achievement unlocked…
Posted by jaked | Filed under just4fun, so i was thinking the other day...
ok so with halo: reach coming out tonight at midnight i thought i would try to let you into a little bit of my nerdy side (ok who are we kidding, i’m all nerdy side) and share with you something that i’m currently really discovering about myself through video games. ok so the other night i downloaded the demo to crackdown 2 on the xbox live marketplace. i played the first game and remember liking it but not remembering it much, and the sequel wasn’t even really on my radar.
so when i fired up the 30 minute demo suddenly it call came back to me. i remembered that when i played the first game i was all about collecting agility orbs, which make your character run faster and jump higher… so much so that i completely ignored the story of the game and just collected the green colorful orbs floating around on rooftops. i don’t think i even finished the story in the game. it was almost at a level of someone addicted to a crack like substance… i just had to get my fix… and collect all of the orbs. (insert lame pokemon joke here)
i then preceded to play through the demo three or four times primarily just collecting the same orbs over and over again. i feel like this obsessive trait really shows up primarily in my video game playing than anywhere else. it really results in some odd gaming habits and tendencies. (most of which i’m probably not too proud of)
i think it’s this weird obsessive compulsive nature that has me so into the xbox 360′s achievement. this achievement system awards arbitrary points for completing things in the game. now these points do absolutely nothing for you, you can’t spend them, you don’t get anything for having lots of them… really they are completely worthless… but i wear them like a red badge of courage.
while i wouldn’t say that i pursue these achievements in an unhealthy fashion, i do admit to some… questionable methods of raising my gamerscore (the arbitrary achievement points) but i have played completely garbage games for the sheer reason to increase my points. for example, i used gamefly to rent king kong and avatar the last airbender because they are both notorious for being easy achievement games. (avatar took maybe 2 minutes to get all 1000 points that a game allows, king kong took maybe 3 hours total)
i really try not to think about what this says about me as a person…
i think it’s this same thing that drew me to ‘secretly’ start playing forsquare again and what has me excited about the iphone’s new ‘gamecenter’ (which since it has come out i’ve lost interest in all games that don’t have achievements) i am an achiever…
i’m kind of a goal person, i kind of schedule my day around tasks. when i get up i have a list of stuff that i have to do before i can sleep again, or just become a flurry of stress lying in bed. it doesn’t matter if it’s mpd stuff like making phone calls and appointments, stuff to do around the house, stuff like blog posts, (which without a computer are freaking hard on the iphone, this probably has been almost a week in the making) or even hanging out with family and friends. all of these things are like little tasks that i can check off all compartmentalized and stored away for future reference. yes i am in part a box checker.
i can tell you that this in no way means i am organized. really it just sort of highlights my obsessive nature. like when i was a kid i would only take an even number of steps in a square on the sidewalk and would stutter-step or jump in order to keep the streak going. also whenever i was in the car on a road trip and there were like telephone poles or even the lines on the highway my had could be open in between the polls but as soon as we went by one my had had to be balled up in a fist during that time.
occasionally i’ll actually still find myself doing these things but for the most part i’m past all of the weirdness. (and i mean who isn’t a little weird as a kid?) one thing that i’ve tried to do is to trick myself into using this for good instead of evil. i’ve really seen some cool stuff happen because of this in the world of mpd and in weight-loss. it was cool because in these cases the ‘achievements’ yielded real results.
the problem i keep running into is not quickly making new goals after i accomplish my old ones. like when i was wanting to run in a race in bozeman i trained hard because i had a goal. after the race was over i totally lost interest in running for exercise. losing weight and keeping it off has been increasingly difficult once i hit my goal of losing 70ish lbs.
how about you? what are some ways that you’ve found help you get things done? how do you stay motivated when results aren’t explicitly right in front of you? do you want to add me as a friend on xbox live? my gamertag is FAITHintheKNIFE.
man, i wish i didn’t have a job…
Posted by jaked | Filed under so i was thinking the other day...
