Welcome to one of my favorite posts that I write here at BigNerdGaming.
I’m actually not very big on my birthday. I’m someone who prefers to stay mostly under the radar on this day, but it can also be hard to consistently come up with fun topics for the blog, and this has become a very easy go-to for me each year, despite my mild discomfort with highlighting that it’s my “big day.”
But also, I’ve come to enjoy this post as a way for me to truly reflect on my life. Birthdays and a new year are probably the easiest markers to decide what changes you want to make in life. But I think it’s important to recognize in what ways you have grown as well. When I looked back on my past two iterations of this post, I saw multiple lessons that I believe I have firmly been committed to. Recognizing your own growth is a good way to maintain it.
In the past five years, I can safely say that I have grown a lot thanks to my journey into fatherhood. Truly living your life for someone else who needs you is inevitably going to shift the way you view both yourself and others. That level of responsibility seeps into everything you do.
I feel like being a parent has made me a better writer, a better person, and even a better employee at work. Being a parent has allowed me to compartmentalize things better and have a clearer understanding of what is important and what is not. It has made it easier for me to let go of my stress when I walk out of work. And as a manager, dealing with chaos at home has made me better at planning, prioritizing, and being disciplined.
In the past 4.5 years, I reached heights that I never thought I could at my job. After a decade of working toward it, I was finally promoted to run the store that I always wanted. Unfortunately, things went downhill with my company soon after that. After working so hard to reach my goal, it all crumbled around me within months. After a bankruptcy and new ownership, I was ready to continue on and hope that things would get better. Sadly, after about a year and a half, it was clear to me that things were never going to improve. For the first time in 12 years, I actually committed to job hunting, and I found my new career, which I’ve been in for four months.
Obviously, it’s been an interesting year for me. It feels a bit off to write all of that and now pivot to talk about what I learned from video games. But it’s honestly spooky how many things I can look at in the past year that have helped me in small ways toward my new journey. In my view, almost anything you do in life should be something you learn from. Whether it’s experiencing art, playing a sport, or having a conversation, there are always lessons you can take away from everything, and I don’t view video games any differently. Admittedly, many of these lessons are ones I have learned from dealing with a new job, but I’m thankful to video games for helping solidify many of them. Here are three things I learned from video games, life, and my new job this past year.
You Can Accomplish More Than You Believe
I’ve played most of the major Soulslike games over the years. I have touched pretty much every FromSoft game in particular, and I have enjoyed all of them… until I get to a certain point. For whatever reason, there was always one boss that stymied me in these games, and rather than pressing on, I would decide that it was no longer worth it and stop.
In 2022, I picked up Elden Ring. My hope was that the open world format would help push me to the end, and it would be my first ever Soulslike completion. After getting pretty damn far (I got through the Fire Giant), I finally hit a wall and quit. After that, I decided that I was likely never going to beat a Soulslike. I just didn’t have it in me.
I know it’s a generic lesson, but I think that Soulslikes are a great example of how sometimes, overcoming a challenge isn’t necessarily just about your skill level. Oftentimes, your patience and discipline are just as important.
It never made any sense that I couldn’t beat a Soulslike. I play a large chunk of video games on hard mode. I had already made it pretty far in several Soulslikes, and I enjoyed playing them.
In the end, I just needed one game that I truly loved to force me to learn that patience, and that game was Hollow Knight: Silksong. I had tons of frustrations with how that game was designed, but the combat and platforming were truly on another level. I managed to beat Act 2 with no health upgrades (this was out of pure laziness and a lack of patience with exploration), and it was a huge confidence booster for me.
I carried that same confidence into Nioh 3, which I quickly fell in love with. That game became my first ever 3D Soulslike completion. I haven’t suddenly become better at these games, but I now have a deeper understanding of what they take mentally to overcome.
This lesson has served me well in my new job. After spending twelve years in one place, it has been a true challenge to take on something new. I spent something like 8 years feeling like I could handle literally any situation put in front of me, and now I am constantly trying to figure out new things. It’s an uncomfortable feeling.
