we're too afraid to enjoy the simple things. [The Counter Hit #4]

Hey, let me ask you something.

Do you think we tend to over complicate

things for the sake of it?

Are we incapable of enjoying simplicity

out of fear of coming

across as quaint or simplistic?

(Sound)

about that.

(Music)

From emotional intelligence to street

fighter, poetry to nature, to comic books

and other curious things

and everything in between.

This is the internet show that asks, "Why

can this teach us about being human?"

I'm your host, Sam Kirk.

Welcome to Team Human.

This is...

The Counter Hit.

(Music)

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome, welcome to

the Counter of Hits.

The Counterist of

Hits, you might even say.

I'm delighted to have you all here.

All of you.

Every single one of you.

New and old.

We are here.

And now, so are you.

Welcome aboard, my friends.

I'm your host, Sam Kirk,

also known as Scarequotes.

And this is the Counter Hit.

This is a place where we get a little bit

of sanity back after all the craziness

that's going on in our world.

And we try to recalibrate ourselves,

what's going on in

the world, good and bad.

While also just

having a place to hang out.

We all got to die someday.

We might as well enjoy the

time we waste while we're at.

And I'm so glad you chose to waste some

of your time today with me.

I meant what I meant, that I'm concerned.

I have questions about

whether or not I think deeply that

we're afraid of enjoying

the simple things in life.

And of course, I'm thinking

about video games here today.

But before I dive into that topic, I

think it's about time we talk about some

good news, some just overall good news

that all of us should be aware of.

Because it's kind of hard to be aware of

all the good news that's going on,

because the world makes it makes it hard.

It makes us want to only pay attention to

this stuff that's not going so great.

So let's spend just a little moment, if

we can, thinking about some of that good

news coming our way.

(Music)

Cement kilns

could become carbon negative if run on

clean energy as Limestone absorbs CO2.

That's the headline coming from Andy

Corbally over at good news network.org

with some good news about all those kilns

we've been using all this time that takes

up all this horrible carbon emissions.

It could become a net negative over time.

Andy writes, the production of cement

ranks is one of the world's largest

industrial sources of CO2.

But now a new study shows how in the

future it could be used to remove, rather

than produce greenhouse gases.

Hey, ain't that pretty cool.

Every year around 4 billion metric tons

of CO2 are produced through

an energy intrusive process.

In this new study,

researchers at ETH

Zurich, one of the top engineering

schools worldwide, have shown that these

emissions could be significantly reduced

if cement production were combined with a

technology known as

direct air capture, DACO.

Didn't know about this.

For the study, researchers collaborate

with the US company Heirloom Carbon

Technologies, which utilizes a DAC method

called calcium looping.

Already kind of lost here,

but let's keep on reading here.

Calcium looping and cement production are

both very similar, as they rely on the

heating of limestone to separate CO2 and

quicklime, a process

known as calcination.

ETH

Zurich's research team led by PhD student

Vittorio Balognaro determined that 78% of

a cement kiln's carbon emissions could be

cancelled out if the kiln ran

electrically rather than on fossil fuels.

Wow.

the slaked lime absorbs further CO2 from

the atmosphere and is converted back into

limestone, which can be reused as a raw

material for cement production.

Oh, interesting.

Burning oil, coal, or gas to power a

cement kiln, however, combines with the

carbon emissions that are being absorbed

back into the limestone.

So, we use this new interesting method,

which changes out how the carbon

emissions are cancelled out thanks to

everything being powered electrically

rather than using the

actual fossil fuels themselves.

Those kilns that are being absorbed back into the limestone, they're not being absorbed in the atmosphere. They're being powered electrically rather than using the actual fossil fuels themselves. Those kilns that

are all across the globe but kind of all

over the United States, if

I'm being perfectly honest,

well, they could have a use.

That's pretty darn good news, folks.

I love hearing good

news about the environment.

You know, we've only

got one planet, one Earth.

Actually, it's not true.

We've got billions of planets.

Billions?

Millions?

I don't know.

How many plans do we have, folks?

You tell me, how many

plans do we actually have?

I think we have a lot.

I want to say billions, trillions,

quintillions, et cetera, but don't let me

get the facts wrong here.

However, there's one planet that kind of

brought us human beings

here, and it's planet Earth.

I'm a big fan of planet Earth, and I love

talking about exploration.

I love talking about space exploration.

I got to be honest.

Whatever we can do to treat home a little

bit better, keep it tidy.

It'll be nice.

And especially if you've already got

infrastructure, I love creative ways in

which people have been able to find

workarounds to what was probably in very

bad hindsight, poor infrastructure.

Yet, we have found a way to make it work

for our own ends and help the environment

as a whole within net zero negative

nothing impact on the Earth.

So that's pretty cool.

That's pretty neat.

I cheers to that, to

that accomplishment here.

By the way, if you're watching our video

podcast, I'm not drinking alcohol.

I promise this is not alcohol.

This is actually root beer, mug zero

sugar root beer, which I didn't know was

a thing until literally today when I saw

it at the grocery store.

Big shout out to

Plantsland, also known as Liam.

It's one of our goats

when it comes to just

generally good nutritional

advice.

The kind of advice that

doesn't break the bank and keeps the

human in perspective, doesn't make you go

on a stupid crash diet.

He recommended it.

I got to say it's pretty tasty.

So again, cheers to ETH

Zurich's research team.

Thank you so much for all the amazing

work that you've done.

Keep at it.

Thank you for being on Team Human.

Thank you for doing good stuff.

I appreciate you.

(Upbeat Music)

More good news coming

to us once again from the

Good News Network.

That's right, good news coming from the

Good News Network here.

The headline, two hours of sleep restored

in Alzheimer's brains

and research breakthrough.

What, what, what, what, what?

As someone who lost a mother recently due

to complications of dementia, closely

related with Alzheimer's, but not

entirely the same exact schism here.

Christian Helle Haunce from the UK

College of Medicine reports, picture

this, you find a small fire isolated in

your kitchen, if you had the right tool,

you might be able to put it out, but

before you can, the sprinklers turn on

and soak your entire house.

An automatic response to an issue now has

damaged everything you own.

Okay, cool metaphor, where

you going with this buddy?

That's akin to what happens in the brains

of people with Alzheimer's.

Amyloid plaques, sticky protein clumps

that build up in the brain

are the fire in the kitchen.

Oh, proverbial, see you were doing a

metaphor and that's what it is.

Microgelea, the brain's resident immune

cells are the sprinklers.

A mechanism designed to

protect the body ends up hurting it.

researchers at the University of Kentucky

have discovered this harmful process for

the first time and

figured out how to turn it off.

What?

That's crazy.

