You know what’s weird?

 
There’s a trope kicking around the media (and to an extent, real life, because tropes have to start somewhere) that girls love hitting sales for stuff they wouldn’t ordinarily buy. It’s usually used in a sort of “ha ha, girls are crazy” way.

 
It strikes many as strange, but I can’t exactly throw stones. While I don’t go looking for the kind of nifty things they keep in the bargain bins at Kohl’s or whatever, instead I go cruising through the “Under $5” tab on Steam and see what they’re trying to boost sales for this week.

 
Steam is an odd beast as internet services go. As far as I know, it is technically the original cloud-based content distributor. Instead of selling physical copies of games, it just allows you to pay for and download them straight onto your computer from the internet.

 
It also has a reputation for producing the most bizarre independent garbage ever seen by the human race. My favorite example is “NEO AQUARIUM – King of the Crustaceans,” a shooter featuring three-dimensional maneuverability as you attempt to pilot a lobster to victory.

 
Anyway, there are currently 67 games in my Steam library. Some, I am completely unsure as to why I purchased them in the first place, some I did on purpose or got blown away by the $2 price tag. Perhaps my favorite story was getting “Dawn of War 2” with all of the expansions and DLCs for a quarter of the actual price. It was $80 worth of content for $20.

 
Now, that might not sound all that strange. After all, games are meant to be played, right?

 
I’ve owned some of them for more than a year and I still haven’t finished them. “Dawn of War 2’s” story mode languishes half-completed because I can’t deal with teleporting space elves and knockback physics.

 
Neither can the 300-year-old veteran space marines, which I find kind of hilarious. It would help if the walking tank could be a little less sentimental, but I guess after getting bisected by a bug the size of a Greyhound bus you save the pals you can.

 
So there might be people who have closets full of things they’ve worn once, or bookshelves loaded with novels that will never get read, or libraries full of games left unplayed.

 
In the end, it might just be a waste of space or of money or of time, but I don’t really see much that’s wrong with it. The willingness to put time and money into a hobby demonstrates that you’re enjoying the hobby, whatever it is. This thought falls apart when you find people with hobbies that lack a required monetary investment, but they are a theoretically mad bunch and I will pay them no heed.

 
I don’t remember what year it was, but in Nebraska City there was this odd poster campaign one summer that used the slogan “I geek X” where X was the passion of the person on the poster. It was neat because it used people from around the community for it and encouraged the unironic enjoyment of hobbies.

 
So, I guess what I’m getting at here is enjoy your hobbies and don’t let the haters get to you. Unless those haters happen to be your banker, in which case you should probably listen to the guy before you have to declare bankruptcy in the face of a mint-condition Black Lotus card or an awesome pair of stompy boots or something. Eating and having a place to live is important, too, after all.