But also, I did this once before. It’s been a long time, but when I first joined my last company, I had no real knowledge or experience to go off of. I was constantly pushed into situations that I wasn’t ready for, and yet, I still managed to get promoted something like five times if you include lateral moves to bigger stores. There are many things that keep me going every day, but the knowledge that I did this before, even if it was over a decade ago, is one thing that is a constant reassurance for me.
Similarly, whenever I pick up a new Soulslike game in the next year or so, I will now know that I can cling to those past successes as a marker for what I can accomplish. The beautiful thing about pushing forward and doing something hard is that it can never be taken away from you. If you did it once, you can almost certainly do it again.
Sometimes, We Have To Take a Chance
While I pride myself on being the type of gamer that is willing to play damn near anything, I certainly have some limits. There are a few genres that don’t always fully click with me. Also, with how many great games are out there, it can be tougher than ever to really take a chance on something that you aren’t sure of.
But 2026 has been a weird year in gaming for me. I’ve enjoyed most of what I’ve played, but gaming hasn’t really reached the highs of the past three years in my view. So, I went out and took some chances, and it paid off. I already discussed Nioh 3, which I never would have tried in the past. Readers of the blog already know how huge of a fan I was of Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse as well, which wasn’t on my radar in the slightest.
Taking chances isn’t always pleasant. There are plenty of times that it doesn’t pay off. This is why I ended up at the same job for 12 years, but there are times when you should take the leap, and this past year has been a great reminder of that from both a video game and life perspective. The last four months at my new job have been some of my favorite months in my career. I’m facing new challenges, I’m learning a lot, and I’m growing as a person. Being at this job made me realize how badly I needed to make a change years ago. That is a lesson that I will never forget.
The Power of Friendship and the Value of Community Are Real
Funny enough, this is a lesson I talked about a bit in my post a few years ago, but the past year has been another great reminder of this. One of the big reasons why I started this blog is because I really wanted to have more friends and a community in the video game world. Despite having a lot of great friends in my life, none of them are gamers. This blog has been a huge success in helping me meet all sorts of people whom I genuinely care about, despite never seeing them in person.
But as much as I value my friends and my community, it can admittedly be very tough for me to lean on others at times. I tend to be extremely self-reliant when I do things. I suppose this blog is decent enough proof of that. It would be much easier to write for many websites out there, get review codes handed to me, and move on from there. Instead, I wanted my own project. I had to figure out how to make a website on my own. I had to build a brand on my own, and I reached out to publishers to try and get review codes on my own. Last year, when I finally decided it was time to add a podcast to my mix, I also went to work figuring it out on my own.
However, I really have no background in any of these things, and while I have been able to get by well enough, it’s been clear many times that this blog hasn’t always been able to reach the heights it maybe could have because of my own limitations. The podcast was a great example of this as well. I thought it was passable, but it was a real struggle for me. The time investment ended up being too much with all I have going on in life, and I put it on hiatus.
The BigNerdGaming Podcast was only able to return because I finally asked some friends for help. I want to give a special shoutout to David, who has taken on all of the production elements of the show, and who has in turn made the show a million times better looking. I also want to thank Andrew for being a great addition to the show and for being a mostly stand-up guy outside of a few things he does that annoy me. Finally, leaning on others made the show better, and frankly, a lot more fun to do. I feel like we get better with each episode, and I’m excited to see how things continue to go as we continue to figure out our rhythm.
This is a lesson that has been extremely valuable at work as well. At my last job, I was often thrown into situations where I just had to figure things out myself. This time around, I think I’ve done a much better job of trying to find support and help when I can, and not endlessly struggling to figure everything out myself out of pride. In turn, my life has been easier, and I feel like I’ve already made real friends there.
These situations remind me of a somewhat older game I played this past year. In the game SOMA, you find yourself all alone except for one other person, whom you can only talk to through a computer. The main character is dismissive of this person and refuses to view them as a friend despite the fact that she is the only person he has on the ship. That mindset ends up making his life significantly worse in a lot of ways. I’m really glad that this hasn’t been my mindset this year. Accepting help from others has made my life better in too many ways to count this year.
Past Birthday Lessons
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