A Transition Post of Sorts
I hadn’t necessarily planned on addressing the events of last Friday here again. Quite the opposite in fact, I had intended to talk to it once, get my say out and then in recognition of the fact this is a place for gaming rather than real-life news, move on.
But I can’t. I haven’t been able to, instead getting quite stuck. I’ve opened countless ‘New Posts’, some inspired by other posts. Then maybe I get so far as to draft a title and opening line, only to then falter.
It isn’t that I haven’t been gaming — I have. It has been a welcome respite from the continual heartbreak from the constant coverage of the event. I have no complaint with how the news media in New Zealand has responded to the event, in fact they’ve shown an amazing degree of maturity and respect, putting people first.
Gaming — in particular The Division 2 with other Kiwi and Aussie friends — has been a way for us to decompress and just breathe again for a little bit.
But when it came to returning here and posting about it, or anything, I’ve struck something of a mental block. I didn’t see a way to return to normalcy — a feeling perhaps paralleled in life a little bit. How could I return to such a light-weight topics like Friday never happened? It hasn’t even been a week yet, but it feels like a time from another age.
I sort of joked about this last month1 in the ‘Planning for Success’ section, but I don’t really have a post schedule per se. My internal commitment (well, formerly internal, I suppose!) is one post a week and I’m not close to breaking that. I was still conscious though, that already today would have marked the longest break between posts since I started.
My hope is that posting this will act as a bridge between the worlds, here. That I can acknowledge the necessary role that gaming is playing in maintaining breathing room and overall mental health, without taking away recognition from what has happened.
As an aside, the outpouring of support for the Islamic victims as a nation is beautiful. At least one Catholic church has opened their doors, hosting inter-faith services with Islamic leaders standing side-by-side with Catholic priests. Even in the corporate world, bitter rivals in to Telco space banded together to proactively block sites hosting the hate-fueled, white supremacist terrorist attack footage.
This is what New Zealand is made of. This is who we are.
