Sometimes Life Takes You in New Directions–I’m Now on the Extra Life Houston Committee

Clockwise from dude in the blue shirt: Extra Life Houston Chairman Allen Ragasa, the back of PR Committee Member Ryan Cayari

Extra Life: My New Project

My life has recently taken a huge turn for the awesome. About a year ago, I was approached by a friend who was working with a gamers’ charity going by the moniker Extra Life. Started in Houston by Sarcastic Gamer, the group originally sought to aid juvenile cancer research.

Well, guess what: pretty much everyone agrees that being a sick kid sucks. So after the successes of Extra Life in 2008 and 2009, the Children’s Miracle Network decided that tapping into the gamer market might be a slick way to raise money, especially since no other organization had thought to create a philanthropic 24-hour gaming marathon by having people sponsor gamers by the hour–much like runners and bikers raise cash by the kilometer or mile.

A Crash Course in Charity Fundraising and PR

A little over a month since my first meeting, and blammo! I’m waist-deep in committee whatnots. I’m co-running the PR sub-committee with my new friend Ryan, and we’re wading through unknown territory. Thanks to the time I spent working with the University of Houston in the Development and University Advancement wings, though, I’ve got an inkling of where Extra Life needs to go.

Changes on Things I Learned from Video Games

So what kind of awesome stuff can you expect to read about now?

• Gamers giving back to kids by raising money for the Children’s Miracle Network
• Awesome events throughout the Houston area, and maybe beyond that
• My new friends at Space City Nerd, without whom many of these incredible events couldn’t happen
• The trials and tribulations of being the fledgling community manager for the Extra Life Facebook page as well as @ExtraLifeHOU
• And, of course, how video games shape my world view

My posts will be sporadic. It’s 8:58 p.m. on June 7, 2010, and this is seriously the first spare moment I’ve had in weeks. This charity committee stuff is enough to make your head spin, but Extra Life is for a really good cause.

Gamers helping kids.

And Mom said my time playing everything went to waste.

(P.S. If you couldn’t tell, I’ve learned a metric tonne of HTML since I’ve been away, too. Take that, worthless liberal arts degree!)

Thursday AFK: There’s No Such Thing as Too Many 1Ups

My father died just after 2:00 A.M. yesterday.  I’m not thrilled, but there’s nothing I can do to change it.  I wish this wasn’t the case, but in life, you really only get one play through.  Over the past eight months, as I watched my father deteriorate, this fact slowly dawned on me and led me to apply to start taking my desire to work in the gaming industry more seriously.  Maybe in a video game I could tolerate being a secretary for the rest of my life, but out here in reality, I want more.  Despite being confined to a hospital bed, Dad supported my attempts to gain entry into the world of gaming journalism.  It meant that I would be moving halfway across the country to San Francisco, but he felt that I was capable of it and that I needed to live, not put my life on hold for him.  (Truthfully, though, I’m kind of glad that the jobs I applied to didn’t pan out. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had these last few months with him.)

Okay, so this doesn’t really correlate to gaming.  Not directly, anyways.  What I know is this: Since I found out a few months ago that Dad was terminal, I’ve been stingy with my extra lives and respawns, and this has improved my play.  I’m less reckless, more inclined to preempt attacks, and actually finishing games that I had walked away from.  I can’t explain this change, and I don’t think I want to dwell on it for long.  I hope this lasts.

Damn.  Trying to keep up with this project is difficult when I’m still really depressed.  Still, like I said, Dad didn’t want me to put my life on hold.  So I won’t.