook, but I am really through with worrying about it, and now I’m just ready to have some fun like the “good ole days”.

So, part of the reason that I fell away from the site was because I had acted like a dumbass and was trying to avoid the “scene of the crime.”  But there were other far less nefarious reasons for my absence.  Let’s count them shall we?

1. I didn’t get an Xbox 360.  I didn’t want one, and to some extent I still don’t.  Sunburned Goose let me borrow his for more than a month while he was on vacation and I hardly played the damn thing at all.  A lot of the cool people that I had made friends with DID get 360’s but for a while that wasn’t a problem because there weren’t any really great games for it and people kept coming back to play Halo 2 anyway.  This is sort of tied into the second issue..
2. I got tired of Halo 2.  I’ve never been a big fan of shooters anyway.  Probably because I’m nowhere near twitchy enough to ever be good at them.  I prefer turn-based strategy games and racers really.  I still like to play Halo 2, but I can’t stand it for more than about an hour now.  All that getting blown up just kinda wears on me after a bit.  It makes me…edgy.  So, I was a bit screwed on the gaming front.  I didn’t have a 360 to play the new games and I didn’t feel like playing the old standard for 10 hours a week like I used to.
3. I got busy with “real life” stuff.  Since moving to Birmingham I have found a lot more activities to take up my free time besides gaming.  In Charleston I didn’t have much discretionary income, lived far away from my wife’s family, I didn’t have many friends in town, and my house was new.  Now I have a better job, better cash flow, we live equidistant to both of our families, my best friend on earth lives here, and I have a used house that keeps me on my toes with improvement projects.  We go out of town to visit family at least once a month now, and if we stay home we spend time working on the house or hanging with our friends.  Actually, the past 3 months or so we have gotten heavy into BOWLING of all things.  It’s fun, it’s cheap and you can get drunk while doing it.  In that way it is a lot like video games.  But unlike video games, both my wife and Raste’s girlfriend like to bowl, so it is something cool for all 4 of us to do together.
4. My wife and I worked together.  For a while we worked at the same company and commuted together.  So I didn’t find myself sitting at home for hours feeling lonely with nothing to do.
5. When I did game, I wasn’t doing so online.  I picked up Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and got lost in there for a couple of months.  I did the same thing with Age of Empires and Puzzle Quest on my DS.  When I had time for games at all, it wasn’t typically on the days and times that a lot of other people play, so I stopped trying to find a group of folks to team up with and just went back to the old days of playing alone.  It’s not so bad really.  There are some great single player games out there.

Add all of that up, and you can see why my site participation and Xbox Live logins started getting less and less frequent.  Oh sure, I came back now and then for the odd game or ranting blog, but really, I was completely disconnected from what was going on here.  I was losing track of my friends, and came dangerously close to just cancelling my Live account and never looking back.

But that didn’t happen.  Once again, a series of different events has pushed me back to this site, and Xbox Live, and gaming in general.  What were these events?  You can find out tomorrow, when I finish up.  And after that, I promise, no more serious stuff.  Just foul mouthed rants and tales of my gaming exploits.

Since I rarely have gaming exploits worth sharing, it will probably just be foul mouthed rants.