After a bunch of frustration with my not-entirely-kosher Windows 7 install – culminating today in being unable to open a PDF file to pay my electric bill – I finally bit the bullet and found a repair utility that would allow me to update to an entirely kosher version of Windows 10.

Unlike the last couple of times I’ve had to deal with PC problems, for once, I didn’t lose all my files, but any programs that were installed? All gone.

Getting the functional stuff back online was easy – I keep installers for most of the things I use all the time in my downloads folder. Reinstalling my web browser (because, no Edge, no), Discord, Steam, and the other launchers I use took minutes.

Now, the game re-installation marathon has begun. I grabbed Ode and Aven Colony right off the bat – I have one more level to go in each, and I plan to finish those up over the next couple of days. But everything else is a clean slate – thousands of games at my fingertips, and with nothing installed, every one of them is just as likely to get played next as any other.

And since I was updating my OS anyway, I decide to opt in to the new Steam beta. Now, maybe it’s just me being resistant to change, but I don’t love it.

It’s not just that it feels slow and clunky (which it does), but it feels like it’s just not up to the job of dealing with as many games, and as many categories, as I have. It has also, somehow, resurrected from the dead any of those old free to play titles I have long since uninstalled and they had previously disappeared themselves from my libraries. Which would be fine, I suppose, but it has also resurrected categories that no longer worked for me, so I now need to recategorize to get rid of those categories, and …

Look, I like organization. I don’t like the process of getting organized.

Sure, I could opt back out for the time being, but that’s just stalling. I’ll need to figure out how to make it work for me – at least until GoG Galaxy 2.0 hooks a girl up with a beta key.

It really doesn’t matter what form of entertainment media we’re talking about, I am forever and ever behind the times. While that allows me to seek out things that suit my taste at my leisure, it definitely also has drawbacks.

You might think that spoilers are the worst of those, but for me? It’s hype.

I’ve come to realize that once people start talking in terms of something being the best of the best, it starts plummeting on my personal to-do list. The more positive attention something gets, the less interested I become. It’s not because I’m some wacky hipster who couldn’t possibly like something that’s popular, but because there’s a tipping point, and once that point is passed, nothing can ever be as good as it has been made out to be.

Forgive me folks – I’m going to say something now that many folks will find horridly offensive.

Firefly was … fine. It probably deserved a second season, but in no way is it the best TV show ever made. Hell, I don’t even think it’s the best of the Joss Whedon shows. And Serenity? Don’t even get me started on Serenity.

I am fairly certain I would have enjoyed my time with the series more if it hadn’t been a victim of excessive hype. I might have even liked the movie better (but I highly doubt it – that movie just isn’t that good).

Take a moment to catch your breath if you need to. Cuss me out. I get that Firefly is absolutely sacred to a lot of people.

Despite really enjoying reading lists of All Time Best Video Games, I find myself passing over actually playing a lot of those games, despite having ample opportunity. I don’t own The Witcher 3. I’ve never played Portal. I played the first 30 minutes or so of the first Mass Effect, and never cared enough to go back. I still don’t know what Undertale is about, but I don’t feel the overwhelming need to play it.

Of course, despite being unwilling to ride the hype train, I certainly have no issues driving it. I love recommending games, and there are a handful that I find myself recommending over and over. I am single-handedly responsible for the presence of Psychonauts in the Steam library of about a dozen people I know.

Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing about games (and movies, TV shows, and books) that other people are loving, especially when I know we already have similar tastes. But I also don’t believe the perfect game – and by that I mean the game that’s perfect for every single player – exists.

Do you find yourself riding the hype train? If you do, are you more often pleased or disappointed by it?

Around the end of last year, I got the itch again. I still had no real idea for a blog, or a video series, or a stream or anything else, but I wanted to do something.

So I did what indecisive nerd girls do – I went to Twitter and posted a poll.

Now, obviously, seven people is barely even a minuscule sample size, but since I’ve never really bothered to grow my Twitter beyond a small corner of the internet populated by people I already like from other interactions, well, I wasn’t expecting much.