In a study published in the Journal of

Alzheimer's and Dementia,

a team led by Shannon L.

McCauley, PhD, an associate professor of

physiology in the UK College of Medicine,

and first author Nicholas J.

Constantino, PhD, a

recent UK doctorate graduate,

that microgelea are the

primary drivers of sleep loss.

By using a drug to temporarily remove

these cells in animal models, the

researchers successfully restored over

two hours of sleep per day.

Two hours of sleep per day, wow.

Providing a new target for treating the

disease that McCauley

described as paradigm shifting.

Whoa.

Quotation I have here is, basically, we

show that it is not the plaques

themselves or solely dysfunctional

neurons that cause sleep loss, but

actually microgelea, said McCauley.

Microgelea are immune cells that, when

they respond to plaques, kick off the

elaborate cascade of inflammation as if

the microgelea are partying all night and

keeping the brain awake.

Mm, mm, mm.

Oh wow, this is good stuff.

I highly recommend you

check out the article.

We'll make sure to put the article into

our description here.

But a couple of things that's really

important about sleep, if you don't know

this, sleep's good for you.

Sleep's really good for you.

And it's even better for you.

Well, it's always good for you no matter

what, but those that suffer from

dementia, as often said, have huge

problems with sleep.

My mother in her late life, similarly,

just a lot of problems there.

As a big fan of sleep, I

think sleep's a pretty cool thing.

I think this is fantastic.

I think whatever we can do to allow

people the mechanism to get restful sleep

as early in their life as we can, also in

late, but any time we can do that, likely

we'll turn up, this is my biased opinion,

of course, likely we'll turn up

to be preventative

solutions to later ailments in life.

of the big things we started this podcast

with about, one of the big misconceptions

that we wanted to tackle with the

podcast, the first version of this

podcast, also known as the Zero Dot

podcast, was this idea that you can just

grind your way through solutions and

problems that, you know, science can

probably help fix for you.

One of those big misconceptions that I

was a big fighter of is this idea that,

oh, you don't need that much sleep.

You know, who needs sleep?

Screw sleep, we don't need that, right?

Who needs sleep?

Just work really late and go to bed

whenever you can, get a couple hours of

sleep, wake up at 4.30, 2.30 some people

and get grinding again.

I'm sorry, but the data suggests that's

not the best way of going about things.

Be kind to yourself, sleep is good.

If you're listening to this podcast,

instead of sleeping, I'm

sorry, please unsubscribe.

As much as I would love your listening

hours and tension and time,

sleep is the better thing.

It's a better investment of

your time.

And we talked a bit during that episode

about evening routines,

how, you know, morning routines are cool

and all, but they only happen if you had

the evening routine

prepare for that morning routine.

So it's in that way that

I am in, I'm team sleep.

I'm a big, big sleep guy.

Fun fact, this morning I wanted to wake

up early and go for my morning run.

And I did go for my morning run.

I did my calisthenics

routine, but it took me a while.

Why?

Because when I set my alarm for 4.30 in

the morning, it went

off and I felt this deep,

just

desire to keep sleeping.

Like it wasn't just like laziness.

It was just like, no, my body is sending

me a signal, I need to sleep.

And I'm glad I did because there were,

when I woke up maybe an hour or two

later, I felt more

refreshed, I felt better.

There was family events that occurred

that we needed to deal with.

So I needed to be around the house for

those things to happen.

If I was out and about, I would have

missed all that stuff.

And I got to do my workout afterwards.

I felt great, I felt

like a million bucks.

I felt like I really had

a premium workout today.

So that can only happen with sleep.

Love the work these folks are doing here.

Thank you so much.

I'm sorry,

millions of patients, potentially

billions, millions of patients who suffer

from Alzheimer's or dementia who've

already passed away, will not see the

fruits of this labor.

But those that are probably developing

small symptoms now might see something

that will help in

this particular fashion.

So thank you everyone

that's working on this.

Those from UK College of Medicine,

Thank you Shannon L.

McCauley, as well as Nicholas J.

Constantino.

I appreciate your efforts.

The world's a better place

because of people like you.

Thank you.

And sleep, please sleep more.

Thank you, that ends

my PSA on this topic.

(Upbeat Music)

All right, here we go.

Just trying to get this

last level in here real quick.

A big deal.

I'm about to get a high score.

This is sweet.

I think I got all the shapes here.

Here we go.

And,

oh, whoops, sorry.

Didn't see you there.

I was busy playing video games.

Actually, let's get more

intimate for this conversation.

You see, I've been

having this problem lately.

And this problem is, is that, well, I

like video games, right?

You know I like video games.

video games, right?

I think they're pretty cool.

They're pretty neat.

They're pretty all right.

I've been gravitating towards the simpler

side of video games.

And here's a game of a Pollo Pollo good

old game boy that I have

here on my screen here.

And I've been trying to

wonder, ask myself why?

Why am I enjoying these little itty bitty

games just a bit more than I used to?

What's this about?

And I think I know the answer.

So first of all, let me kind of walk you

through my history as a little bit of a

gamer, if that's okay.

If that's all right with you, okay?

Large part of my gamer life, I have

enjoyed complicated video

games, some would say, right?

My favorite version of video game is

probably fighting games, arcade games.

And people often say they

can't play fighting games.

Fighting games are

too difficult for them.

I love them.

I think they're fantastic.

I think they're amazing.

And I used to believe that the reason why

I liked fighting games

was the competitive aspect.

Then I told myself it

was the art direction.

Then I thought it was the nostalgia of

going to the arcades.

And I told myself it was the complexity.

And every other genre, by the way, it's

just as complex as the other genre.

It's all a myth, right?

First-person shooters are just as complex

as fighting games, as MMOs, as

puzzle games even.

Yet I have been craving a specific type

of recreational video game experience

that is incredibly simple to digest and

understand in some

particular facet and capacity,

but doesn't make me have to bend over

backwards to make all of the functions

work in a complicated fashion like a

musical instrument,

which nothing against that.

I'm a musician myself.

I play a little piano, a

little guitar here and there.

I love that stuff.

But it's just for video games, for some

reason, I'm craving that simplicity.

And so I'm asking the question,

are we afraid of simplicity?

Am I afraid of simplicity?

Maybe that's a better question.

Maybe I'm the one

that's afraid of simplicity.

I don't know.

Maybe I am.

But when I'm playing good old pollo pollo

right here, as I'm not doing

a very good job playing here,

I'm reminded that with just a simple

game rule set of blobs coming down on the

screen and making bigger blobs and

stacking combos and beating my opponent

with just one, sometimes two buttons,

sometimes three max, I'm getting a very

similar amount of enjoyment

as I get kind of anywhere else.

am I too chicken shit to admit that

simple stuff's pretty cool, man?

