A Little Self-Reflection

Someone asked me about my hobbies last week.  I was talking with someone of an older generation while I was at work.  He's not a co-worker, but someone I see frequently in a professional capacity.  We were talking about a project he was working on at home, and when he finished describing it, he politely asked me what type of hobbies I spend my spare time on.

I led off by saying that I'm a soccer fan.  I love to watch soccer and I enjoy playing in my indoor rec league.  After briefly talking about that, I found myself in an awkward situation.  The other hobby which I approach with any amount of passion these days is technology and video games, especially video games.  I love video games.  I love playing them and I love talking about them.  For some reason though, was afraid to admit it.

I don't understand why I feel this way.  I presume there are others that feel the same way that I do.  We're in a period when people who grew up with video games are entering the professional world and working with or under people who did not grow up with video games.  I don't generally have a problem talking about video games with people of a similar generation or people that I know like video games as well, but I think there's a fear on my part that there's an baseless judgments will be lumped into a stereotype based on my hobby. 

The truth is that the same thing happened in the last generation with comic books, and the generation before that with TV.  It's easy to see that from my perspective, and it's easy for me to see objectively that I've got nothing to be ashamed of.  There is plenty about the video game hobby to be proud of, and I actively try to avoid some of the more shameful aspects of the hobby (like internet flame wars).  I know it, but plenty of folks don't.  

This will end in one of three ways.  At some point, I may be comfortable enough and established enough as a professional that I won't have to care much about the opinions of others.  I may be around long enough to get to the point that the older generation retires and and the problem evolves out of existence like TV and comics before it.  The other option is that I have to hide in the shadows and wait for those moments when someone else I run into reveals him or herself as a gamer and I know that I can talk safely about the hobby with that person.  

It's entirely possible that all of these things will come to pass at some point.  As a post-script to my original story, I mentioned my video game hobby.  For my trouble, I was rewarded with a story from the person I was talking to about his long nights playing Goldeneye 64.  As gamers, we are becoming more and more the rule, not the exception.  Eventually, we may not feel any need to hide our hobby from the "adult" world.  The truth is, we don't NEED to and we SHOULDN'T feel like we need to.