For… a long time, now, Rohan and his brother, Leigh, have been working on an iOs game, presently codenamed Township. I can no longer remember how long it’s been, because for me, this has been going on for years. In most ways, it’s a good thing. It’s awesome, for me, to get Rohan home of an evening excited about some new feature he’s added; it’s much more awesome than getting him home tired and grumpy about something far more mundane.
We’re moving towards crunch time, though, and his time has become more and more valuable. It used to be that we spent several evenings a week watching TV together. Now– well, I’m pretty sure we watched something on Friday night (it’s now Tuesday), but I can’t remember what it was, and it was definitely the first evening we’d had together in a couple of days. Rohan’s busy. I’m also busy, filling my evenings with other things if he’s not going to be around to share them with me, but it’s not quite the same. It’s hard.
It’s Tuesday night, and the last time I saw Rohan (conscious – that is, not asleep) was Sunday night. I don’t expect to see him again until he gets home tomorrow, and that will probably be 7pm or so. Or later. That’s an unusually long time for us, but no longer completely unexpected: other things take precedence, sometimes. That doesn’t make it feel any less strange to simply not see the person you live with for so many days.
It’s a hard balance. I love him – I wouldn’t live with him, be with him, share my life with him, If I didn’t – but I’m also super excited about what he’s working on. I can’t wait for Township to be released, so that I can share with everyone how awesome this project is. I am so proud of Rohan and Leigh for this game. But I do miss him. I do miss having evenings together, without them being a rarity. I miss homecooked meals, meals that aren’t for one. I miss talking about things that aren’t game-related.
It’s al worth it, but it’s still hard, sometimes. I’m not used to having so much time on my own, and though I’m good at entertaining myself, it does wear on me at times. I get lonely. I have bad nights. I fall asleep alone, and wake up in the middle of the night still alone; but sometimes I wake up and I can hear Rohan in the next room, or he’s crawled into bed alongside me and I simply haven’t noticed. Sometimes it works.
At the moment, the thing I’m really looking forward to is this game being released. My intention is to steal Rohan away for a week or so – take him away from his computer, and away from our normal lives, and just… be. He can have Internet access, and he can fix bugs and do what he needs to, but I think we’ll both benefit from taking a step back from our computers, and spending time with each other.
It’s a little sad that our big plans for this week involve an evening without laptops, iPads, or iPhones. Just us, and something on the television.
Sad, maybe, but damn: I can’t wait.