Nothing wrong with it?

I don't know.

Like, okay, hold on.

You with me on this one?

I think you are.

I just,

I

think I need to reconcile that

the ego, my ego especially, plays a

larger role in my recreational hobbies

than I'd like to admit.

What I think people would perceive about

me plays a larger role than anything else

that I'd like to admit.

And that's very

uncomfortable to reconcile.

It's very uncomfortable to admit.

But I think it's true.

I honestly remember,

I remember being a kid and getting into

that pool, not really

knowing how to swim,

but I love being in the

water, being in the pool.

Thought that was fun.

I thought it was cool when you could like

swim to the deep end.

That was neat, right?

I wasn't a kid that could do that until I

got swimming lessons.

And I learned how to swim, and I learned

how to swim incredibly well.

But then it became kind of like,

it became this ideology that when I went

into the pool and if I didn't do laps in

that pool and if I didn't go to the deep

end and practice my diving technique and

practice treading water for 45 minutes,

then it was a waste of time.

Whereas before, simply just

being in the pool was enough.

And if I'm being honest with

you, I love being in the water.

I'm a pluvio file at heart, someone who

just loves being near water.

I still find reasons

not to be in the water.

All the time.

I convinced myself I

don't need to be in the water.

It's the same thing here with video games

in my recreational time.

I'm looking for some reason to call it a

quote unquote achievement.

I'm looking for some kind of,

some kind of ego stroke.

Maybe you feel like I'm

doing something with my time.

But that's crazy because video games,

video games are by definition, by

definition a waste of time in the best

way possible as they should be.

Not to say that Daigo Umehar, one of the

greatest fighting game esports

competitors of all time

is wasting his time in

the traditional sense.

No, of course he's not.

He's made a career out of that, right?

But generally speaking, video games is a

thing that you spend to waste time until

the other thing you're

waiting for to happen.

And yet we're looking for ways in which

to complicate this to

kind of protect our ego.

So

what does that do with video games beyond

what I'm talking about?

Is it just a matter of just giving

yourself permission to

enjoy the simple stuff?

Maybe.

Maybe.

And I also have to be

honest, I'm getting older.

And as I get older,

these guys, they work pretty well.

No pain, no problems.

But I'm sure there's a natural

inclination for me to take a slower,

easier, and gentile

route throughout life.

But as I've talked about before about

bicycles and photography and art and

music, whatever happened to just enjoying

the thing for the sake

of enjoying the thing.

What does

learning how to pixel paint and Photoshop

have to do with photography?

What does ramping up your wattage on a

bicycle have anything to do with enjoying

literally just being

on a bicycle and riding?

What does getting a master rank in a

video game have anything to do with just

putting a controller in my hand and

having a good time on the

couch playing a video game?

They can happen at the same time, but I

would argue they're not related.

They just are two isolated things that

happen separately from each other.

And so back to my

question, my question, which is,

are we losing sight?

What brings us joy?

Because we're so afraid of

being seen as quaint, simplistic,

one-dimensional.

Are we?

That's a good question to ask.

I think there's a possible truth there.

I think so.

I also believe in the seasons of change.

And by seasons, I mean, you're allowed to

change your opinion.

You're allowed to kind of sway throughout

the universe and be different throughout

the months to years, your hobbies, your

interests, everything else in between.

And you're totally allowed to be uber

awesome, first-person

shooter, Fortnite guy for one season.

And then another

season, you can be, you know,

Puzzle Bobble Guru.

And then another season, you can be

Evolution Fighting Game Esports Champion.

And another season, you can be Baldur's

Gate 3 RPG guy playing with your loved

ones or family or wife on the couch,

passing the controller around.

Everything is about seasons.

And I wonder

if that concept of

seasons gets lost in some of the

talk about

growth in life.

We optimize so heavily towards this like

optimal way of thinking

and looking at things.

There's no other way of doing things.

Yet we forget about seasons.

We forget that there's a time to be

optimal and there's a

time not to be optimal.

You already know from last week where I

talked about my belief that we should not

as human beings take any amount of time

trying to be optimal.

That's just pointless.

The human brain by definition already

does a hell of a job optimizing for us.

We do not in any capacity need to

overanalyze that optimization.

We do not need to over intellectualize

the optimization that is already

happening in our brains.

It doesn't need to happen.

yet we feel compelled to do so.

And I wonder if our feeling

to be compelled to do so is very much

related to our fear of people perceiving

us as simple at the same time our fear of

allowing ourselves to have seasons

throughout our life.

I wonder.

I don't have an answer to this question,

but I think it's an important thing to

ponder and consider.

What seasons do you have in your life?

Let us know in the

comments and description.

We'd love to hear from you because we've

all got one life and at

some point we're gonna be gone.

It's nice to know that, yeah, I could do

everything exactly the same way every

single day for the

next 30, 40, 50 odd years.

Or I could decide, you know what?

For this season I'm doing,

I'm getting into crochet.

Or this season I'm gonna learn soccer.

Or soccer is the American term.

Everywhere else it's football.

Whatever season.

Maybe this season I'm gonna learn

yo-yoing and do some tricks.

Or maybe this season I'm gonna jump into

that pool, do absolutely

nothing but just be in the water.

And having known that I was

in the water, that was enough.

Simple or not.

And I'm gonna enjoy the simple things.

And maybe next season I'll

enjoy the more complex things.

Maybe that's what I'll do.

What will you do this season?

And what season are you

getting ready for, my friends?

Let me know.

Hey folks, did you know

that we have a Patreon?

And those that join our awesome Patreon

get access to all kinds

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They also get access to cool little

hangouts with myself, chilling and vibing

with the club ZD crew, club zero dot.

I know what you're asking.

How do you join this cool club?

Why are you being so exclusionary, Sam?

Why are you being all gatekeeping on me?

Trust me, I have no desire to.

Which is why I'm talking to you today

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You're probably asking.

I'm so glad you're asking.

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Okay, but there have to

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No, there's just one plan.

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All right,

enjoy.

(Upbeat Music)

so you just heard

about our awesome Patreon.

One of the cool things about our Patreon

is that you get to request certain things

we had talked about on

this show and other shows.

And one of our oft requested items that

one of our Patreon members has suggested

is that we talk about FGC stuff, fighting

game stuff, but specifically we talk

about fighting game terminology.

And so today we're gonna talk about one

of the most notorious pieces of

terminology when it

comes to fighting games.

And that is the option select OS as it's

called in many circles.

What the heck is an OS?

What the heck is an option select?

I'm glad you're asking, cause if you had

NEST, I would just been here by myself in

the silence saying absolutely nothing.

lot of us feel very uncomfortable right

now, but I'm glad you particularly asked.

