Sinan Writes This

A Preview is not a Press Release

So for the last four months I’ve been doing what I’ll self-importantly call the preview circuit. And to be honest, I really think the title of this tumblr post pretty much sums up my thoughts on the whole thing. For goodness sake, if you’re not going to offer a smidgen of judgment on what you’re seeing, why not just list your job title as PR?

The thing I learnt this last week is that I can travel around the country and stay in a hotel all-expenses-paid, have my dinner paid for, be given plenty of beer, and still make my own mind up. Well done me. Actually, I knew that already after meeting the girlfriend’s parents. And you should have seen the size of that steak.

Cripplingly Shy

Today - well, yesterday as I’m typing this up at 5am, thank you fucking erratic sleep cycle - was the first day of this year’s Eurogamer Expo. And it was very fun. I got a good interview, played a few games, met a few people, and listened to Peter Molyneux make spectacular comment after spectacular comment.

Afterwards Lewis Denby, who’s currently sleeping on my sitting room floor or secretly playing on my PC and replacing all my game save files with mp3s of himself laughing - you never know - took me along to the Rock Paper Shotgun meet at a local pub. There were plenty of great people there, very talkative, very interesting and I did have a swell time meeting the whole scope of personality that was there.

But it rammed home to me one of my serious problems I have, both in terms of progressing within a career of games criticism and just as a regular old human being - I am cripplingly shy. I am terribly self-conscious, I find it so hard to just introduce myself into a conversation without feeling like a loser. I’m always worried I’m going to say the wrong thing, make a faux pax, generally arse it all up.

It’s at things like Eurogamer where I really need to get over it. I should be able to see, say, Kieron Gillen and not be intimidated. I should want to go over to Peter Molyneux and shake his hand. I should work my butt off to try and grab some time with the Eurogamer boys and girls. Instead, I worry and type up self-absorbed blog posts at 5 o clock in the morning.

I’m being very harsh on myself, I know - I think typing it out is cathartic, but also I’m just trying to give myself a kick up the arse. I want to be better at networking and socializing. One’s a career skill, the other is a life skill, and at 27 I’ve got to stop caring that I might come across as a douche. You’d think I’d have realized that through doing things like my podcast, heck my writing, but somehow when it comes to a social situation, unless someone else gets the ball rolling or I somehow summon up the will to overcome myself, I’m a waste of space. And as much as I’ve had a great time today, I’m left hating myself a bit for being so shy today.

This is very whiny, and I think I’ll just keep this to myself in terms of sending this out to the interwebs en masse. I try to publish all the stuff I write on Twitter. But with this one… well,  people can find it if they want or not. But this feels like something that was really for me. Besides, it’s self-asborbed arse and frankly the only thing that could make it worse was somehow staining this web-guff with my virtual tears. Ugh. Back to sleep, I think.

Living With Complications

They don’t tell you what life will be like as a grown-up.

I’ve spent the night round my mum’s house for the first time in 5 years. I can’t sleep. Just keep thinking about stuff, very annoying. So I’ve been browsing through some of the crap that’s still here. Some of it’s a treasure trove: an old Final Fantasy IX soundtrack. Others resurrect painful memories: a photo of a cute girl I lied to when I was 14, ruining our relationship irrevocably. Old university books from a degree that hasn’t brought me a lot of good. Photos of a younger, far more innocent me, one who didn’t know how the world could be a dark place.

Browsing through Facebook tonight I came by chance across a name, one I hadn’t seen in quite a few years. It was the name of a person who raped a close friend years ago. I know it, he knows it, and many people know it. And yet he walks free.

I remember when I first found out all those years ago. The friend, she didn’t want the police involved at all, so I considered taking matters into my own hands. I mulled over violence – for some time – and then harassment, and then possibly making it public knowledge. In the end, I realized it wasn’t my place. Well, more accurately, I came to accept it wasn’t my place. I felt I had to, very begrudgingly.

Some months later, I saw him. Slouching against a wall in a bar. I wanted to kill him. It’s the only time in my entire life I’ve felt so powerful a hatred, so pure a desire to end someone’s life. I didn’t even trust myself to punch him. Instead, I quietly told him to leave. He did. After that, he skulked into the shadows.