before you jump up and down and get all mad/excited/throw-me-off-of-a-bridge, let me stress one big point, i LOVE my job. let me also stress the smaller points that i do not wish that i did not have a job because i want to be able to be lazy, or because i want to take up professional lego building, or because i want to increase my xbox gamerscore. (its 24,095 btw) no i want to not have a job because i was able to work myself out of one.
what does that mean?
you might ask. to fully be able to really explain that, you have to understand what it is that i do for a living. i work for an organization called campus crusade for Christ. it is the goal of said organization to see a day when every single person on the face of this earth truly knows someone who genuinely knows and follows Jesus Christ. as a part (a very very large part) of that job i get to hang out with and engage in spiritual conversations with college students who are all, if they know it or not, searching for something, for someone. and lucky me, i get to introduce them to someone who i was once searching for.
seems like a pretty big deal right? not so easily done i assure you. but the cool thing about that is i can’t do it. i definitely can’t do it alone and i am blessed to be working with some of the most talented people in the united states. but to be honest, we could be the most talented, organized, stratagized, and whatever other -ized we could be and it wouldn’t be enough. and thankfully for that we serve a very big God. everything we are trying to do would be for not if it were not for Him.
another aspect of my job in which i’m trying to work myself out of one is in raising up leaders. i want to train the guy who’s going to take my place, and i want him to be better at my job then i am. (and i don’t want to hear any snide comments about how easy that may or may not be) i want to invest in where i am, to build up leaders, and then be able to move to a new place, rinse and repeat.
so when that day finally comes and my organization’s goals are fully complete, i will probably be without a job, and i will be excited about it. i really don’t know what i’ll do when that day comes… maybe i’ll work on my gamerscore then, or maybe get a couple boxes of legos and see if i can build this… what about you? in what way are you trying to work yourself out of a job? what big thing are you trusting God to see happen?
[update] my buddy chris has also written his thoughts about the same subject over at his blog www.christownley.com he did post his first but i’ll have you know (it may not show) i started writing this a couple days ago. and be sure to complement him on his shiny new website.
currently listening to:
hans zimmer – inception original movie soundtrack
on replacing God…
Posted by jaked | Filed under a smart guy once said..., so i was thinking the other day...
in reading the “pursuit of God” by a.w. tozer this weekend, this quote has been messing with me.
there is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always possess. it covets “things” with a deep and fierce passion. the pronouns “my” and “mine” look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant… they are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. the roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one root lest we die. things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
this has been something that has actually been in my thoughts alot lately… especially due to my lack of transportation situation. God has really been doing some work in my heart when it comes to the topic of conversation of possessions. i’ve never been “rich” but there was a time in my life when i really never had to necessarily go without. there’s just alot of that stuff (a car, decent computer, money to eat out, a bike, etc.) that i seriously took for granted. now having most of that been taken away (which i can see was God’s doing to really teach me this lesson) i can see where the severe disconnect between me putting my whole dependence on Him instead of just talking about doing it.
God has a funny way of teaching us things. being without a car has been super frustrating for me. having to be a burden on people for rides around town having to have students pick me up for appointments, i’m not going to lie to you, it’s been a pretty big strike at my pride. i’m incredibly grateful to “work” at a “job” where i am loved by the people i “work” with and serve and they’ve been nothing but loving and helpful. but i’ve seen how instead of relying on God i’ve ended up relying on people.
another side of this is the side where i’ve substituted God’s gifts with God himself. i’ve seen it in some of my prayers where they arn’t necessarily about God himself but more about what would really help me out if he would do. less about His goodness, mercy, faithfulness, justice, and love and more about what He should do for me.
i’ll admit it, i’m pretty thick sometimes, especially when it’s about me and my downfalls. i’m just thankful i serve a patient and very forgiveness God. He’s definetly teaching me things, and being the man (can i put that?) i am i’ve got to learn the hard way.
leave it to a guy who died almost 50 years ago to figure out what needs to be broken down in my life.
what about you? what’s something you’re replacing God with?
UPDATE: it looks like pete wilson of cross point church has written about the same thing, using the same quote of tozer’s book on his blog. crazy…
