The date as of starting this piece is October 4th 2018. That is 228 days since my wife surprised me with one of the biggest announcements of our lives. 19th February and just 5 days after Valentines day. Another Valentines day in which my wife had told me to not get her anything, but realising that this really means “If you love me you’d get me a Valentines day gift even though I fuss about not liking the day”, I still got her some little bits. Chocolate, some wine, you know, just a reminder that I do know you well enough to realise you’d want something. But I digress, I come home from work on the 19th February and I’m the kitchen, I can’t recall doing what, probably not cooking. My wife come’s downstairs with a box and says she feels bad about not getting me anything for Valentines day and hands the box over to me. A few chuckles from myself I take the box and proceed to threaten to shake it querying did she buy me a PS4 game? She says don’t shake it rather urgently. I lift the lid and peer down into the box…
Now I suppose looking at that, you’d be thinking… Wow, that’s awesome, oh wow and probably a load of joyful expletives. I opened the box and just could not comprehend what was going on. My attention is first grabbed by the Batman booties, which In my slow processing speed diagnosed as a pair of socks… for me. I then scan the baby grow which reads “I get my awesome from my dad”. Again the penny still stupidly hasn’t dropped, and I’m thinking, “cool T-shirt I guess, my dad is kind of awesome”. I haven’t even begun to process what this white stick on top of it all is…And then…
The cogs finally turn and it clicks. I swear, I swear a lot, I pick up the stick now realising what it is, and there are the 2 lines that confirm something that my wife and I had been wanting to see for over a year. I’m hyperventilating, I’m not sure what to do with the items in the box, I keep picking them up, putting them down all the while repeating “Holy shit”. I grab my wife, we hug, we kiss, I pick up the baby grow again and question is this real? are you really? She nods excitedly and we hug more. That feeling, that’s a feeling that you only encounter a few times. Proposing and then fast forwarding 3 years later waiting at the end of the aisle knowing she’s being walked down by her dad. This was up there rightly so with those moments.
Now fast forward to the date I began writing this. It’s the 4th October as mentioned, and we’re now 20 days away from the arrival of my son as hopefully all goes to plan. Will who runs Geek Sleep Rinse Repeat with me will more than likely agree with me when I say my gaming habits and geeky habits in general have changed so much in the last 228 days. I’m rarely contributing to the site anymore, I’ve not been getting board-game reviews out anymore, I’m not active in the blogging community that have so warmly welcomed GSRR into, I’ve not been able to attend EGX in September more so for precautions reasons. While that reads like I’m hanging up my GSRR contributions, I certainly have no intentions to do so (This feels like my Wolf of Wall Street moment)…
In fact I thought the journey could make for a decent article for the site. I see this as an introduction to the series, which I will try to continue on during the journey which will kick up a gear before the end of the month. I’m still very much into gaming and despite the months since the announcement seeing drastic switch of focus in my life from gaming to baby shopping and house prepping (and my wife would say going out and drinking more, but we had a great summer and World Cup), I’ve still managed to amass a reasonable amount of time gaming albeit just more limited to the purchases I’ve made.
My wife treated me to a Nintendo Switch for my birthday with a friendly warning to not expect such extravagant presents for the next 18 years. While it was all in jest not to expect so much gaming related presents in the future, it’s also the truth I guess. I can see it in my purchases alone now too, I’m more focused on my disposable income for other items rather than video-games as maternity income while very welcome, is certainly a fair whack down from what we’d be used to earning. Still when you look at the games I’ve had the privilege of playing this year, you certainly can’t say it’s been a bad year can you?
I think this is the part that is going to take me the most time to adjust to, as selfish as that sounds. From for the most part freely spending on video games and spending time playing them, or arranging board game nights with Will and friends to having to carefully select what game to get and prioritise what I’m desperate to play more than others. The next decision making process to make is how can I get Madden, NBA, Red Dead 2, Pokemon Let’s Go, Smash Bros and Christmas pressies for everyone as well as look after the little one? To be continued…
– Murr