So what is an option select?

So an option select is a cool little

trick where using an exploit that the

game provides to you unintentionally in

most cases, almost all cases actually,

you as the player are able to input

something on your controller.

Doesn't matter what controller it is,

whether it's an arcade stick, a leverless

or a good old pad of any kind.

And if you input that

input in the right context,

the video game, because fighting games

are built on this idea of interpreting

your inputs and trying to give you kind

of the best guess of what it thinks

you're trying to do, the interpreter kind

of gets in the way and either interprets

one option or the other, depending on the

context, meaning you've done absolutely

no thinking in the equation.

Put another way, you ever play a fighting

game and you're in a particular mix up or

set up and you feel like your opponent is

just reading your goddamn mind?

Well, he might be.

And if he is, you should register to be

part of the school for the young gifted

school for the gifted.

I get that right.

By Charles Xavier, that'd be a good thing

for that person to do if they were

actually doing that.

They might also just be

good at reading the situation

and they've programmed you in a way to

get you to do

whatever they want you to do.

Or depending on the game, the situation,

the context, they could

be doing an option select.

An option select is when

the opponent, the person that's driving

you nuts and thinks they're reading your

mind is not actually

reading your mind at all.

They're doing nothing.

They're just doing the same

input over and over again.

And the game decides to either give them

one output or another output.

the easiest examples of how an option

select might manifest is in

Good Old Street Fighter II.

So imagine you're

holding your controller.

It looks maybe like this

and you get knocked down.

You're good old Ryu, right?

You're Ryu, you're Ryu,

you're doing the Ryu thing.

And you're getting knocked down.

And on wake up, you decide

you are gonna do a dragon punch.

Which is forward, down

and down, forward and punch.

And let's say you're a pro Ryu player.

You're just so good at playing Ryu that

you never miss a reversal.

And a reversal is when you're able to

upon wake up, do your special move at the

first available frame available to you.

So it's the fastest possible way.

It's which is 1 60th of a second.

And you do that every single time.

Well,

the opponent could get wise to the fact

that you do this every single time and

wait for you to do the dragon punch, poke

you, stuff you, do all kinds of things.

And before you know it, you feel like

you're number one technique, which is the

reversal dragon punch upon wake up just

doesn't work anymore.

Or what you could do is two small

adjustments to your input

and do it every single time.

That way you're in a more safe position

in more cases than not.

So what you do is you still do the dragon

punch motion, but you

make two small adjustments.

The first one is

with your punch button or buttons.

If you want to use all three,

make sure that you have the button

already pressed

before you start the input.

Then do the dragon punch input and then

on the forward down to diagonal, so

that's forward down, release the punch

button and then

immediately go to down back.

Let me repeat that.

You would do the same

situation you've already done upon

wake up.

You would have the button or buttons

pressed before you start the input.

You do the input,

release all your punch buttons, whatever

ones you want to release to, then go to

down back and then see what happens.

What this does is it plays with Street

Fighter II's interpreter in a way that

only one of two

options are gonna happen now.

Either you are correct and you've done

your reversal dragon punch and you win

the day, or maybe they just do nothing

and let you whiff it, or

if they try to hit you while you're doing

it of any kind or it wasn't gonna quite

work or maybe your execution was a little

off, you will end in down

back, which is blocking.

And the reason this works is you're doing

a negative edge input, which special

moves work with, they allow for that,

which negative edge is when instead of

doing a motion, then pushing a button,

you do a motion and release a button.

And we know that normal moves cannot be

triggered by releasing of buttons.

So the game is literally

option selecting to you.

It's like, here's the better hand, we're

gonna let you be in a blocking position

here because otherwise

nothing would have happened.

That's one of the easiest examples to

think of when you think about an option

select, but there's literally dozens, if

not multiple dozens of situations of

option selects in all fighting games,

recent fighting games, old fighting

games, they're basically everywhere.

So the next time you feel like you're

getting thrown looped or you're getting

stuffed in a mix-up that you feel like

the opponent is just guessing the right

solution every single time,

guess again, because they might not be,

and that's an option select.

Here we are folks bringing

it back, bringing it back

to a popular section in the counter hit

where we talk about Reddit stuff.

And again, I'm not a Reddit person, I'm

barely on Reddit, but there's some good

stuff on Reddit in terms of people

reaching out and asking for help.

And

I've said in the past, I'm talking about

leadership consultancy stuff because I am

a leadership consultant, but let's make

it more broad and talk about life stuff.

So I've gone ahead and gone onto the

Reddit webpage right now, it's reddit

slash life, r slash life.

And literally this was

posted five hours ago.

Looks like this is a very, very, very

short post, but let's

see what it has to say.

Yeah, who knows what it says?

The title is, I just need someone to say

it's going to be okay.

Hmm.

I haven't even read what you're about to

talk about, but I felt

that, I have felt that.

I felt

everything is lost and I do wanna keep

going, but I need someone to please tell

me it's gonna be okay.

Hmm, okay.

The blurb says, I have no

direction, I feel so lost.

I lost the only job that I enjoyed.

Ooh, so you had a

job, you really liked it.

You lost it for whatever reason.

I just found out my girlfriend of three

and a half years cheated on me

and it just hurts so fucking bad.

I sit here with no

job, bawling my eyes out.

I wanted to marry her.

I feel so broken.

I just need someone to

say it's going to be okay.

Hmm,

okay, and that's it, that's

the red, that's the blurb.

Wow,

yeah, I've lost a couple of jobs that

in the moment I felt

were perfect dream jobs.

I used to work for a

very short period of time.

I worked at a record shipping company,

not a record label, the company that

would ship records to people and

turntables and all that stuff.

It was a mom and pop kind of situation.

And I worked in the shipping department.

Department is a very fancy term, but it

was just like five or seven guys just

packing sleeves and doing the thing,

packing sleeves and

doing things, whatever.

I love that job.

I love the people there.

I love the vibe, it felt really cool.

The CEO or the owner of

the company, not so much.

And there's a reason.

But man, I was really bummed out when I

wasn't welcomed back at that job.

I didn't get laid off, but I

got asked not to come back.

The story to that is

this individual had a board, like a

chalkboard or a leaderboard of us and had

us put our names down and how many boxes

we were able to get done and whatever.

And I was always number one or very close

to number one all the time.

He's very impressed by me after a while.

He didn't know I had a

business analytics background.

So I talked to him a little bit about

what we could talk about, et cetera.

And he seemed interested, but still

trying to suss me out

who I am as a person.

This is a temporary gig, by the way.

This was not a real full-time thing.

This was just something to just kind of

do in between gigs as I

was kind of working on.

