Who am I, and What's My type? - Part 1
I’m writing on my new blog every day for thirty days straight. This is the fifteenth one.I’m halfway. Can’t stop now – too much momentum to slow down! See you in fifteen more days!
I vividly remember my high school sophomore photos. The first day back at school was photo day. I felt great, but the camera thought otherwise. When I got my pictures back, I wasn’t impressed, but when I showed them to my Mom, she audibly gasped. SHE AUDIBLY GASPED. MY OWN MOM. I love her. She immediately said, “we’ll have you do some retakes.”
It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school. It was the summer of Guild Wars. An online video game. I spent days where I would go immediately from my bed to the computer and stay there until I went back to bed. The only things that could tear me from the computer were the bathroom and the refrigerator. Days stacked on top each other. And I was content. I was content, and thinking back to that summer, I want to do it all over again. I still want to wake up and play video games every day, all day.
But my high school sophomore photos were a wakeup call. The only way to describe my photos is nightmarish. Gollum-esque. My skin was pale, my eyes were dazed, my skin was blemished, and my poor weak shoulders were hunched. I looked like a meth addict, but I was a video game addict - and don’t think it’s too far of a comparison: from a book I’m currently reading called The Willpower Instinct, “one study found that playing a video game led to dopamine increases equivalent to amphetamine use – and it’s this dopamine rush that makes both so addictive.” I have no problem comparing video game addiction to drug addiction. Some might argue that drug addiction leads a man down a darker path that can lead to death. What’s death other than losing life? I lost my 15-year old summer. Losing that summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school still hurts my heart. I could have been a kid. Outside. Exploring life and love and adventure! But I was exploring Tyria instead.
I know that I’m probably too harsh on myself, but video games take years from people. Knowing the man I want to be, I know that I have to stay far away from the Gollum I was back in 2004. I still play the occasional game, and I know I’ve tempered my addiction. I had the thought one day while playing Guild Wars,
“I don’t want to level my character up, I want to level myself up.”
Last month, I stood in front of a PS4 in a Best Buy for a half hour. It was playing tug of war with my soul. It was going to win. In a moment of clarity, I called a close friend and had him talk me off the ledge. He reminded me of all the things I want to accomplish as an actor, and how buying a PS4 could lead me down a very opposite path. He’s the best.
There are a lot of things I want to be as a man, not necessarily as an actor, but as a human being. I know that I am the man I am today because of the video games I used to play. I don’t discard any of that. I am happy with who I am today. But I’m often confused. Who really am I? I know I’m not that boy from the high school photos.
It’s a hard thing for an actor to dissect. Actors try to define their “type” - that quality that makes us suited for certain types of roles over others. For example, Matthew McConaughey has a wildly different type than Seth Rogen. We need to understand our “type” so that we can work for roles that we can naturally knock out of the park.Over the next several days, I’m going to write more about my type and what I've discovered about it. The process is never easy, but it’s always interesting. Stay tuned.