Reviews and Moments

Reviews and Moments

So, yeah, uh, reviews?

I’d like to let you all in on a fun secret; yesterdays post was meant to be about viral marketing. I started the post off with a somewhat vague description of Amnesia because I just wanted to briefly describe it before going on to talk about their online marketing campaign working in conjunction with the guys over at Valve. The only thing is Amnesia happens to be really, really good and thus I was about three or four paragraphs into that post before I realized it had more or less become a review. The cool side is if you put it next to my three pages worth of insulting Homefront it actually looks like I’ve managed to do a couple write ups for games, and actually produced them close enough to their release that they’re still relevant. This means in the future I’m actually going to bother tagging my posts and who knows; maybe we’ll get some extra views from that stuff. I’d like to say I’m finally following through on the promise of making game reviews (movies too if you count Hobo with a Shotgun), but frankly it’s been entirely accidental. I type when I want to about what I want to, it just happens to occasionally be about cool stuff. Kind of makes me wish we bothered to maintain that site we made eons ago designed specifically for both reviews and blogging. Ah well.

Abrupt topic change.

Now I’d like to talk about moments. It’s a hypothetical discussion with a hypothetical audience. I’m not talking perfect moments here, just those uniquely satisfying ones that come along every now and then. I’d like to share a couple examples and if we had anyone who reads this sort of stuff they could post theirs in the comments. Of course we don’t, so this is mildly pointless, but it does give me an excuse to ramble.

The first one to give you some degree of framing is a place where I find I can relax, almost better than anywhere else. It’s at a book store called Chapters near where I work. In there they have a Starbucks coffee place hooked into the store itself. The combination was a stroke of brilliance in my opinion. They’ve surrounded the adjoining entrance with comfy chairs and couches on either side and allow customers to pick and choose where to sit. I occasionally go there on lunches when at work and just buy whatever hot expensive chocolaty beverage strikes my fancy that day and sit down to read a book. Sometimes I go on to buy the book if it left a favorable impression, others times I don’t – the book store doesn’t mind; they know they’ll get their business another day. The place is often filled with a dozen or more people with either books or laptops, all quietly enjoying themselves in whatever world they’re currently inhabiting. The feeling I get is like a break room for life. A moment when you can sit back fully free of obligations and relax, devoid of concerns or worries.

A second moment comes from a nearby forest from where I live. It’s on the outskirts of the town and stretches out for several kilometers. The forest has a number of paths through it, but when I go I tend to stay off them. I’ve been in there with friends or walking the dog enough times that I’m never worried about getting lost. That isn’t to say the forest is small by any stretch of the imagination, really. It has gently rolling hills in it and it's an old forest, which cuts out the noise and sight of anything further than a hundred yards away. You can spend the better part of a day doing a loop of it and never see a house, car or person. The situation in particular is when I go alone, with or without the dog. Since I avoid the few trails I can get a real sense of being on my own, regardless of how close civilization may be. It’s in times like that I seem to have the most interesting ideas come to me. I can get a period of reflection and peace that urges them out. I’ve even noticed that when I do take friends our discussions tend to be wide ranging and have more depth than other times. On a personal note it’s those times I’m most prone to introspection, and re-examining why I’m who I am.

They’re just a couple of havens I’ve found in the life, not that mine is particularly troubling. You sometimes need a break from even the most mundane of lives. Its here I’d invite other people to share a similar place or experience, though as I said; I don’t think we have enough (read; any) audience to support that. Still, the invitation stands to any who’d care to.