Role Playing Games?

It has been a rather intense week at work.  I've just gotten through three days of the good kind of meetings, Tuesday through yesterday.  What that means is ten hour work-days locked away in a sterile conference room with a handful of admirably bright people trying to solve problems together.  I mean it, it was great.  We did reasonably well.  If the constraints of working for a large corporation whose leadership lacks balls and vision isn't too much to overcome, we'll actually accomplish something this year.  These last three days are what keep me coming back to this job.  I got to define, ponder and put forth solutions to problems this week.

I bring this up for two reasons.  One, I haven't done a damn thing on the trade system.  I went home every night these past three days and spent the waking hours with my family.  When the sun went down I sat alone drinking a bottle or two of beer, strummed the guitar and prepared myself mentally for the next day.  The other reason this all seems so relevant to me is that Alexis recently posted something over at Tao regarding RPG character cliches.  He hit the nail on the head, as is his wont to do. 

Accepting that others will get out of this game something entirely different than me perhaps, I know non-the- less what it is REALLY all about.  We want to solve problems.  We want to be clever and creative and in the end walk away with the prize because we deserve it... we won it.  This isn't a kids game.  A kids game is the charade I sleep-walk through most days of the work week.  The kids game is shambling from meeting to meeting to hear the same stupid shit I heard last week, or to go home and pretend to care while my neighbor drones on about lawn care or his kid's swim meet.  This game, whatever specific THIS GAME you're talking about,  is about solving problems.  At least that's why I keep coming back to it year after year after year and that's why it seems so much more relevant then whatever work-a-day routine I need to fall back into after three days of exhausting bliss.