Pinball isn't fun

Pinball isn't fun for me; it's an addiction. Why else would I join a weekly league and proceed to get my bells kicked each week? It's insane.

In my heart of hearts I need to move far, far away from Utah to a more idealogically congruent home--a mecca of art and music like San Francisco. So it was my plan last year to make it to The City by early 2018. What have I done in the 6 months since that plan? Only buy 6 more pinball machines--proving what an insipid addiction pinball really is for me. 

I can't make it to the Bay Area with 13 pinball machines in tow! Am I out of my mind? And why would I leave Utah, anyway? Seems like a pretty, great state... right?

If you've ever been victim to any mind-stealing ideology--one given to you from birth--you'll understand what I'm about to explain. I was born into a cult (of sorts). My parents felt like it was very, very important that I stay in this cult--forever. This they wanted more than anything; that I and my 3 siblings grow only to love the cult and to never stray from it once grown.

The plan was to move from the suburbs into a remote, hillbilly-esque area of rural Pennsylvania so we'd grow up with very little outside influence. The thinking was this would band us together tighter and we'd have little more than the cult as an influence on all us kids growing up.

A very real problem with such a setup is that growing up with such a bland, insipid influence in your life leaves you very empty inside as an individual. Nearly all experience until you're grown consists of events either directly planned by or approved of by the cult. Naturally this leads to a very narrow "band" of experience in one's life. My siblings and I went through this (I bore the brunt of it, being the oldest and moving to Pennsylvania at 8 and only returning to a city at 18). Consequently I grew up pretty bland, boring and helpless to change that... not even understanding what I'd missed by only consuming the cult's pure "white bread" culture.

Luckily, I got away from all that upbringing and painfully, slowly over the next TWO DECADES I was able to extricate myself from the cooked-brain thinking of this cult and have emerged. The problem is I'm super-ready to have some awesome life experiences, but I'm too old now. My eyes have started to fail me. I need reading glasses. My health is better than it's been in several years; but I'm an old dog now. Women don't look at me the same as they used to 25 years ago. I'm left at the mercy of the universe.

And there it is. Without cult-like thinking clouding my brain, I realize what must be obvious to the most thoughtful humans--we're all just bugs hurtling through space on a blue rock. What happens here doesn't really matter. So, what do we do? Might as well do something while here to pass the time. I'd prefer days of endless drugs and sex; but again... I'm an old guy. Pinball seems to fit. The problem is, as stated above, it's not fun. But I'm addicted to it. It's just something to do while we whiz through space on this watery asteroid.