So there I was...

I was alive.  That's about it.

I'm a gamer, you know, I'm adventurous, I love cool shit, I do awesome things.  But nope, I didn't.  I was just alive.  Living.  Hating it most of the time.

Then something happened.  I reached out for someone who I thought was awesome, who seemed to be in a bad way.  I reached out with a few soft gestures of kindness and warmth, helping to improve a day half a nation away, in a city I'd never seen, under a sun too bright to be believed.  I said things, I cracked jokes, I coaxed a smile, I arranged a laugh, and I helped.

It felt good.  You know?  Doing the right thing.  Helping someone out who needed it.  Felt really goddamn good to have someone appreciate me.

And life went on for a while.  Kept going downhill for me.

And then, one day, the hand came back, the other way.  And that felt amazing.

So instead of just existing, I did what any smart gamer does.  I picked up the dice, and I rolled.

You could say I got a critical success... but you'd be understating.

You'd be performing an almost criminal act on this amazing thing that's happened to my life.

I mean seriously, just check this shit out:

No, that's not Robert Baratheon on the left.  That's me.  When I didn't give a fuck about myself, and when I hated my life.  See all that shit hanging down from those pendulous breasts of mine?  Yeah, GONE MOTHERFUCKER...

All thanks to this:

That's my wife.  Ginger.  She's gorram amazing.

She walked up and found a wrecked out but reliable beast of a ride.  She picked me up, spun me about, polished me up, trimmed me down, and now I'm one fly ass motherfucker who no one can take the sky away from.

Life can take you for some pretty strange twists and turns.  I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this, we've all had those moments where our lives COMPLETELY change.  Some for the better, some for the worse.  Me, I rolled the crit of crits, and my life is never going to stop getting better.  She's amazing, and now, so am I.

So I'm sitting here tonight, and, like pretty much every day, I look over at her and I'm just blown away by how we're together now.  So much has changed.  We overcame a lot.

She's Texan.  I mean that's a huge hurdle right there, you know?  (Probably gonna get punched for that)
I'm a vegetarian.  I mean... what the fuck?  I'm a guy who would have snorted bacon grease if I could.
She's happy errday.  I'm happy errday.  These are both huge changes.
We go out, we do things, we see plays, we plan trips, we have INCREDIBLE friends who support us in every crazy venture we turn our eye towards.

And we're deliriously gorram happy together.

There are haters, always are, but fuck'm.  I suppose I'd hate too if I still dwelled in a mudshack and rolled in my own feces... uh, metaphorically, I guess... while two people perfectly suited for each other soar past unknown horizons, discovering new levels of the word joy and the concept of love every day.  Yeah, guess jealousy's a bitch.  I wouldn't know.

I won.

What am I trying to get at here?

There's change out there if you're willing to take the chance.  Reach out, take the chance, there are golden rings hidden in clouds.  There are coins spinning behind dull faced bricks.  There are power ups gallore available if you're just willing to jump, spin, wall-kick and do a special move to get at them.  You won't always win.  Not even close.  But if you have the right timing, the right attitude, a little luck, and a lot of style, life can't stop you from winning.  It won't have a prayer.

Sometimes people need a little bit of a kick to start reaching.  Sometimes you reach, and you reach, and you pull back a bloody stump, or a singed palm, or you grasp a foul tentacle of a netherthing.  The ONLY thing that can stop you for good is if you quit rolling the dice.

Don't ever stop rolling.  Don't you ever goddamn stop.  Life can ALWAYS be improved.  No matter how good it gets, or how bad it is, you can always go up.

There's a place called Rock Bottom.  It's not an actual place.  What it is is the place where you decide to make your own ground.  Where you take your branch from Ygg and you stab it in to the ground and you scream to the heavens that your Pattern begins here, and you start to walk it.  When you reach Rock Bottom, you can make your own reality.  You just have to be crazy, cool, and strong enough to do it.

So pick up those dice, toss them.  Pass the secret note to the GM in the sky.  Do whatever you goddamn have to do to make your life better.

Let go of your anger, your hatred, your jealousy, and all that bullshit that is weighing you down.  Stop looking at other people's lives and going "Damn, I wish I was them."

Take a long fucking look in the mirror and say "Fuck, they're gonna WISH they were me!"  And then go out and make that happen.