Over the years a lot of my nerdiness has taken place late at night.
I’m probably only reflecting on this because, at this exact moment, it’s 2:10am on Wednesday, September 3. This post will hopefully go live in another 50 minutes and I will hopefully be in bed.
Right now I find myself awake because I wanted to finish writing my sermon for this weekend. I had plenty of daylight hours left to write my sermon but part of me wanted to get it finished so I’d have more time for feedback and edits.
Most of my late nights over the years, though, have definitely been due to my nerdiness.
I remember one of the first times I stayed up all night was at my friend, Jimmy’s, thirteenth birthday party. I had never really stayed up all night before and I was excited for the experience. I was even more excited when we spent most of the night playing Super Star Wars on the Super Nintendo.
I don’t know how many nights I’ve stayed up past 2:00am playing video games, but I do know that they were all worth it. I loved closing Oblivion gates at 1:30am and trying to improve my kill/death ratio by playing just one more game of Modern Warfare 2 at 2:30am.
I’ve always been a night person, whether I was up playing video games or working. My nocturnal habits have changed since I married Alycia, but I’d rather fall asleep next to my wife than on the couch with a controller in my hand.
Still, nights like this make me a little nostalgic for those late-night gaming sessions. I’ve probably never had more fun at 3:00am than when playing Halo 2 with 15 others guys in our church’s youth room.
Late-night nerdiness eventually had to give way to adult nerdiness. I couldn’t keep playing video games until the sun came up and expect to be an effective youth pastor, except when being an effective youth pastor means playing video games until the sun comes up. For the most part I’ve had to fit my nerdiness around a more regular schedule, like playing Magic: The Gathering before youth group and playing video games on my day off.
I may miss my late-night nerdiness but at least I have a job and a wife that let me embrace my daylight nerdiness.
Are you a late-night nerd or a daylight nerd?
I will be in bed by the time this posts.
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