And good group of guys.

And at one point we closed

shop maybe 30 minutes early.

Went out to a pub, had a little happy

hour shin dig and had a good time.

It was a good time.

Really good vibes all around.

Come back the next day

and the owner is pissed.

We wrapped up about 30 minutes early that

we were still behind on our schedule.

Keeping in mind, this owner also wouldn't

let us work overtime because he wasn't

gonna pay the bill to pay us overtime.

He just wasn't gonna do that.

So we kind of did him a favor here, but

the implication was we should have worked

the extra 30 minutes or however long it

was behind on stuff and

started to reman everyone out.

And I forget the exact words that were

said in this entire conversation, but it

seemed very clear that no one wanted to

take accountability for what they did.

And on top of that, the team leads, we

had two team leads in the

shipping department were

trying to be diplomatic, but also they

were in a tough spot and also kind of

dodging some bullets.

So eventually I just stood up like, hey,

why are we talking to

each other like this?

I stood up to the owner.

I'm like,

why are you speaking

to all of us like this?

We're all adults.

You want us to have not

clocked out 30 minutes early.

Got it, we can do that moving forward.

We thought we were cooking well.

We decided all enjoy some time together

as like a bonding moment.

It was fun, I don't regret it.

I know that I see that

that really upset you.

We can ensure that we

will never do that again.

But I made it super clear, don't

communicate to us like this because this

guy was screaming at

us, like yelling at us.

Like, don't do that, don't do that.

He quietly went off, we did our thing.

The next day we had a big snow storm

and then next couple of

days I never got a call back.

And then I called and I got nothing, I

got nothing, I got nothing.

I got a weird text message from random

person saying, hey,

can you come in today?

And I thought it was, I didn't know it

was one of the people's numbers.

So I came in, knock on

the door, no one was there.

And I basically, I got a phone call from

the owner later saying,

hey, I think we're good.

I think we don't need your services

anymore for whatever

reason, et cetera, et cetera.

I was really bummed out by that.

Obviously I'm not bummed that I skipped

out from an owner that wasn't my

favorite, but the guys were cool.

It was cool working there.

(Sighs)

You had a job you loved

and a girlfriend of three and a half

years cheated on you.

I wonder

did the cheating just happen?

Did it happen a long time ago?

You're finding out about it.

If you lose your job, you lose your girl.

That's like everything.

I'm assuming this is a guy talking.

They don't dox themselves, but I'm

assuming based on how they're talking, it

seems like it's a guy.

You feel so broken.

I just need someone to

say it's gonna be okay.

Well, I can do that

last part for you, easy.

It's going to be okay.

It is absolutely going to be okay.

It is hurting now.

It is absolutely hurting

and it is going to be okay.

And it's gonna be better than okay.

You don't see it yet.

You can't because you're in the fields.

When the human brain is doing its thing,

which is it's feeling all the threats and

the stuff and it's having

that emotional hijacking.

You can't sense it.

Even if I tell you it's gonna get better,

you probably won't believe me, but I'm

telling you the truth.

It will literally be okay.

You'll find another job.

You will recalibrate expectations for the

next partner you look to seek to be with.

I know you put plans

into marrying this person.

And I mean this in the kindest way

possible out of respect to you.

But also I hope you

take solidarity in this.

You are not the first person

I've heard this story from.

And they've turned out pretty damn well.

Got some comments here.

First comment, it's gonna be okay.

You still have you and

that's all that matters.

You will find a new

job and a new girlfriend.

Someone responds to that.

This is cliche as fuck.

When doors close, it is to allow for new

and better ones to open.

Even if it doesn't feel this way now, the

best is yet to come.

A girlfriend that is actually solid for

you and you'll get

another job, you will be okay.

Another person comments,

you will literally be fine.

Millions of men before you

have survived heartbreak.

And so will you, you will 100% be okay.

Here's another comment.

I'm not going to lie.

No one is coming to save us.

We must be tough on ourselves if no one

else is and break through the walls that

are preventing our betterment.

It's tough and you can do this.

Please remember and

take power within yourself.

You can do this.

I like the sentiment, but I'm not vibing.

I'm not

vibing my friend.

We must be tough on ourselves.

No, you don't.

Gotta be gentle.

Trust me, I've been the tough guy and

I've been the not so tough guy.

It's a whole thing.

Don't do it.

Okay,

someone's got a big comment here.

It's gonna be okay.

The universe is telling you something in

a language hard to interpret.

Ooh, I like that.

That's nice.

This woman was not the one meant for you.

Concentrate now on

bettering your job situation.

It is your first priority.

You think I'm telling you bogus stuff?

I got dumped by a boyfriend of three

years with whom I

thought I would build a life.

He brutally told me he

wasn't finished playing yet.

And so it happened that this coincided

with us having half emptied my savings

account for the kinds

of fun he preferred.

And I started expressing some caution as

I was still at uni and needed the money.

Well, he heroically paid me back about 1

20th of the missing capital.

So yeah, that was not the

brightest day of my life.

But guess what?

I went out to a bureau and got hired on

for helping out a disabled old man

several times a week.

This man had a son who was still single

due to his business and family

obligations not

leaving him any time to play.

And I had a smashing good marriage with

that guy which lasted 45 years.

Whoa, until the universe took him away

from me again but left me with three

great people in my life

which we had raised together.

Oh,

obey the universe, go with the flow.

Listen to what it tells

you and act in accordance.

Wishing you all the best.

There is light at the

end of every tunnel.

That comment,

chef's kiss.

The OP says, you are a very kind person.

Thank you for your insight

and I'm sorry for your loss.

Mm,

mm, yeah, mm.

This last comment I wanna talk about,

you've got a clean slate.

I remember feeling sorry for myself and I

was leaving my abusive husband and whole

life behind, moved countries.

I felt like I had

nothing and it was true.

But my friends were jealous.

I was like, damn, I guess a clean slate

isn't so bad after all.

Bravo, bravo.

Well, you only posted

this five hours ago.

You've already got

plenty of people giving you.

Kudos, it's gonna be okay.

And I'm here to tell you,

it will in fact be okay.

All right, and here's another Reddit

story once again from r slash life.

This one's kind of more asking a question

and I've just only read the topic

sentence and I'm curious about this one.

People who lived before cell phones, was

life actually better?

I got thoughts about this one.

I got thoughts about this one.

All right, the blurb says, for people who

remember life before cell phones and

smartphones became a normal part of

everyday life, what was it really like?

Do you think life was better, easier and

less stressful back then?

Or do you think modern technology has

genuinely made life better?

What are some things you miss about life

before cell phones and what's something

about today's world that you absolutely

wouldn't wanna give up?

