I'm an old fart.  That will become apparent as I tell my story.  Why anyone would want to read this crap, I have no idea.  writing has always made me happy though, and I haven't in awhile, so maybe this will help. 

My real life background includes past jobs as a Veteran (Russian Linguist in the Army), Crime Scene Investigator, Firefighter and lots of other weird jobs.  I still currently work in the fire industry.  

I have 2 kids, a grandkid, and in my 2nd marriage.

VIDEO GAMES - THE BEGINNING

My gaming journey began on the tv (when there were only 4-5 channels to choose from), sometime around 1972, when PONG came out. I thought it was the best thing ever. The tank game became my new favorite shortly after.  These were all 8-Bit games and think the Atari was my 1st console at home.  

I guess I was hooked for life. I went through different consoles, and played at arcades whenever I had the chance.  I think my saving grace from becoming like kids today, were my parents limiting my gaming time, and that cell phones did not exist yet. While I grew up, getting bored or finding something to do meant heading outside, playing with friends, talking to friends, and just having a blast.  

After graduating high school in 1986 (yeah, most of you reading this probably weren't born yet), video games weren't a part of my life.  I followed the Grateful Dead living in my van, and just kind of explored the world. It wasn't until several year later, married with 2 kids, did video games come back into (haunt me) my life. 

GAMING TAKES CONTROL

When the kids arrived, home video game consoles had certainly evolved.  We had SEGA, Nintendo, Atari was still in it.  My son was playing Mario when he was old enough to hold a controller.  Of course as a parent and past gamer, these new games were a BLAST.  I played them with my kids, and alone, whenever I got the chance.  Home computers, Playstation, Game Cube, were all coming out as my kids were growing up.  I built a computer for my son, now  somewhere around 10-11 at this time, and had one in my man-cave as well, along with a console.

WOW - no, not as in "holy moly wow", but World of Warcraft.  My son discovered this game, and being a fantasy/sci-fi lover, I was hooked. My son invited me to a guild he was in and BOOM, real life disappeared.  To make this really short I'm abbreviating a lot of this experience. For probably the next 5-8 years I was raiding with my guild a good 5-6 hours a day, on top of 'working'. OK, working is a stretch. After the army I found a way to to be a stay-at-home dad while the wife worked, and supplement our income with the GI Bill. 

   I could probably still log in and get a real picture of my character(s) but I'm married again and won't torture myself.

Sometimes this was 8-12 hours a day in WoW depending on whether I wanted to give up sleep to go farm ingredients or PvP some.  I thought this game was the greatest thing in the world.  I had my little game family, I had my world to live in, I had it good. It was also a great escape for my mind and soul and helped with some serious PTSD.  Not from the Army, as you would expect but from working as a CSI.  Anyway, gaming helped that. 

Oh, There's A Real Life/World Out There?

I became a hermit, I had no friends, and no outside life, which was fine by me.  But my marriage sure suffered.  Not really sure how my kids turned out so good and grew up to be so awesome (my daughter works AMMO in the Air Force, and my son is in IT after teaching English in Japan for 5 years). But alas, the marriage ended and I went  on to now being a single hermit.  I found a real-life job again and moved to Humboldt County, CA. Work just paid the bills because when I got home, I went straight to playing games again.  However, my gaming patterns and tastes had started changing.  I still dabbled a little in Wow, but was in no guild anymore and mostly just wandered the world with my maxed out undead warlock, Skullsmoker, was his name.

And of course, the cell phone had been out for awhile now so I had some games I played on there, but not many.  I still loved the PC games, and also had an XBOX too.  Though I got out some, most of my free time was still as a hermit, playing games, with no friends. At least no real friends living close by, that I could get together with and do shit. Plenty of peeps I had met online and chatted with.  I was beginning to have a issues with how I was spending my time, and started getting out more.  I took up running, hiking, mountain biking, and back to my love of backpacking. 

THEN I got introduced to crypto

And that story will continue in a follow-up post, because that will lead us to where I'm at today.