TPA 40

Sometimes I wonder if this is helping. I'm not writing the things I want to write, I'm writing whatever comes to my head. I'd rather be playing a game because writing, real writing, takes a toll on me. I suppose it's another thing I have to learn. When will I learn it though? I feel like I'm way behind. God, get inside my head before I get into it. My writing partner says that I've got this. I don't know if she's right. I'm full of doubt. Why don't I believer her?

I've bought a lot of books last month. Mostly books on how to improve your writing skills. It's as if buying the book gets me the experience. I still have to sit down and read the book and try to memorize the content. What a sad idea. Buying so much that I can't do anything with it. I'm flooded with books that I haven't read yet but I want to. I desperately want to. But time is elusive to me and I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I want to do everything but I don't have enough time. I think it's time I gave up on some things. I remember my folks were watching a show called "Justified" while I was working on a story. I wanted to watch it but I had told myself that I wasn't going to get up until I finished the five hundred words. Back then, that was a gauntlet. I sat there in my sister's old room and waited until an idea came to me and I wrote it down. All five hundred words. 

Another thing I've been reminising about is the old Flash Games I used to play. Flash was an Adobe tool that was used to make games or short videos. It's defunct today but there were whole sites like NewGrounds which hosted millions of videos and these quarky games. There was this one that always stood out to me on Cartoon Network. Back then, sites would try to get you to stay by releasing these simple video games. Honestly, I think I liked most of them. They weren't bad but they stuck in my mind for many years. One in particular was called "Trick or Treat Beat." It was a promotional game for Unicef which is a charity that asks people for cash on Halloween. The game was wrapped around trick or treating with different costumes, each one had a different power. The skeleton had a "key" that would unlock any door, the vampire could turn into a bat and fly, the swamp thing could swim, the witch would turn enemies into frogs, and the Frankenstein's monster could smash objects. You had to change to get to these characters featured on Cartoon Network shows and doorsteps to gather as much candy and loot as you could. It wasn't a fantastic game but it made me want to help Unicef. This was back when companies put a lot into their games. They hired these large teams to make these simple games to fill their web pages. Every week there would be a new game but I always came back to the trick or treat game. This was on the Cartoon Network site. Today, the site is only there to promote shows and show time schedules. As far as I know, the games have been removed. I wish someone would make a spiritual successor to this game. 

There was one other game that springs to mind. This "Wild Thornberry's" game that I played on the Nick site. The show was about a girl who traveled with her parents who were nature documentaries. The girl had the special ability to talk to animals. In the game, which name I have forgotten, you had to rescue animals and put them in a enclosure. You were repsonsible for cleaning for them and tending to their wounds. It was designed so that you had to check up on the animals daily, or in some cases, hourly. Something that escaped my mind. I remember returning after a week being away and the enclosure was filled with feces and empty of animals. All my work gone in a few days. After that, I bitterly quit the game and never touched it again. If I recall, the Nick site also shut down any games. For a gamer like myself who didn't have access to Steam, this was how I got my gaming kicks in. I had so few games that because I didn't have enough money. Now I have so many I don't know what to play. But I always remember those games with some nostalgia and I wouldn't mind putting a few hours into them again. Right now, I'm going to go take a break and play a game.