A Gamer in Uniform
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The Dice Monkey and Capuchin Captions.
Being a US Navy Photojournalist and being a Gamer presents a unique set of challenges.
First of all, I’m on a ship, and we’re currently in six-section duty. That means that every six days, I’m required to stay onboard the ship from 7:30 in the morning, until usually 4 P.M. the next day. Now this in itself is difficult enough, losing an entire day every week, but everyone in my gaming group is also from my ship, and each one is in a different duty section. I’m in duty section 6, one of my players is in duty section 5, another in duty section 1, and one guy who’s interested in playing is duty section 3. On duty section 4 days, I watch one of my co-worker’s kids while she has duty. This really only leaves one day a week everyone would be able to play: duty section 2 days. However, that shifts the schedule throughout the week, and when you have to wake up at 5, you don’t want to play too late into the evening. Our son goes down at 7:30 or so, and requires our full attention before that, so that really only leaves 2 hours for us to play.
Another issue that arises is that the Navy, like all the other armed services is generally a very “macho” environment, which doesn’t allow for those who have different interests than others. If you aren’t spending your day talking about football or professional wrestling, then you’re out of the loop. Also, you can get a lot of crap from everyone for talking with one of your buddies at work about D&D.
How about all of you? What types of jobs do you all have? Do you have any trouble being able to separate your life from your work?
Wow, that sounds crazy!
I’m a housewife. I’m this older woman into amazingly geeky things – and I’m Suzy Homemaker
I don’t get trouble but alot of people, both gamers and non, look at me weird.
I work in Healthcare on the cancer unit of the local hospital – while my co-workers don’t understand my interest in games and other geeky stuff – they do respect me enough to know that it’s my own “escape” from the day to day stuff we deal with. Though my interests in comics and superheroes has made for some very interesting conversations!
[...] my last blog about the subject, I told you about the inherent problems in being both a gamer and a member of the armed [...]
Just Kidding. I was in the navy as well but I was in a land based squad and there was no gaming when out on detachment. Not much time for anything but work. I ended up mess cranking a couple of the times and would usually end up with 16-18 hour days. Only thing I got to enjoy was about 13 seconds of hot water and sleep (until a plane landed, being that the quarters were close to the deck). Aww, poor me.