If you could choose to live in either the

pre-cell phone era or today,

which would you pick and why?

Oh man,

I remember not having a cell phone.

I remember it very well.

I remember having to, if you wanted to

make a phone call, phone home, you had to

go to a pay phone or toll booth,

put a coin in, pay the 50 cents or

whatever to call someone.

Or do 1-800-collect, we all did

1-800-collect every occasion.

I remember having to do that quite often

when my mother or father needed to hear

from me at a certain cadence at a certain

time when I was out and about.

Was life easier?

No, it's harder.

Imagine not having GPS.

Imagine not being able to contact someone

that you were meeting up with if they

weren't showing up late or whatever.

You just waited until they showed up.

If they were gonna be a few minutes late,

then you just kept waiting.

There's simplicity,

but it was still hard.

And again, not having that direct contact

anyone knowing where someone was, huge,

massive, it was a problem.

When smartphones were, when phones were

starting to come into vogue, you had this

thing called minutes.

That's right, you had to pay for minutes

and pay for how many texts you could send

and all that other nonsense.

Stuff that's free now, it

should have always been free.

They just, they nickeled and

dimed you while they could.

Was better, easier,

less stressful back then?

I think this OP is coming from a place of

trying to goad people to

be romantic about this era.

I'll indulge you though.

This isn't an original idea.

You can actually, you can probably pick

this from the good comedian Pete Holmes.

But there was a time before cell phones

when we did not know things

and it was okay not to know things.

You wonder a question to yourself and go,

(Keyboard Clicking)

What's the capital of Alaska?

You'd wonder that.

And one of your

friends would probably know,

But if they didn't, we would just be

like, I don't really know, I don't know.

And you'd ask the person next to you,

you'd ask a stranger maybe, or,

just as valuable.

You would bask in the

not knowing of the thing.

You would just enjoy not knowing until

you went home and looked it up or you

asked your parents or you looked at the

library, you asked an adult or

you had to take an extra step.

There was a level of obfuscation to get

to the knowledge that you had.

And so you had to be comfortable not

knowing something for a while.

And then because there was a big gap

between you not knowing, you having the

question, the thought, not knowing it,

and then the gap between you knowing it,

when you finally know it, you're

like, oh, yeah, of course.

There's a big Eureka moment.

Those are minimized almost to nil at this

point because we have a phone.

You wanna know the capital of Alaska?

Just look it up.

We're now at an era where I talk to

younger people and oftentimes

they'd realize it is look-up-able, it is

searchable, so they don't

even ask the question anymore.

Why would you even ask that question?

I can just look it up.

You would only need to know the answer to

that question if you're filling out some

kind of form on a test,

a form on something online.

Then you'd look it up.

Or

today, chat GPT it.

(Mouse Clicks)

And what'd you know?

It's Juneau.

Juneau is the capital of Alaska.

So there it was, there

was a little bit of time

And then I looked

into it and there you go.

It's right there.

And then I can feel a little bit of a

tingle in my brain going, oh,

oh.

People were wrong more

often, as I just demonstrated.

You'd be wrong about something and you'd

argue about who was wrong and you'd plead

your case a little bit, but eventually

you'd relent when you found out what the

real information was.

What's the real answer to this?

I missed that.

That was really cool.

When we have infinite access to

something, it doesn't make

us smarter in many cases.

It can.

But our brain will take the path of least

resistance and start making decisions

that we're not gonna look things up when

we could, et cetera,

et cetera, et cetera.

So here's the thing though.

This device called a phone,

supercomputer, whatever you

wanna call it, it's amazing.

I have GPS, I have Google, I have apps I

can download right there and then.

I have, I can call and text,

I can FaceTime people.

I am more connected to people than I ever

have been and it makes

life easier in a lot of ways.

It is true that the world has become more

obfuscated in lieu of

this, like fuck QR codes, man.

Like,

dude, I'll use a QR code and like we did

QR codes back in the pandemic because I

guess not spreading germs or whatever,

but a lot of restaurants and places still

demand you use QR

codes now, which is insane.

Just give me a paper menu,

just give me a paper ticket.

Obviously I wanna save the planet and not

kill trees, but I mean, come on,

come on.

I think we're at a swing now where we're

gonna start learning all the ways in

which we can improve the use of the phone

in a place that

retains our mental health.

I think we're on that

upswing coming that way.

But we've been in a pretty

bad downswing for a while.

So

was life better?

I'm certainly romantic for it.

There are pieces of that life that are

better that I like quite a bit,

but on the whole, if

you could choose to live in a life,

either pre-cell phone or

today, I'd pick today every time.

We're always better off.

No matter how bad things get, we're

always better off with newer technology

because I have access

to both old and new.

Whereas before I didn't

have access to the new.

That's my hot take.

Got some conversations here.

Post says, I was born 83, I'd go back to

the day it was, I'd go back to

the day it was in a heartbeat.

Life was simple back then.

Life was simple back then.

Less noise, but one thing I like about

today is if you have a problem, it's so

nice to connect with people worldwide who

are going through the same thing.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Like Reddit, I can just go, here you go.

Life was simple back then.

That phrasing, I don't like it.

Every generation feels that way.

Life was simple back then.

It was simple for two reasons.

One, the world is always increasingly get

more complicated as we keep going on

throughout all of existence.

But two, you were a kid.

You were young and when

you're young, life is simpler.

So that's a bad argument there.

To connect to people, I mean, I will say

we had internet well before cell phones.

So you could connect to people worldwide.

It's just we were all in our computers

and our desks or laptops,

not literally on our phones.

That being said,

traveling is really nice.

Traveling with a phone is

great, taking photos and

FaceTiming people from traveling

telecommunicating that way, that's nice.

I can't deny that for

sure, for sure, for sure.

This other person says, I would also go

back in a heartbeat.

Born 85, life was simpler.

Here we go again.

We had a family desktop in

95 that was common back then.

I think life was definitely simple.

There's an epidemic where creativity has

disappeared because nobody can be bored.

That's true.

That's another element to

what I was talking about.

No one likes being bored.

They're incapable of being bored now.

It is healthy to

sometimes be bored, they say.

Absolutely agree.

Let me see, I could go outside as a

teenager and not talk to anyone or be

bothered by anyone for literally hours.

Nobody freaked out if

they hadn't heard from me.

It was just normal.

You would go to a friend's house and

knock on their door and say

hello, that was just normal.

Unscheduled visits just

happen, obviously not at 1 a.m.

I would still live

pre-cell phone era if I could.

Unfortunately, isn't an option anymore.

I've mentioned this on other threads, but

if there is a day or period where you

don't need a phone or throw it on charge

and just go outside with a book and don't

come back for a few hours

minimum, that's what it was like.

