Steam is selling stuff! I suck!

When you know you have a problem.

Steam’s “Perils of Summer” sale has messed up my life. Here I was, ready to hide out and squirrel away some money for a mid-July bachelor party in Austin, Texas, when the digital download service announces that it will be slashing prices on PC games through July 4.

Some of the discounts have been ridiculous. For 24 hours Sunday and Monday, you could pick up CIVILIZATION IV and all of its expansions (including COLONIZATION) for $10. DAWN OF DISCOVERY and its expansion, VENICE, are still available for $20.09, originally priced at $30. If you like lush, rewarding, incredibly complicated city-building games set in the 15th century, I advise that you act now.

I also bought THE WITCHER: ENHANCED EDITION (read: functional version) for $6.79, marked down from $29.99. I originally got this game through Direct2Drive in late 2008 and aborted it as soon as I finished the introductory sequence, such were its technical problems. But it showed so much promise and stunning weirdness that I’m more than willing to give it another go.

And the bargain-bin items — the up-to 90 percent discounts on old or commercially disappointing titles, or ones that were cheap-ish in the first place — have helped me rack up a nearly $90 haul only four days into the sale. GHOST MASTER, ALTITUDE, EVE ONLINE: TYRANNIS ($1.99!), all of the OVERLORD games, last year’s weird GHOSTBUSTERS thing, INDIGO PROPHECY, both MAX PAYNEs. They’re all mine. I might never install most of these, but at $5 or less, it would have been stupid not to buy them, right?

Nod if you love me. Now.

Okay, I literally just bought KING’S BOUNTY: THE LEGEND and KING’S BOUNTY: ARMORED PRINCESS because I saw that Gameosaurus alumnus Peter Rambo bought one of them. I don’t even know what they are and never heard of them until three minutes ago. They came in a pack for $10. There’s a steampunk robot in one of the trailers.

I have a problem.

Here’s the thing: we’re talking about $90 — nay, $100 — that could have been applied to … something else. Anything else. I love games and the fun I have playing them more than just about anything in this world. They come below my dogs and above my family on my ladder of caring.

But I have brothers in arms who are doing amazing things right now. Pat Himes, who has been one of my best friends for half of my life, is days from returning to the United States after two nearly uninterrupted years of Peace Corps service in Kyrgyzstan.

Himes outside some Kyrgyz village or another.

High school buddy Andy Keller, who studied in China in college and has been living there since, is in the final months of a yearlong bike ride around that enormous country, and, per my last conversation with him, is set to come back to the states for good sometime this fall. He and fellow insane person Evan Villarrubia have been documenting the entire trip in exquisite, crazy detail — check out a recent interview, the map of their trek, their blog and an amazing flickr stream.

And those are just the people I keep in touch with. Another high school friend posted a throwaway blurb on Facebook the other night about her moon party in a crater in New Mexico. Or something.

These are amazing, life-changing accomplishments, the sorts of things few people of my privileged suburban upbringing have tried or will try or could imagine even wanting to try. I don’t envy the legion of proud retards who moved to big cities after college and continue to brag about it — they’re good and fucked and probably miserable — but I’m pretty jealous of people like Andy and Pat, who will launch their careers in earnest with these wild mental touchstones locked in.

But why the achievement anxiety if I’m relatively pleased with the trajectory of my life? And why should I be jealous? I had every opportunity to do something just as wild. These guys weren’t whisked away on their transcendental adventures by sheer luck or on the bankroll of some wealthy benefactor; they’ve taken them on because they had the gumption and the interest, and they were willing to sacrifice a lot of creature comforts along the way.

I simply can’t imagine giving up my stuff for any substantial length of time. On my trip to Texas, for instance, I’ll probably bring my PSP, my DS and a 700-page book I’m loving in chunks. I’ll bring my laptop and its external hard drive, stuffed with episodes of JUSTIFIED and SONS OF ANARCHY and that HBO miniseries THE PACIFIC (all of which I’ll buy when they become available, people). I’ll have my ratty old 3G iPhone, soon to be replaced by this marvel of modern engineering, and I’ll probably leave my home PC on so that I can access my music library remotely. I won’t use any of it.

And if I can find room in my backpack, I’ll probably stuff some clothes and a toothbrush in there or something.

I’m not embarrassed by my obsession with this stuff. Indeed, I wear it proudly, like a tattoo that’s taken on new meaning after an initial shame spiral. Sure, I wish I could talk about the majesty of DEADWOOD or BATTLESTAR GALACTICA or BREAKING BAD more often than the occasional Google chat with my college roommate, who’s having his own twentysomething adventures in our nation’s capital (see: Facebook updates about getting drunk with Ezra Klein).

But that’s the burden I carry for knowing everything about everything, right?

This feels as ridiculous to type as it surely does to read, but I can’t help myself. Sometimes I think I’ve accumulated a vital, valuable body of pop-culture knowledge, a starting point for an assuredly brilliant future in arts and entertainment criticism. The trouble, of course, is that I’m the only one who sees it that way, and that no matter how hard I try or how credible my resumé becomes, I’m never going to break in to writing for the A.V. Club or Joystiq until I move away from here and start making connections.

And I’m not willing to do that until I put together some money and find a quiet, safe, affordable home in the outskirts of a happening place that accommodates my dogs. Executed properly, that’s going to take years.

I pointlessly imagine what it’s going to be like for Andy and Pat when they get back. Andy spent years in Beijing before hitting the road, and he’s been to the states and back a couple times for various reasons. When Pat steps off the plane, he’ll have lived in relative desolation for two years to the day, excepting a two-week vacation in York (ha!) over Christmas of last year.

How joyous for them! How lucky they’ll feel to be enveloped in the suffocating embrace of instant-gratification-buy-take-break-throw-it-away culture, which I sincerely love! How ever did they manage? Surely they don’t dare to be anything but happy to be home, lest they breach my impregnable fortress of feelings!

No, I don’t imagine it will be like that. They’ll have left a piece of them in their respective countries forever. Andy has walked among and broken bread with every type of Chinese person imaginable. Pat has spent all this time learning bits of two languages and becoming part of a hard-working agrarian family and community, only to watch ethnic violence tear the southern part of Kyrgyzstan a new asshole, right at the end of it all.

I, meanwhile, have this:

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy SIN AND PUNISHMENT: STAR SUCCESSOR and try to remember that I bought PUZZLE QUEST 2 on Saturday.