Gaming is good...

... everything other than being passive is.

I haven't posted that regularly recently. I usually need a bit of anger or something that bothers me to write. There is less of that in my life now. Lifting my Macbook onto the desk that I use basically only for writing and serious stuff feels good. Words flow.

Shanghai is being great, a lot of things are improving. I am improving, there is no end to that until it ends and that is so far in the future, we probably will have real-life Westworld.

That show is the bomb, I think I mentioned it before and have to say it again: it's cinema on the small screen and the most expensive looking TV show there is at the moment. It's also the best thing since Breaking Bad. Watch it! If you don't - you miss out on having your mind tickled and talking to people like Lost was ever any good (you can possibly tell I never got into that). It's one of the show that you want to talk about with other people, a show that you will possibly dream of in one way or another and it's a show that you want to enjoy every second of and makes it worthwhile. I don't miss the show with dead people walking and fake-out cliffhangers, lame episodes in the middle and characters that make dumb decisions and characters I don't care much about anymore at all (and it seems I am not alone).

It's something active, it's not mindless zapping through what is on TV and just watching something while cleaning the house or putting chips in you mouth while leaving crumbles on your couch (I am not condemning anyone who does that and watches Westworld though). It's the best kind of TV.

Life throws stuff in your way. Every day, it's not always fun, but you can make the best of it. You can act, you can choose before something is chosen for you. Choose what you watch, choose what you consume and chose how you react, how you get up, how you do things, how you look at things - then you change the world, then you decide, then you are in charge and you can change the world. Your world changed for the better - every day a little bit. My friend Ramsey wrote this splendid article about Protein (totally unrelated but as much worth a read as it is to give Westworld a watch, everything he writes there is great and I know for a fact that he agrees that change happens through repetition through doing it over and over again and have a positive outlook). I just hope VeganGains will not be onto Ramsey next - haha! While we are on that topic, please have a laugh here about how many days are in a week.

Coming full circle and back to the start. Why is gaming good? Because I say so! Because I got an Xbox 360 now and through Chinese magic there are tons of games that can immerse myself in, like I did before with my Raspberry Pi and Playstation and SNES games from my childhood, but this time with better graphics. I also learned that the AV cable makes your games look like you have a Playstation 2 and then you get an HDMI cable and I am too awestruck to tell the difference between that generation of consoles and the latest. Nah, gaming is great because it is active.

You don't sit there passively and have something numbing you. You take part, your hand and eye coordination gets better. Your problem solving skills get a workout. Your willpower can grow. You can relax while immersing yourself in different worlds. I dream better - meaning my dreams go nuts, I ride dinosaurs and shoot laters and I am saving the world with my friends (apparently you can do that online now too - for me it happens in my dreams). I was a bit said to see that the couch co-op is somehow on the way out, sadly, it seems. That doesn't hold me back from playing Borderlands and old split screen titles with friends or my girlfriend.

It's the active part. Games are great. Games are as active as books. Reading a book is better than watching dumb cable TV. I probably don't have to explain that or silly game shows or ads.

Having a beer walk to go from store to store and exploring the city is better than having a beer alone. Biking to work is better than taking the subway and waiting for said subway. Taking the stairs is better than taking the elevator. Writing a blog article is better than not writing something down and forgetting about it. Being strong is better than being weak. Being pro-active is better than being re-active. Gaming is good and so is life.