Casual Cogitations

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the ego, and a Sancho Panza, the self. Truth be told, I never relished making an autobiography. It necessitates a rather personal introspection and looking at the less than stellar life I have led so far, Sancho don’t like what he sees. But the Don Quixote in me tells me otherwise.

Well I’m twenty years old; I have two insufferable sisters and three brothers, inside our family I am what people may refer to as the odd man out. If my yearbook inscription back in high school had been accurate, it would probably say “Most Likely to Die Alone”. I magnify beyond the limits of truth of course but I guess that’s a rather efficient way to describe my personality. As a kid, I had been enamored by the macrocosm of video gaming. The thought of dominating people ten years older than me sent chills down my spine and proved to be more alluring than what paltry imagination could offer. Some people smoke, some drink, well the cross I bear then is I play too much video games for my own good.

I carefully deliberated on mastering the symptoms of ailments than can get me out of school days, from migraine to conjunctivitis; I performed them with a calculated finesse any professional actor would appreciate. Heck, my own parents would’ve been partly impressed themselves if they discovered the intricacies that involve such fascinating subterfuge.

Now, you are most likely getting a picture of what kind of person I am and I wouldn’t rebuke such presumptions. Your conjecture is well within reasonable grounds. I shunned social shindigs, ignored the societal totem poll, and became heedlessly indifferent of my future. I was proud to call myself a “true” gamer. Years passed, and before I knew it, I mercilessly squandered my childhood on slaughtering people with an AK-47 on the virtual world.

When high school days came knocking in my door, I didn’t answer it, not until a good friend of mine gave me a copy of one the most controversial masterpieces in classic English literature, Catcher in the Rye. It’s like the holy bible counterpart for teenagers, teenagers who couldn’t find their place on society apparently. Being largely an ignoramus and impressionable kid, I swallowed everything the book fed me. After I breezed through it, I buried myself in it again. Then once more. Then on a nightly basis. Eventually the bibliophile in me woke from its deep slumber and since then, refused to be lulled back to torpor. I sought high and low for Salinger’s portfolio. Read all of it yet, lo and behold, craved more. I did away with my Salinger discrimination and began scavenging books that exuded similar vibes to Catcher in The Rye. Next thing I knew, I metamorphosed from an intransigent video gamer feigning sickness to a voracious reader that devours fantasy books with wild abandon.

But for some reason, I still didn’t change. I was still that peculiar hermit who couldn’t bask in social excursions and thought himself best left alone. The only difference was instead of cooping up with a screen, it was with a novel.

Fast forward to the present and here I am. A mass communication undergrad, who hardly communicated with anyone in the past, let alone the mass. The irony here is indeed ludicrous.

I realize many are dismayed when they hear my story, citing things I messed up and wasted. Perhaps I should be as well. But you know what? Time enjoyed is not time wasted. And both Don Quixote and Sancho enjoyed the hell out of their lives.