After Bioshock, I picked God of War up again.  It had been a year or so.  It’s almost over, but, wow, what a truly fantastic game.

Last night I finally completed Bioshock.  My last save before I started playing again last week was from November of last year, and my initial saves were from its release in August 2007.  Amazing how having a kid puts things on the backburner…

I knew I would eventually return, though, because this game is amazing.  It is one of a handful of games I would put against a great film or novel as an equal.  There are far too few games that, at their best, are as powerful as this one.  The story peaked in Ryan’s office, even though there were a few hours of gameplay left at that point.  That moment is the one that hit me hardest and will stay with me.  Incredible.

I’ll go back again, to see the one or two things I neglected the first go around.  I already miss it.

I start things all the time.  I get enthusiastic for a month or so, and then it drops off.  When I was in school, my life was making comics and playing drums.  I really thought I would make a go at one or the other but I convinced myself that the starving artist life was not suitable for me.  I still believe that, actually.  So I went to grad school and got a good steady job, along with the wife, kids, etc.

I love my life.  And I know in my heart that those choices were the right ones for me.  Especially after watching my dad sweat every month about how we were going to pay the light bill.  He always did, but I didn’t want that kind of uncertainty.  I sought and have a steady paycheck and enjoy what I do.  I can’t ask for more than that I guess.

But I do want more.  I still have the desire to create things.  It shifts from music to comics and back again, but it is always there.  The desire is ALWAYS there.  But I lost the willingness to actually make stuff years ago.  My story ideas are no good.  I don’t have time.  Blah blah blah.  It’s just excuses.  Friends have written scripts for me.  They lie unfinished.  Friends have provided opportunities for me to contribute to various things musically, but I don’t pursue them.  It’s something in me.  Or not in me, anymore.

I was reminded of this when I read this interview this week:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/steve-bissette,30751/

It’s a very interesting discussion with a man who left his art behind.  His website still offers his past work for sale, but it feels more like a museum than a going concern.  Sad.  Until I read this response from Eddie Campbell, an artist who knows him well:

Steve has so many cockeyed justifications for not finishing his epic Tyrant, the biography of a dinosaur (he got four issues of the 24 page comic out in three years), that if you sit through a session of listening to them you will lose the will to live. The orders for his first issue were around 24,000 if I remember correctly. Steve thought it was a catastrophe and got out of the business. My orders started at 8,500 and I did well for seven years after that. If i tell him that, he will come up with ten advantages I had that he never had. But the simple fact is that if Steve had continued to work on Tyrant for half an hour every day while making a living doing other things, he would have had a completed project years ago and publishers would have fought and still be fighting each other to have a part of it. But he would have to finish it first, because no publisher would commission it with an advance payment. None of them would hope to live so long. And if done according to my suggestion, It would be a magnificent piece of work and a tribute to his talent and vision.
That really struck me.  No excuse is adequate.  If you really want to get something out there, you will do what it takes to make it happen.  Even if it means working a full time job and squeezing in a few minutes a day for that dream project.  That is something anyone can do.  Stephen King said in On Writing that if you can write a page a day you’ll have finished your novel in a year.  It is more than possible, it is probable.  But you have to work.

I am 34 years old.  When I sit down to draw now I feel as though I am 5, because I have lost all the skills I ever had (rudimentary as they were).  I have to get past that though.  I don’t know if I ever will, but I have to work through the awful stuff that I will output for a while to get back to the good stuff.  I have to work through the awkwardness to feel confident again.

I have to work.

Trying out a new site, hopefully updated regularly:

Tales of the Psychic Wars

Now playing:

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (Wii)
Various Wiiware games (Shining Force anyone?)

Gathering dust:

Fable 2 (360)
God of War (PS2)
Zack and Wiki (Wii)
No More Heroes (Wii)
House of the Dead Overkill (Wii)
Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
Ico (PS2)
Bioshock (360)
Overlord (360)

Thick layer of dust:

Metroid Prime (Gamecube)
Eternal Darkness (Gamecube)
Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn)
Snatcher (Sega CD)

I can now play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on my Wii.  This makes me happy.

Not only did I pay full price for a game tonight, a game I’m sure will be marked down in a couple of months, but I bought it at Gamestop.  Can’t…  Get…  Clean…