The Wasteland of Reality

Over/Under as a Volumetric Shit Compressor

Two stories from my day, two days after Over/Under ended.

First among them: engagement amongst my students during class today was utterly dead, I kept on trying to prod questions about the topic at hand, met with silence. A student sleeping in the front row, another fiddling with their phone in the back, I had to fight every urge in my body to start screaming out of sheer frustration and despair over the fact that I’ve poured my life into cultivating a knowledge of history and oh-so-desperately want to share it wholly and authentically with people but that seeing an audience who simply could not even pretend to care was utterly gut wrenching. It’s strengthened my resolve to go teach English in China next year, hopefully in Guangzhou- that’s where my family came from, it’d feel nice to be the first in my family to have set foot there in over a hundred years.

Lunch break.

Costco. Chicken Bake and a soda, the place is crowded as all hell. I sit down next to this older woman at a table, I get a feeling in the back of my head: she has a story and life of her own, talk to her. We get to talking, I learn that she was actually in charge of allocating the budget to the deans at the college I work at, and thus she is only connection removed from having met me in turn: we get to talking about her retirement, my plans for the future, the matter of students and frustrations and hopes for them, it was honestly oh-so genuinely lovely to talk to someone for a few moments, knowing that I’ll probably never meet her again, but nonetheless feeling fulfilled for having done so.

These highs and lows of today were brought on by Over/Under.

The former: I’d existed in the headspace of Tam Ziyi for the better part of a month now: I sure as shit wouldn’t want their life, but y’know? It was still fun, it was still interesting to exist in a mindset entirely different from my own for that time. Thus when Over/Under ended and I exited that headspace, I was more or less looking at my own life with a fresh set of eyes and found that I’m actually immensely unhappy where I am in life, I’d just grown used to it and thus didn’t think much to well and truly change that. Hence, my heightened desire to try and sort out my life even further, to go teach English in China for a year, get out of my current situation, and figure things out from there: maybe I’ll go pursue library science, maybe I’ll go for a PhD, could wind up moving to Japan, the UK, DC, Portland, stick around in China, maybe even figure out what I’d need to do to be happy staying in my home town, but my current situation, feeling like I want to scream at my students for scrolling on their phones while I’m pouring my heart out about how deeply evil the peculiar institution of American slavery was? It ain’t fucking it, let me tell you that.

The latter: part of my Over/Under experience as the game was coming to an end was exchanging stories with people I’d literally never met in or out of game, wanting to know what they were up to the whole time. I found myself regretting not talking to more people, learning about their comings and goings, getting involved in the dramas of their lives, even if it was just on a momentary basis- and possibly even discovering that we were far closer than we previously thought. Applied that framework to that precise moment of sitting next to that woman at Costco, and wouldn’t you know it, that exact scenario played out: I felt more of a human being for it, more connected to the wider world that surrounded me.

I joined Over/Under with the idea of playing maybe a couple of hours a day, making crass jokes about whacking off, and that’s about it: instead it turns out to be a turning point in my life, it’s forcing me to get my shit together. Head off to China and teach English, work on a fun little project or two for personal enrichment, make myself a part of my community and form proper connections, the whole shebang. I’m not sure how any of that’s gonna work out, but I’m excited to try.

I’m gonna be living the dream.