You can mimic that time now.

So again, it was very common just to

knock on a friend's house,

hey, is Jimmy able to play?

And the parents be like, yeah, sure.

Now it's like, don't you

ever knock on the house.

You must call her text

first, let them know, et cetera.

That's a kind of cultural social normal

thing that's changed.

It's true that if you were gone for a

couple hours, no one freaked

out except probably your mom.

I know my mom did.

My mom was always concerned about me.

She would be brave for me, but she,

it was clear that she would be concerned

if I was gone for long periods of time.

Yeah.

A lot of these

comments are the same thing.

They'd go back, they'd go back.

But yeah, the boredom thing is huge.

Like when you have this thing that gives

you endless entertainment at all times

and it's connected to the

internet and it feels like

you can just look at it forever and just

always gonna make new stuff for you

because of how

connected it is to everything.

Yeah, boredom, the skill of boredom, the

skill of embracing

boredom just goes away.

I am so lucky and I call it

lucky, I call it fortunate

that I still enjoy being bored and I

actively try to add pieces

of my day that are boring.

Really just like staring at a wall, kind

of doing nothing, getting

lost in my own thoughts, boring.

And I think if I'd grown up any younger

or if I had a cell phone younger in my

life, I would not

have had that experience.

So

as far as the era and time goes, I think

this is the best one.

I'm lucky though that I have that general

paradigm in my brain and

how I think about things.

So

good question, good comment.

Moving on.

last Reddit story, I don't even know if

it's a story, it's just

someone posting something.

That's the thing about Reddit, you never

know what you're gonna get.

Like I said, I'm not on Reddit very

often, I'm only on Reddit

for these episodes here.

The title here is seven hours ago, I

finally quit my job after six years of

hating every morning.

I'm

that,

that sounds like that feels really good.

Let's see, I handed in my

notice today, no backup plan.

Okay, just savings and a feeling that I

couldn't do one more day of that place.

Been there since I was

22, so you're 28 now, okay.

And I never once woke up excited.

People keep asking what's next and I

honestly don't know, but for the first

time in years, I feel light.

Sleeping is easier already,

scared, but sure.

Wait, sleeping is easier, wait.

You handed in your notice

today, so did you take a nap?

Or did you already go to sleep?

I'm confused.

Hmm, okay.

Well, hey, good for you, scared for sure.

If you got enough in savings, yeah.

I don't wanna kill your parade,

but that feeling that you have is the

intense feeling of the

pressure being lifted off of you.

It's a phenomenal feeling

and I'm glad you have it.

That is incredibly temporary.

And then there's other things

that come through in the end.

Now, at 28 years old, you're young

enough, I think you can

do a lot with your life.

You should be fine.

Yes, the job market sucks right now, but

I think you'll be fine.

And by fine, I mean, you're gonna work

your ass off and be kickin' butt, but at

least maybe you'll put yourself in a

position where you're doing something you

love a little bit more than

what you were doing before.

Again, there's not a lot of detail here.

I don't know what the job was, I don't

know what made the job so horrible.

I'm worried, again, reading into nothing

probably, but I've seen quite a few

people on the younger side of things

who hate a certain thing and

are so happy to be done with it,

only to find that what they hated had

nothing to do with the job or had nothing

to do with the thing that

they had placed their hate on.

It's a very common thing.

I hope that's not your case.

I hope that

it really was the job this whole time.

And for six years, that's gotta suck.

Screw that noise, I'm glad you're out.

Couple comments, hope and wish you figure

something out soon, but first, enjoy this

feeling of freedom for which you have

made this bold move.

Yep, hope it works out well.

I did a very similar a few

years ago, someone else says.

No backup plan, scary, but staying would

have given you a

heart attack by 35, true.

Now you just have a

panic attack at 28, progress.

Okay, Reddit.

Mm,

mm, one person says, I'm a step behind

you currently on a trip trying to use

this time to make up my mind.

I'm sleeping so good on the trip while

regular days it's

fucked up due to stress.

I've almost made up my mind.

I need to break the golden handcuffs

which I am so afraid of breaking.

I made a same choice a few years back

while committing to marry my wife.

Turned out a great decision, okay.

The feeling is same for this

one, scary, but feels right.

With no backup option.

That's weird to describe marrying your

wife in the same context as this.

Because one, it's like,

you have to have a job.

Most people do to get money on the roof,

to build a roof over their head and have

food and all that stuff.

You didn't have to marry your wife.

But I get the sentiment.

Sentiment being, it was scary, you

weren't sure, but it was 100% right.

Don't tell your wife that though.

Your wife wants to know it was a sure

thing the whole time, right?

Hmm.

I like this one comment.

I rarely had the next step

when I decided it was time.

Be well, fellow Redditor.

Someone else says, be proud.

It takes real courage to do what you did.

Throwing ourselves into the unknown as

part of the big adventure.

I believe you'll be very

glad you made this decision.

At least someday.

Yeah, nice, nice.

Be well indeed.

I quit a job once, no backup plan.

One time, just once.

I won't get into the details right now

about it because it's a little spicy.

It's a little whatever, but

it was hard.

It was scary.

It was about seven months of hell of

picking up any job that I could.

Didn't matter what it was, just to get

some kind of cashflow coming in while I

got my other real job on the ground.

It was demoralizing.

I barely got any sleep.

I was working three

part-time jobs at once

to make up for it.

But as hellish as that was, that was

better, a better situation than having

stayed at the place that I was in.

And I knew I made the right call, even

though I was getting beat up for it.

So don't let anyone be up about that.

So

good for you.

Congrats.

I wish you the best.

(Keyboard Clacking)

So before I was talking

about simplicity, right?

Talking about our desire and our need to

obfuscate our victories and our

achievements in our recreational hobbies.

And instead of just being honest with

ourselves and really just saying, hey,

look, I like the simple things in life.

And my question to all of us is still on

that pillar of, do we think we stop

ourselves short of enjoying

those things in life in which our

perceived is simple, easy, or quaint as a

disregard or a regard for our ego?

And what got me thinking about this

wasn't just video games,

other things too.

But in the video game space, I came

across or kind of stumbled across a video

game series that I'm sure all

of you have heard of before.

Bubble Bobble, you

know Bubble Bobble, right?

Bubble Bobble,

this little dinosaur game with Bub and

Bob who are blowing bubbles at enemies

and then stepping on those enemies or

bumping into them and

they turn into fruit.

And you got a hundred levels to go

through and that's the game.

Each level is a little

bit different, right?

It's a game that I wanna sink more time

into because its simplicity belies

something charming

and beautiful about it.