But at some point people move on, and clearly the shadows have less hold over him now. He is on Facebook. He does not fear, and he does not wilt.

Maybe he is happy. Is that right?

As I lie in this bed, on the mattress I slept on as a child, I ask myself when it all got so complicated, and when a man thought it fair to do something so vile. It leaves me cold and lost – and helpless. Even now, I wonder if I could’ve done more. Was I right to let him go? Should I have made it my place?

They say those who do wrong will have to live with the guilt of their crimes for the rest of their lives. What about the victims? If I, just a bystander, recoil so just from seeing the bastard’s name on a website, it crushes to think what my friend must go through each and every night because of what he did.

Life was so much simpler once.

Social Limbo

I don’t think my social life has ever fully recovered from leaving university.

I was in a long course. Add on top of that some external medical problems which kind of knocked me out for a good year and it’s safe to say that I was chained to uni life for a while. I made a lot of friends there, friends I spent a long time with. I was also blessed with my best friends from school being local enough to stay in constant touch with them. It was a really good time, minus the being ill part.

All those uni friends have gone - the nature of that course means they spread across the country, across the globe. And they’re also incredibly busy. Staying in touch is hard enough, let alone seeing each other. All my school friends are too far away or too busy too now to spare the time. I kinda got left alone in a social limbo because of all those external problems.

I then got into part-time work, but I could never make longstanding friends there. Just not my type of people. I’ve now made loads of friends through this writing-about-games malarkey, ones I talk with regularly, ones I’ve met a few times too. But because it’s all over the Internet and not in person, it can be a little tough. Take Joe, for example, my Big Red Potion co-host. I would consider him a good friend now, we’ve talked plenty about each others lives’ and helped each other through tough times. But we’ve not even shaken hands. It’s tough. I think going to E3 this year would’ve really helped. A shame that I could not.

My girlfriend and I have also had to deal with the things going on in her life - she has had and continues to have much tougher medical issues to deal with than I ever did - and that can often make it impossible to make the time to catch up with old friends or meet up with new ones. So I still feel like I’m in a social limbo. I love my girlfriend, I love spending time with her, but I do miss my friends, old and new.

I wonder if this has something to do with why I want to get away, to have an adventure abroad. My life is making me a little claustrophobic right now. I am well aware a sojourn in Italy will solve nothing… but it couldn’t hurt, right? The problem is working out how to make this work, on all kinds of levels.

Engagements, Marriages, Weddings, That Whole Malarkey

The problem with life is other people have lived it before you. It’s easy to fall into the cliches of growing up. And so I find myself 27 years old, in the middle of a relationship of six plus years with a lovely and utterly patient woman, and we are not yet engaged. Not even close. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Everyone around us, everyone we know and love, is either getting married, already married, or both. Or something, I dunno. The world is having a wedding, I thnk.

I seem to have created this world in which everyone is taunting us with their engagements. That’s not the case. I actually don’t get too much of the ‘so when are you getting married?’s that I would profess to getting. It’s happened, sure, but in my screwed-up reality there’s a parrot on my shoulder who repeats it 10 times a minute. In my reality, I am the pirate never to wed.

One of my best friends got engaged this weekend. He and his girlfriend have been going out for four years - that’s two years less than me and my girlfriend have been going out. I think I felt more OK about all this when all of my best friends (all four of them - oxymoron, I know) were single (in the married sense). That way, I could lull myself into a belief that I’m still young, sexy, able to get Jennifer Love Hewitt should the opportunity come etc.

The truth is that I’m procrastinating because of two things. The first is that I don’t really like the idea of marriage. I fully confess that my parents got divorced and it was painful for me, blah blah blah. While that surely has some bearing, honestly, I’m not 100% sure I get the point of wedding and marriage anyway, at least beyond the legalities. I don’t get the “to show our love” thing about it, and I don’t get the “to make it permanent” thing. I can do all that without asking my girlfriend to wear a virginal white dress that insults and demeans her only slightly less than getting her dad to ‘give her away’ - and he would want to, I might add.

The second is that, frankly, we’re not financially comfortable. Since I took on the recklessness that is pursuing a mostly non-viable career late into my 20s (woo) and my girlfriend returned to studying as part of a career that is similarly uncertain (woo), I’ve been left always aware of the cost of one of these wedding things. And I know she will want a big old wedding. Actually, I don’t know that she will, but I’m afraid to lead her down the path I would go down, which is one that is - safe to say - not every little girl’s dream day. Although, frankly, I’m not sure my involvement could ever amount to a dream wedding.

