I’m from a generation where being into video games, card games, table top games, comic books, and so on, and so on, were all things that would earn you a title of nerd or geek for being interested in them. I was rarely bashful of my interests growing up and was often an outcast because of it. I am and always have been a nerdy little hermit who enjoys my video games, books and many other such things that earned me my title.

One of the things I struggled to get into out of sheer lack of desire to play was table top games like Dungeons & Dragons. When I was in college, I ended up in a relationship with a person who rather enjoyed this style of game and attempted their best to get me interested and teach me the rules and such. I was bored out of my skull and probably deeply offended them.

As a side note before I continue, I firmly believe that people’s interests, personalities and traits can change with time and/or effort. That said, my interests and traits have changed over the years. As a young teenager, I was heavily into anime and by the time I was a late teenager I lost all interest. As a younger person, I had no interest in table top games, but after reading a series by one of my favorite authors I was interested but lacked people to join.

Rewind several months. I was promoted up in my company to another team and have been slowly interacting with the guys on my team one by one and getting to know them more. We are spread across four cities and there aren’t that many of us. We don’t exactly get a ton of down time to just talk and socialize at work. However, a few weeks ago I was talking with one of the guys in one of our other locations and he started talking about their game of Pathfinder. Fast forward to last week, they decided to extend an olive branch to me and invite me to their weekly game.

This has never been my thing but I had an interest in it after that series so I accepted and on Monday of this week attended my first virtual game. Guys. It was awkward as hell for me. I don’t do role playing. I play World of Warcraft and I avoid RP servers like the plague. I am TERRIBLE at it. But here’s the thing, right? It was awkward, but it wasn’t bad. I was out of place in my own mind because they all have a lot of experience playing and I have exactly no experience playing this game. But you know what they didn’t do? They didn’t make me feel like a shit person for not knowing how to play.

So here’s my post for today. If you are interested in something, even if it makes you scared or nervous, don’t shy away from making yourself open to an opportunity to pursue that thing. You never know, you may just enjoy it. Worst case scenario, you find out you don’t enjoy it and can cross it off that bucket list.