Dale concludes his laborious introduction and begins a journey both stupid and clever

So, at the risk of this becoming a thing, I must apologize once again. I got a comment (yes, just the one, but it does help explain why I love Lindsay so damn much) after my last post that referenced the “big reveal” coming up. Let me clarify: there is no “reveal”. All I am doing in this post is concluding the introduction to my blog. There will be no fireworks or children's choirs to celebrate the announcement, and nobody reading this will make any kind of delighted exclamation and read it out loud to their spouse or significant other in gleeful amazement. Trust me, if you've read the first two posts, the point should be mostly apparent by now anyway. At the very least, you must have concluded that I am, at the very least, going to ramble at length about things that are on my mind.

Well, that's at least partially true. I tend to ramble and go off on tangents when I write, and things that I intend to keep short end up being, well, long. So one of my goals with this is to discipline myself and work on brevity. So I will not be going over 1000 words on any post. That's the Krawchuk guarantee! *this is not a guarantee.

Another goal is to get back to writing regularly. I want to keep this thing up and post at least two or three times per week. And since I actually plan to tell people about this blog, the pressure will be on and I will have to write or reveal myself for the all-talk, lying blowhard that I fear deep down in my heart of hearts that I actually am.

Now I realize that so far it seems like this whole thing is for me. What's in it for you, you ask? Well have no fear, I do plan to keep things entertaining. My anecdotes have frequently been described as “enjoyable”, though I have also heard the terms “pointless” and “in need of closure”, but in my opinion all three of those can entertain at some level.

I also plan to be honest. And when I say honest I mean I will be unflinchingly forthright about my opinions, my thoughts and feelings, my fears, my doubts, and most of all, buckets and buckets of self-mockery. I was going to say “self-hate”, but I'm really not sure if I actually hate myself or if it's merely self-loathing. I gave it some thought and decided that either way, there would be self-mockery. Oh, and of course, mockery of others.

Is that it, you ask? You're just going to post a few times every week and ramble about whatever's on your mind?

Well, no I'm not. Though I did try that a couple years ago and found it fun and the posts were amusing (don't believe me? They're still up on Blogspot. Look for Dale's Brain), I feel like I need to hone in a little bit. And that's where the story about my kids from last post comes in. It made me realize: I'm no longer a gamer. The only game I play regularly is World of Warcraft, and trust me, WoW does not count as an actual game. It has several game-like elements, but it is really a social experience and an escape for me at this point. Many may argue with that statement and perhaps I'll devote a post to it some day, but the fact remains, I would finish up my day and sink into my desk chair, fire up my Mac, and holiday in Azeroth for a couple hours each evening. Which is great, don't get me wrong. I have great fun and hang with fun people. But it does not compare to the days when I would log on to Counterstrike every night and battle for my life against incredibly skilled opponents with deadly virtual weaponry.

I have played bits of some awesome games on Xbox and on my computer, but it's always just way more convenient to log on to WoW. Plus there's competition for my Xbox much of the time. It's downstairs set up in my home theatre area, and my kids can be found down there much of the time.

Anyway, I decided that I was going to make time to play more games. Get outside my comfort zone and actually get into some of the games I've been wanting to play. And then I thought, maybe I should write about that. I'm now a lame gamer, I know, and my skills and reflexes are not anywhere near what they once were, and I'm sure I'd have some amusing tales to tell.

Then I thought, “Wait!” There must be tons of guys with similar issues. I mean, I haven't just been neglecting my love of gaming. I don't write as much as I used to. I don't watch movies as much as I used to. I don't read as much as I used to. When you're eighteen, you have energy and time to do all the shit you want, and it doesn't seem to be over in five minutes like all my activities now seem to do (Wait, maybe I should rephrase that, both for grammatical reasons and for the potential unintended implication. No! No time!). But as you get older, and things like jobs, and spouses, and kids start to demand the bulk of your time, and rightly so, how do you still find the time and energy to keep up your more trivial passions?

The answer is that I have no idea.

But I'm going to try. On Boxing Day I bought a second Xbox for my house that I've hooked into my upstairs TV, and damn it! I am going to use it. It's not much, but it's a first step. The rest I'll work at and see what I figure out as I go.

And there you are. I'll keep at it and post regular reports from the field. And I already have a couple of amusing anecdotes from playing Red Dead Redemption. But seeing as how I'm breaking my 1000 word limit guarantee by writing this sentence, I will stop here and express my hope that you'll find my musings worth your time and that you'll pop in once in a while and check out my progress.