Intro to my Gaming Identity – AKA #Blaugust 2015 Day 1

So, if you’re reading this, there’s a pretty good chance you know me from social media, and if you’ve been around long enough, you may even be familiar with my old World of Warcraft-centric blog. If you DON’T know me from those places well then… what the hell are you doing here? (I kid. Mostly. But seriously, what’s the deal?)

Anyway. I’ve stopped playing WoW a couple months ago, so naturally that blog is pretty much irrelevant anymore. I’ve thought about resurrecting the blog in some form or fashion, but the title is pretty intrinsically linked, as well as all the content i’ve put out over something like 3 years of writing, so I figured it’s just better to start fresh.

So, a couple things you should know (or might *want* to know, or don’t even care but i’m gonna tell you anyway) about me. First one is that I tend to ramble. These blog posts are going to be my thoughts on things, and as such don’t always follow silly rules like proper sentence structure (but I WILL do my best on spelling) or cohesive thought processes. Some posts will be focused and have a point, whereas others will be very ramble-y and inane (kinda like this one). I also use parentheses and ellipses a lot. Deal with it.

Next, this blog is going to be about gaming in general, but it’s also going to be about me and my life, and how I relate to games and gaming and things of that nature. My life is very strange. I work full time, and i’m married, so I won’t promise anybody any kind of posting schedule, because I will just feel disappointed in myself when I invariably fail to uphold it. That said, to start off, I *am* going to try out this Blaugust nonsense to get back into the swing of things. It’s been a really long time since I’ve blogged with any regularity, so I think this will be what I need to get into the habit, at least. I’m not overly concerned with winning or not, just… getting thoughts on “paper” for the whole world to see.

Lastly… this blog is going to be personal at times. Like I said, I have a very strange life. While you won’t see anything OVERLY personal, or personally identifying about myself here, there are times when I may (quite unintentionally) get a lot deeper on this blog than I do on twitter or anything like that. That having been said, it’s worth noting that I have no intention of censoring myself on here. If I want to say that something fucking sucks, then that’s exactly what i’m going to type. It’s just a part of who I am.

All of this brings me back to the title of this blog – Gaming Identity. If you know me, you could probably come up with a lot of adjectives to describe me. I would be willing to bet, however, that one word that would overlap most lists would be “Gamer”. I’ve been a gamer since I was a kid, and it took me a really long time to realize that this wasn’t something that I would just grow out of, nor should I expect myself to. Since then, i’ve come to fully embrace the gaming side of my life, and it has led me to some truly wonderful people, and events… not the least of which led to my getting married a couple of years ago.

Now then, a little bit about me (holy shit have I already written 600 words, WordPress?), and what made me fully decide to get back into blogging. As I mentioned earlier, I blogged for several years about World of Warcraft. As my interest in the game started to wane, so did the regularity of my posts. Eventually they tapered off into nothingness, but my desire to blog never fully dissipated. Occasionally things would come up (either about WoW or about something else) and it would make me want to blog again. A couple friends on twitter have been talking about this Blaugust Initiative and so (with no gentle coaxing on their parts), I decided to open a new blog that would let me participate, and vent my spleen about things to people again.

Oh right, I was gonna talk about myself too. Well, people call me Achloryn, but my real name is Chris. i’m 33 and I live in Tennessee, and i’ve been a gamer almost my entire life, going back to those really awful Atari 2600 games. Nowadays, i’m pretty exclusively a PC gamer, with very few notable exceptions (mostly games that are only available on console, like Final Fantasy Tactics. Curse you Square-Enix, GET ON THE ANDROID VERSION OR STEAM RELEASE ALREADY). As I mentioned earlier, i’ve been married for 2 years, and she is also a gamer. Maybe I can occasionally coax her into guest posting on here, but I wouldn’t hold my breath necessarily. In my spare time I like to game, and play D&D, and play video games, and occasionally I find a way to slay a dragon or two in there. I guess you could say it’s my biggest hobby. Really though, gaming has kept me sane at a times when I *still* look back and wonder just how in the donkey balls I held it all together. I owe a lot to gaming over the course of my life, some good and some bad, but all of it has made me who I am today. And I suppose you can say that that is my Gaming Identity.