So, I decided to give streaming a whirl. I spent a day or two whipping up some graphics, setting up my channel and agonizing over my overlay. I decided to pass on having a main game, and do a variety stream. I figured it was good opportunity to delve into the nearly-forgotten portions of my library and give some screen time to games that people weren’t already talking about.

I wish I could tell you that I failed on scope. No. I failed on tech. I refused to get a webcam, because gaming is my chill time, and I wasn’t going to get all dolled up to sit in front of my computer and relax. I managed to do a whole stream with no sound – something I would have realized a lot sooner if there was anyone watching it. I found myself dreading streaming instead of looking forward to it.

It just wasn’t my medium.

And to be honest, although I like the idea of video game streaming, I don’t even really watch streams. I stopped using Twitch on anything resembling a regular basis when SMITE moved its E-Sports games over to Mixer. I don’t even care much for video walkthroughs or Let’s Plays.

Although I usually have one or more multiplayer games in my rotation, I grew up with gaming being something you basically did alone. If you were lucky, you had people to talk about it with, but it was rarely a social thing in and of itself.

So, on this first day of Blaugust 2019, I’m glad to be back home, with the written word, and oh-so-many delightfully nerdy things to write about.

You won’t be seeing me on stream anytime soon.

I’ve always been mildly envious of people who know exactly what they want. Who love a thing so unabashedly and completely that they rarely get distracted. Those people tend to excel in whatever their chosen discipline is – or for our purposes, their chosen hobby.

I am a generalist. I have been a generalist for as long as I can remember. There are so many things I love and adore, I would need ten lifetimes to get even reasonably competent in all of them, and at least half a dozen to even experience all the things I would like to experience.

Yep, that’s a nerd girl problem for sure.

My house is cluttered with supplies for a multitude of arts & crafts projects. The list of movies and TV shows I want to watch is so long and overwhelming, I frequently find myself tossing something on the television that I’ve seen a million times over because it’s easier than choosing from all of the worthy (and perhaps the not-so-worthy) options I haven’t seen. The only reason my TBR pile isn’t scattered over every flat surface is that I went primarily digital years ago.

And then, there’s the video game library.

While that’s not a completely accurate number, it’s close enough for our purposes.

When I started my game-a-day blog back in 2016, I though my library (which was certainly less than 500 games) was unmanageable. And it probably was. Just over three years later, it has become such a mighty and unwieldy thing, I find I do even LESS gaming than I did before. It’s become my “What to Watch” conundrum all over again.

It would be easy to blame deep discounts, and the proliferation of bundle options, but let’s be real. It’s a problem that comes from being a generalist*. I want to play ALL THE GAMES, but honestly, who has time for that?

So I keep building up my digital library at a faster pace than I could possibly work through it, and then, when I have time to play, I frequently find myself suffering from paralysis of choice, unable to commit the precious commodity of leisure time to any one suitor.

I’ve joked for years that my Steam library isn’t a backlog. It’s a retirement plan. It’s a security blanket for the time when time is abundant.

Yet I also understand that there’s a deep flaw in that reasoning – new games will keep being made, put on sale, tossed into the Humble Monthly, and I will keep acquiring faster than I can enjoy. It’s a hoarding behavior I haven’t been able to overcome, and one that’s been enabled by the digital marketplace (because can you imagine having that many physical games – where would you put them???).

In the past year, I’ve tried to remind myself that some games are not for me. I have stopped adding things to my library that are praised for being “fiendishly difficult” – I know my reaction times are not what they were 20 years ago, and they weren’t great then. All the critical acclaim in the world isn’t going to make that any less true, and I’m not here for frustration.

What I want from games is an experience. Challenge my mind. Tell me a story. Show me something beautiful. Make me think. Make me smile. Hell, make me cry like a baby.

I’m ready to play now.

*Ok, time to say what you’re all thinking. The real problem is a lack of self control when it comes to things that are cheap or free. I’m a damn Yankee, and I’m not going to apologize for that. I’m 41 years old – I’ve learned to love that part of myself.