And as I was digging into research about

this particular game, I kind of stumbled

across information about

Bubble Bobble's original creator,

Fukio Mitsuchi or

Mitsuchi also known as MTJ

passed away in 2008 at the age of 48

sadly, December 11th.

But he's a renowned game

developer and designer.

He did Bubble Bobble, he did the

follow-up Rainbow Islands.

He's done some other games as well.

And then immediately went into

teaching and teaching

people how to make games.

And what's fascinating about this

individual was I was stumbling across

this particular interview of him on

YouTube that I actually can't, I think

came from like one of their, one of like

Tito's like legends

PS2 compilation discs.

So like a embedded interview here.

And Fukio talks about himself a little

bit and I think it's really fascinating.

I wanna just do a quick

little summary right here

So one of the first questions he's asked

is, what was your role at Tito and which

games were you responsible for?

He says his name is Fukio Mitsuchi.

In my games, I am known as MTJ.

At Tito, I was responsible for game

design as well as character design.

My past work includes Bubble Bobble,

Rainbow Islands, Super Dead Heat, Haley's

Comet, Volified and Civilian.

Next question, what is your strongest

memory of developing Rainbow Islands?

In typical sequels, creators tend to

employ the same gameplay

with the same characters.

But I was determined to create a totally

different game from day one.

To make this happen, I had to come up

with a fresh idea,

which was painful at times.

The reason I chose to do this because I

felt falling into a rut is

the worst thing you can do.

are you doing now?

The interviewer asks.

These days, I've been solely working on

training game developers.

So rather than myself creating a new

title, I look forward to my students to

creating many games.

Does it mean you have done enough as a

designer, the question asks?

Yes, this has a lot to do with my life-fulfilling Yes, this has a lot to do

with my life philosophy.

There are limited things you can do by

yourself in a lifetime.

So I would like to be a person who plant

trees rather than being a tree.

I find that really fascinating in our

discussion about simplicity because

here's an individual who created one of

the most seminal video games

of all time, Bubble Bobble.

And by the way, if you don't know, Bubble

Bobble had several sequels, but more

importantly, it had a bunch of spin-offs.

One of my favorites being Puzzle Bobble,

or Bust-A-Move as it's

known, a nice little puzzle,

bubble popping game of sorts.

And here's the individual who, once he

kind of did what he thought was his best

work or made his mark in his industry,

he's now focusing on the next generation.

He believes in sunsetting his life and

not going any further.

Now, it's unfortunate that he ends up

passing away at the age of 48,

unfortunately, which is a very young

tenure when you think about it.

Yet there's something romantic about an

individual who is not shooting for the

stars, an individual who is

content

with just a little bit of something.

It's funny, he has this dichotomy of not

wanting to settle for falling into a rut

and doing the same

thing over and over again.

You must keep reinventing yourself.

At a certain point, there has to be a

time when it's done and you have to

sunset into that life,

according to his philosophy.

Now, you could choose to read this and

say, well, he only had a couple of hits.

So after that point, he just decided to

quit while he was ahead.

Okay, sure, fair enough, point extra.

Yeah, that's not how

I'm reading the situation.

Not really.

that I'm reading this situation, if

you're reading the

same situation that I am,

I think it's a very wise thing to not

take more than what you

need to take from life.

Enjoy what you have.

Feel free to ask for more things, but

know when enough is enough.

And if I can kind of wrap things up of

all the things I've

been thinking about lately,

I'm so fortunate that I was taught the

lesson early on of

knowing when enough is enough.

What is enough?

How much money in your

bank account is enough?

What does success look like for you?

You didn't know how to

get there and that's fine.

You don't have to

know how to get anywhere.

But along the way, you knew

what you're leading towards.

And once you've

achieved it, okay, you're good.

What's the next journey for you?

Instead, I'm wrought with individuals

across all industries, youths and olds

alike, which is you achieve the thing,

and now there must be a new thing you

must achieve instead of just sun setting,

recalibrating, finding

out what you wanna do next.

It's always what's next, what's next,

what's next, what's next, keep growing,

keep growing, keep growing.

And I hate to be that guy,

but there's no such

thing as infinite growth.

It's true, there really isn't.

It is true that our idea of what our

ceiling is is way lower than

the actual real ceiling is.

That is true, that is really true.

But if we actually go to our umpteenth

optimal levels, there are caps,

biomechanical and otherwise.

And then there's the question of being

fulfilled while you do it along the way.

Going back to what I was talking about

before about simplicity,

I've played some really

complicated video games.

I've had some pretty, I don't know if you

call them achievements, but some pretty

cool achievements in my day.

I've done pretty well in

fighting game tournaments.

I

have done a couple of speed runs for some

video games, never a world record, but

close to a world record

for a couple of video games.

Batman on the NES, you

know what I'm talking about.

I've achieved things.

All the while I'm asking

myself, what am I doing this for?

And I realized that I was just doing it

because I said, well, I'm suffering now,

but later on I'll be happy.

And so I think about good

old MTJ, one of the great

game developers in the entire world who

created one of the

most iconic games ever.

Bubble, bubble.

He made that.

When I think about that, that individual

and his goals, and the fact that he was

okay with having a couple of good arcade

hits, he was good with

training the newest generation.

I see some similarities in myself and how

I focused the past, gosh, five, six years

now, training the

newest generation of leaders.

And I think we need more of that.

More people willing to

just say, this is enough.

I don't need more.

I've had enough, I've had my fill.

Now it's time to plant

seeds for the next generation.

And doesn't hearing that just make you

want to play Bubble, Bubble?

A game that has a hundred levels.

I think later versions had 200 or 300

levels, like, but certain amount of

levels and that's it, you're done.

Doesn't that just make you

want to play that game now?

I'm always amazed at the people that make

the games that I love so much.

I'm amazed at what

they're capable of doing.

I'm amazed at what strife they had to

battle through to be successful.

I'm amazed at the ones that decide, you

know what, I'm not gonna ride this money

train further than I need to.

So amen to that.

I'm gonna say for the

purposes of this week's episode, MTJ

is our zero doubt person of the week.

Thank you, MTJ for all that you've done.

I'm sorry for your early loss, but your

impact is immeasurable.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is our episode

of the week here at the

Counter Hit.

Thanks for wasting some

internet time with me.

I'm your host, Sam Kirk.

You can find the Counter Hit at all

places where podcasts

are played, video and not.

That includes Spotify, that includes

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Music, that includes

your favorite RSS feed.

Check us out at thecounterhit.com for

more deets on more future episodes.

I'll see you next week.

I'm your host, Sam Kirk.

Co-creator Daniel Pratly in the

background making sure the magic behind

all the curtain, proverbial and

otherwise, happens well.

And I'll see you all next time.

Cheers.

(Upbeat Music)