Sometimes I think about getting engaged… and just seeing how long that can last. That’s a very male way of looking at things, isn’t it? Committing to a day when you’ll make an actual commitment. It’s just a half-commitment. Pathetic.

Still, at least the parrot would shut up.

Italy

This moving-abroad-for-a-bit idea is starting to roll.

Italy has taken a lead in what I would call the practice round of this idea. Not for reasons beyond the most simplistic. I liked Italy when I visited it about 8 years ago. Stayed in Milan and Bergamo. Fond memories of playing poker on the balcony of a classic bar that was understatedly beautiful with its arched gate and greenery going just about everywhere. There was perfect weather and perfect beer. Come to think of it, I don’t think we were sophisticated enough to be playing poker. Especially since I won. 

I have no real basis beyond that to put forward Italy. It wouldn’t be great career-wise. I don’t know Italian. I’m not even sure I’m a good fit for the culture.

But I dunno. That all just makes it seem more exciting. 

Early days yet. This idea is very much still an idea, and an embryonic one at that. 

The Stasis of Still Having Electricity

I’d written off today as I didn’t have any work, and the builders doing refurb on our flat said they were going to turn off the electricity at 9am. I was all set to go into London and paint the town a shade of red. Probably a light red, it is a Wednesday after all.

It’s now 11am and we still have power. I have completely wasted the last 2 hours waiting for the power to go off. I should be angry at the builders for saying they’d do something and then not doing it, but that would be like getting mad at a dog for licking its balls. Really, I’m angry at myself. Even as I type this out, I’m thinking that I should just get off my ass and go into Central before the rarity of a free day drips away. Instead, I’m telling myself that maybe the power will stay on, and then I can work on that review I need to finish or that blog post I’ve been thinking about. 

I am terrible at allowing myself time off. That may sound like I’m bigging myself up for being so dedicated to my work, but it’s a definite fault. I get too focused on games, I forget to explore other mediums, and often my best inspiration for an article, a post, or even a review comes from my experiences outside of gaming. The problem comes from enjoying work. I really love to play games. Even for review, even when I’d rather be playing something else. Even when it’s a bad game, I enjoy framing ideas around how to talk about it. I think, actually, the problem is that I really love writing too. 

The electricity is still on. 

So really, electricity or no, I need to get out of this house, take my Tim Moore book, find a nice cafe, a mocha frappucino, and just enjoy myself without a controller in my hand. Just for today. Let’s see how that goes. 

Also, fuck the builders. I mean really. 

Bored of Moving Inches at a Time. Relocating Should be a Worldwide Affair

My girlfriend and I are deep into the slow, tedious process that is moving house. It’s not even really moving house. First of all, we live in a flat - but moving flat just sounds dumb. Second of all, we’re moving to another flat within the block, one a half-flight of stairs below. So it’s not really a proper relocation.

And yet in terms of effort it’s every bit as tiresome. We still have to box everything up and shift it down the narrow staircase, all the while builders are drilling noisily around us. As if living right next to Central Line wasn’t noisy enough. 

On a side note, people often talk bout hearing the Central Line in my Big Red Potion appearances. It really is THAT close. Let me put it this way: I can tell which newspaper a passenger’s reading from my vantage point. I have forgotten what quiet actually is.

Back on topic: on top of the physical shifting of things, there’s the wearisome admin - even if all that’s changed is a number - and the downtime of no electricity, no Internet, no water etc. To add insult to injury, we have to pay an extra £150 rent for the new accommodation and the housing firm hasn’t exactly been clear as to what we’re getting in return for all this money. Not working TV - the fun of living too close to the BBC.

I am already tired of West London and even more tired of barely moving an inch within it. I always told myself that I would spend some time abroad. I’ve now moved house six times in the last four years within the same city. I am beyond bored of it. I should take advantage of the fact that, career-wise, I am not tied down to London, and start to consider spending a year or two not just out of London but out of the UK too.

Saying it, of course, is one thing. For now, I have to make do with moving from one cramped flat into another just like it. I will be glad when this week is over.