I have trouble going to see theatre productions, because it reminds me of the work I want to be doing. What I ought to be doing. I want to be on that stage or directing the action, not just watching. Watching is what other people do, what the normals do.
I often feel the same way about music, though to a somewhat lesser extent. Listening to great music too often reminds me of the music I’m not making, the songs I’m not writing or recording or performing. Experiences with the arts that ought to, by all other accounts, be sublime, are all too frequently for me of alienation and regret.
Shit, even listening to podcasts makes me feel like a slug.
The same can also be said for my experience of great writing, particularly novels, though I suppose a part of me. that I’m not cut out to be a fiction writer (I deeply hope this is not so), and am therefore not really failing any kind of personal expectation. Movies and TV rarely bring this kind of anxiety on, as they feel so out of reach as to be akin to wishing to be a professional basketball player as a 5-foot-5 sedentary dude in his 40s. A couple decades ago I harbored illusions of future movie stardom, but now I can watch Avengers: Endgame without that kind of psychological baggage.
And I think this might be why I’ve glommed onto video games at this rather unlikely period of my life. I’m by no means a “gamer,” but lately I’ve found my greatest moments of escape and enthrallment within games such as Breath of the Wild, Animal Crossing, Civilization, and Skyrim. And I suspect that this is in large part because of the fact that I know nothing about video game design, nothing about programming or software development, nor even anything about how computers work at all. As far as I’m concerned, they all run on magic.
That utter separation makes video games safe. While slashing with a sword, casting spells, or cultivating my ridiculous fake garden in gamespace, I feel no pangs of remorse for the code I’m not writing. Video games are a place, an experience, I can enter and totally surrender myself to without placing any guilt trip on myself for the video games I never made.
But of course, they do have a lot of voice actors in these games. Why haven’t I gotten a voice acting role in a video game? I’m a total failure.
Near-Earth Object 