Be awkward, be free, and game on | A personal post

Some musings following some of the more chaotic times in my life

It’s hard to describe the past month. It was like a speedrun of good and bad experiences. I laughed until I cried at a silly joke, travelled to some incredible places in both France and Italy, attended a fairytale-like wedding, partied with friends while drinking on rooftop bars, ate out at a restaurant with the most beautiful view of the sea, and met up with some friends that I hadn’t seen for a long time.

But this month also had its share of hardships too: My company shut down due to financial constraints and now I’m thrown back into the job market, someone crashed into our car while my husband was driving (he’s okay, thank god), we can’t get to our house easily without a vehicle, so we have been displaced and staying at my mom’s in the meantime, which means we had to leave a lot of our stuff behind for around 2 months.

But it’s life. It happens. I’ve been through much worse times, and I’m thankful to have a good support system in my life. I know that not many people are as fortunate, so I have decided to focus on the good parts and tackle these challenges as they arise.

I realize that I’m running the risk of sounding like one of those obnoxious Linkedin posts, and I certainly hope it doesn’t come across that way. I just had to write my train of thought here.

I thought about writing this when we were celebrating my friend’s 30th birthday at a rooftop bar. You know those moments where you suddenly feel like you are looking at yourself and the people around you from afar? That moment of ‘‘Oh wow, I’m really here with people, dancing around and having fun while I have so many other things going on in my life. So does everyone else.’’

Now, I agree that this might have been the gin and tonic¹ talking, but I still had this moment of… clarity.

And I wanted to write about it. Because while I write about games, it’s not my entire life. Just like how my work wasn’t my entire life. We all have these little facets to us that make life so varied and colorful.

While I am known as the ‘‘gamer’’ or ‘‘nerd’’ in my friend groups and I felt some awkwardness because of it, especially in the past, I am also someone who enjoys hanging out with others, traveling, and hosting small parties at my place.

One of my close friend groups is a group of women who have no interest in games. Their gaming history, as far as I know, comprises some mobile games like ‘‘Episodes’’ and ‘‘Candy Crush’’. They enjoy fashion and makeup; I do not. They love going out to party while I enjoy home parties more. And we are ride-or-die with each other despite all these differences. Why? Because we are all multifaceted. They are some of the smartest people around me. They are very interested in social issues and work actively to make people’s lives better. We make each other laugh with dumb jokes and running gags. I go to them for fashion advice. They come to me for technical issues. They are my hype squad. We were there for each other at some of the most momentous occasions in our lives.

This is the friend group that I have the most differences with, which is why I listed them as an example. Even with friends who share mostly similar interests with me, we all have our differences. Yet we love each other all the same. I believe that our differences make our bond stronger.

My point is… Be awkward, be weird, be cringe. The people who love you for who you are will be at your side anyway.

Şerefe!

1. I initially wrote this as ‘‘gin tonic’’ because it is how we refer to it here in Turkey. Then I got curious and looked it up to see how it’s called in other places, and it seems like basically no one in the English-speaking world calls it like that. It is apparently usually a gin and tonic or G and T or G&T. Huh. The more you know.