I admit that I am blessed in so many ways when it comes to my job. As much work as it really is, I can say that yes, I am paid to do the two things I absolutely love: write and play video games. One such perk I also get is the ability to attend E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the biggest video game trade show in the United States. This year marked my fifth year to go, and it’s the second year I’ve gone to cover a show for a site by myself. It’s a massive undertaking, one that even my hotel-mates pitied, and it requires a lot of smiling, lots of packed snacks, and a willingness to forego sleep.
I know I play different video games all day, but trust me when I say this is no vacation.
Before I left, several well-meaning friends told me to have fun on my vacation. I would laugh it off and say that it’s a work trip and really isn’t a vacation. Some said they understood, but many said something akin to, “But it’s about video games. How is that not a vacation?”
I get that. I see how it appears that I play games all day and have fun. I can’t lie; I do play a lot of games throughout the day and most of the time it is fun. However, I run from appointment to appointment every 30 minutes to one hour. For the last two years, I’ve had no lunch break; I had appointments from doors open to doors close. On Tuesday, that’s 6 hours, 8 hours on Wednesday, and 7 hours on Thursday. That’s a lot of video games to try out and a lot of presentations to hear. Then when I’m finished running around from booth to booth, smiling, shaking hands, taking notes, asking lots of questions, I have to drag myself back to the hotel and figure out how quickly I can eat dinner so I can work. I may have played a lot of games that day, which can be fun if I enjoyed most of them (I do play stuff I absolutely hate), but then I have to write about every single one.
The older I’ve gotten, the harder it has become for me to stay up until 3 a.m. writing and wake up again at 6 a.m. to start it all over again the next day. So I now pick and choose the most important games I saw that day, write about them, and try to go to sleep by 1 a.m. The rest I save for when I return home. This year, I wrote 14 articles before I left Los Angeles. I wrote 5 more when I returned. It’s no wonder con flu caught up with me.
I’m not saying any of this to get sympathy. I only want to point out that attending E3 is really anything but a vacation.
The only time it feels like a vacation is when I get to see and hang out with my other journalist friends of whom I only see once a year. We had some great dinners together and laughed a lot. I was very sad to say good-bye to all of them one more time for another year.
I’m going to San Diego Comic Con next week, also for work, but this one is far closer to a vacation. I won’t have appointments all day long, I’ll have time to play around on the showroom floor, and I have some awesome, fangirl-squeal worthy interviews lining up. I’ll still have to write at night, but it will be about 2-3 articles a day instead of 8-9. Plus at SDCC, there is more than just video games. This one is a little vacation I can claim on taxes.
Now the vacation I am looking forward to that will really honestly and truly be a vacation? Our family is going to the beach for a week with my sister’s family and my parents. THAT’s a vacation.
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