true story... (this is not done, since i don't really know what the point of it was going to be.)

He approached me on the balcony of my naval barracks, and started talking about the hard job that he had to accomplish over the weekend. I asked him, like most people would when pretending to care, what exactly his job was and what it entailed.

“Well I’m working on making firebombs tonight,” he said, as though it was something not out of the ordinary to discuss producing explosive devices in one’s room. “And tomorrow we take the fortress walls, hopefully not losing too many men.”

I could tell by his pasty white skin and natural aversion to light that the kid was a habitual video game player, but I was still not fully prepared for his complete detachment from what us mortals refer to as “reality.”

Apparently he was a member of a powerful guild by night, and only worked as an aircraft mechanic during the day to pay for Mountain Dew and an internet connection. Incredible awe doesn’t even begin to cover my reaction to being in the presence of such greatness. In fact, I took a look at my own life and began to feel as though it has all been just a waste of time.

Had I known that living far from sunlight and learning how to make things happen in a fictional realm would one day be considered a “skill,” I surely would have not spent so much of my childhood learning to climb trees, make art and identify constellations and my adolescence would not have been wasted playing instruments, skateboarding and seeing the world.