My heart's just not in it

I miss my Xbox 360. I know it's only been 2 days and I went longer than that on my self imposed hiatus, but this time it's different. This time I CAN'T play no matter how much I want to.

Last time I'd look at the white box sitting quiet and peaceful and say "nope I'm not going to play today." This time I look at the white box sitting quiet and peaceful and say "still dead." I almost can't wait until I can ship it off so I don't have to look at it any more.

Off and on I've been considering buying a new Xbox 360 so I always have a backup but that's an awfully expensive backup. I've looked through Craig's List and ebay but I'm a little leery of buying used. How do I know what those machines have gone through? With a console that has a proven history of problems I don't want to be taking on someone else's headache. If I could find a new Core system I think I would get it that way I could swap my hard drive between the consoles and it would be cheaper.

But right now my heart just isn't into gaming. I'm trying to get caught up in Final Fantasy VII. I had played quite a bit (got my characters up to level 48 or something) when I realized I sold a one-of-a-kind Materia when I was hard up for cash. No big deal, right? I read in the back of the book that there is another "Master" Materia you can pick up that you have to master all the other Materia of the same color in order to use. Unfortunately from everything I could find in the book I wasn't going to be able to get another copy of this Materia so my choices were to continue on or restart and pick it up (and keep it). I decided to restart. Now I'm finally back to the Gold Saucer area (way behind where I was before) but I just can't seem to play.

I miss playing with my friends. I miss the thrill of killing them and the agony of getting killed. I miss slow playing someone into going "all in" and knocking them out of the tournament. I miss watching my rank go up (but not it going down) when I play ranked matches. I miss changing my gamer picture to suit my mood (doing it through xbox.com just doesn't offer as many choices). I miss rubbing it in when I've unlocked an achievement that I know a friend has been working on for awhile. I miss my Xbox 360.

I know I've got a long ways to go before I can play it again (unless I break down and buy another one). And I know that after a few days I'll be back in the swing of gaming on my PS2, Game Cube or whatever. Right now it just doesn't seem worth it. My heart's just not in it.