I am determined not to bow out of my blog-a-day target only three days in despite the fact that I am being hampered by several different factors. The first is that I have a tonne of ironing and tidying to do in a short space of time and this is not being helped by the rambunctious child upstairs who seems determined not to settle down. The second is that for every day of this year we call eleven I have been no further out of the house than to walk Ellen to the bus stop and a quick wander around the hideous estate we live with Rosie, until the cold became too much and we retreated to the warmth of our surprisingly cosy house.

So subject matter is thin on the ground. I could tell you, for instance, that today as a reward for helping me take down the decorations I let my daughter dress up as a princess and watch Enchanted, a surprisingly good Disney film. As cute as her enthusiasm for this was at the time, I doubt it is of much interest to you dear readers.

This I think will be the greatest challenge of this ‘blog-a-day’ challenge, if I am to stick to it. The vast majority of days are just plain boring, filled with nothing grand enough to lead to a blog post. I have a few ideas of how to spice things up a bit and keep things interesting, but they will have to wait. There is, after all, ironing to be done.

This problem also presents itself in the other challenge I am setting myself this year, that of the 365 photo project. It’s very hard to find interesting subject matter when you are stuck in one place most of the time, and this isn’t really helped by the fact that I am using the camera on my phone, rather than any fancy piece of photography kit. I’ve seen people doing these projects for the last five or so years and always been a bit envious of them, and noticed how they have all become rather good photographers as a result of their efforts. Seeing as I currently have no photography talent whatsoever, it will be interesting to see if I develop one over the year.

To help me achieve this I have discovered some rather nifty Android apps that turn your smartphone into a vintage camera, and my first attempt is the one at the top of the page I quite like it, even if it is nothing more that the aforementioned bus stop. Still, if nothing else it will give me something to put at the top of these blog posts, I’ve been reliant on Google Images for far too long. Oh, and if you want to follow my progress on 365 you can do so over at my brand new Flickr page.

I love Gaming. Everything about it appeals. The immersive nature, the potential for huge epic storytelling. The culture surrounding it, it all appeals to me. Everything except playing the bloody things.  Unfortunately the ability to play computer games is something that ‘purists’ consider to be quite an integral part of the culture.

It’s always been the same. When I was a kid my friends and I would got to hang out for hours at the Trocadero in London, and they would endlessly pump money into the machines for hours on end, while I inevitably got bored and hankered for a few hours browsing Tower Records while they totted up kill after kill on Mortal Kombat 2.

When everyone started getting consoles I always seemed to have the wrong one. Everyone else got a Game Boy. I got a Lynx. You couldn’t even get games for it after about six months.  Eventually I got a SNES, and there were a few games I actually enjoyed for a while.  But then I grew up a bit, and computer games never managed to hold my attention in the way film and music did.

A few years ago I moved in with one of my best friends, a pretty hardcore gamer who would disappear for days at a time whenever a new Resident Evil or Final Fantasy game came out, and I started to hanker again for the ability to do what he did. It always had a sheen of glamour to me, like a secret club I didn’t know the password for.

I got an Xbox, but I ended up using it more as a DVD player, the only game I ever completed was Halo, on Easy setting.  I sold it, and used the money to buy a DVD player, on the logic that it wouldn’t make so much noise when I was watching a Buffy DVD marathon.  And so I retired from the world of gaming, and whenever my friends started talking about their latest immersive world I would simply glaze over, or try to change the conversation.  Besides, I was approaching 30, surely the time to abandon such childish pursuits.

Then my girlfriend bought me a shiny Xbox 360 for Christmas last year, and over the last 11 months the guilt has been building up in me again. It looks at me with its unblinking green eye as if to say; ‘Why don’t you ever use me properly? Yes I may make your DVD’s look a bit nicer, but that’s not what I’m here for and you damn well know it.’  And every time I turned it on up would come my gamerscore, pitifully low.

The came Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe, and I realised that I must be among the world’s best informed non-gamers. He made the world of gaming look like everything I knew deep down that it was.  The recent release of Modern Warfare 2 only compounded my outsider feel, with seemingly all my friends, my work colleagues and my twitter feed speaking of nothing else.

And so it’s time to make a change. This next year is going to be all about self improvement for me, and in every way that is going to to take me on a road that makes me more adult, more healthy, a more productive member of society.  But if I am going to do everything in one year, I’m also going to try to do this. Become a gamer. A casual gamer perhaps, but I want in.

To that end I have already made my first tentative steps.  I asked my friends to lend me some games that might suit my novice level, and ease me in slowly.  I have started with The Bourne Conspiracy, based on the films (obviously) and over the past week have found myself getting more and more drawn into its world, and more and more capable of negotiating it.  I am still playing on trainee level for now, but I’m getting there.

The old hang ups are still there, of course. I get ridulously impatient when I can’t pass an obstacle, or solve a simple puzzle. Last night I got killed repeatedly by the same end of level baddie (curse his knife wielding skills) but eventually I threw him out of an aeroplane, as you do.  I still feel that the Xbox is mocking me from time to time, but now it’s for being shit at playing a game, rather than ignoring its tremendous potential. I may fall at the next hurdle again, and it may become nothing more than a noisy DVD player again, cracked open only for occasional games of Scene It, but for now I can count myself as being that one step closer to the ultimate in geek. The Gamer.