Geeking Out

So, I used to smoke.  Cigarettes.  I think I started because at work. I saw that people that did smoke got to take cigarette breaks.  I wanted more paid breaks.  I know it’s a silly reason to smoke, but I was young and impressionable.  You know how that goes.  And so I smoked on and off for a while.  It seemed to me that my cycles of being on and off of nicotine often correlated with the more stressful times in my life. So I’ve been off the nicotine sticks for a while, but it’s not easy.  It’s not something you can just stop for a while and then you don’t go back to.  I know that the human body only needs the chemicals in cigarettes for about 72 hours after you stop and from thereon out, it’s all in your brain.  If I had a relapse in the 72 hours after quitting, I can simply say that it was the physical chemical dependency on the chemicals that made me have that relapse.  Outside of those 72 hours, if I had a relapse, I had no excuse.  It was a failure of will.

So I think the one thing that people who have never smoked don’t understand is that it’s rough.  The addiction never goes away.  You get into the habit of having one at certain times, and if you change your behaviors you can change your desire.  It’s still something I struggle with, but I’m in a good place in life, and I am winning.

I have always been a fan of alternate universes.  Not like Star Trek type mirror universes where there’s an evil version of everyone, but ones where things are slightly different, or wherein things evolve a certain way.  So one of my all time favorite game franchises was Crimson Skies.  Crimson Skies takes place in the 1930s, in an America that has broken up into numerous smaller nations, and sky pirates rule the air.  Aviation in this world took off the way automobiles did in ours.  All of the games in the franchise have been excellent, and they’ve always managed to capture the imagination with the setting.

Suffice it to say that when there were rumors that a new Crimson Skies game from FASA was in the works, I was certainly very excited.