Like Everyone Else: Highlights 2012

I liked MMOGC's (why do I want to type mmogoc?) format to the highlights of her year of 2012, so I thought I'd have an entry myself on it. 2012 was a great year for both gaming and photography, for me and in general.

I had my first official photoshoot in 2011 and I loved it; I had spent 8+ hours doing something I absolutely loved. I was creative.. tried new things.. struggled with lots.. (beautiful women! lol)but was very successful with many of my photos. I craved more (photo)shoots in 2012. My vacation coincided (luckily) at the same time when my parents were away, so for 3 days in August, I had 4 photoshoots at my house. I had one of my oldest friends, my photoshoot stylist, with me, helping me build confidence, so that I had the mental fortitude to have 3 additional shoots all one my own. 

I'm afraid though; there i've said it.. or atleast this is the first time that i've written it out; I'm afraid of making photography a full time gig. I've seen my photos and think they're good, but I see what other photographers have done and theirs is very good as well and it makes me wonder if I can make that a full time job.

With that said, I hope to have even more photoshoots and even better quality photos this year.

As my friends have gotten older, we've stopped doing outdoor activities (frequently) and clubbing (thank god) and have transitioned to having game nights. We used to play Trivia Pursuit.. Settlers.. Agricola, but this year we changed our retinue and had a whole slew of new games that we tried. Dungeon!, Ticket to Ride, Guillotine, Bonanza, Risk.. tons of new games. I like how we have so many different kinds of games available to us.

MAGIC! lol. In the first half of 2012, we (my group)must have played Magic: The Gathering, every. Single. Weekend. And from the stories, one of my friends played it with her husband, every. Single. DAY. But the start of the football season, came a waning interest in Mtg and a new passion (for all the guys except myself[I like watching, not doing]) for fantasy football. I love the multitude of strategies, rich story and could literally spend hours on deck building; probably something you can do with fantasy football, but as I wrote, I would rather watch the game, than do anything more with it. Its not the main reason, but a big thing that kept me even thinking about fantasy football was:

All the video games that came out this year! Borderlands 2, X:Com Enemy Unknown and Guild Wars 2. Borderlands 2, Game of the Year, by the way by some people's count, is a fantastic game.. very similar to the original, but improved across the board. Still a few issues/bugs.. some incredibly hard parts.. *cough* people duping (not me but friends, which takes the fun out), and it was partially GW2 and a crappy 1st dlc that kind having me let dust settle on the Borderlands 2 cd. I used to play (10+ yrs ago) X:Com: Terror from the Deep. An incredible, but punishing game that never let up on you and made no apologies if it beat you. I was almost deathly afraid that 2K would either keep the insane difficulty (I basically never won and lost 75% of my squad on every mission) or/and ruin the game and the nostalgic parts that made it a great game. And I was so surprised that not only did they do a fantastic job (although a bit shortish, research-wise), I was able to finish the campaign! The only problem I encountered, once again due to GW2, was I didn't have an urge to play another campaign.. whether for keeping my perfect record.. or just boredom from a completionist first-time play-through  For the longest time, I was trying to resist GW2.. mostly because I don't have the willpower (yet) to become addicted. I have good enough willpower to do daily self improvement (stock research, career opportunities, learning a new language, blog etc), but I still spend more time than I want to.