Saturday, June 25, 2011

Finding a Balance in Gaming

I freely admit that I have an addictive personality.  Even if I didn't admit it, I have several people in my life that would jump at the opportunity to call me out.  I don't really care for alcohol.  I've never done drugs.  My strongest vice lies with gaming.

I find it so easy to let gaming consume me.  When I was a member of a gaming clan, I slowly started letting all of my time turn to gaming.  I would volunteer for staff positions, participate in gaming events, and attend lots of practices.  Before I knew it, I was spending more than 40 hours a week logging hours on spreadsheets and hosting small teams practices.

After some pretty serious evaluating, I stopped organized gaming and just played for myself.  Even then, before I knew it, I started drifting back into my old habits.  Every single day off would be spent gaming from sun up to sun down.  Even when I worked, I was sleeping as little as three or four hours a night to squeeze in just a couple more rounds or levels.

This brings me to my friends being in town this weekend.  Since they are virgins to the big city, they obviously asked me where they should go.  I told them about all the museums and sites.  But what they really wanted to know, was how I liked them.  Even though I have lived in Chicago for years, I couldn't tell them because I didn't know.  Gaming has so completely taken up my free time that I have never made it out to see all that this amazing city has to offer.

My inexperience with the city led me to wonder what else I had missed ?  Once again, maybe its time for me to back off a little bit.  I won't stop gaming.  I never could.  Its my favorite.  But when I have weekends free, only play video games on one day instead of both.  Or during the week, I'm only allowed to play so many hours.  I feel silly restricting my hours like a little kid, but it seems like a good idea.

Either way, I think its important to me to find balance.  I can't let my hobby take over my life.  But I need to leave time for the things, like gaming, that make me happy.  Once again, I am obviously going to keep gaming.  And I am definitely still going to be up in this blog.  But balance is vital.   

1 comment:

Linz said...

I hear you clucking, big chicken. I used to have a rule that I wouldn't get on my laptop during the day and it has slowly crept back into my daily life (thanks a lot, Facebook and Kongregate.) I think that finding the balance is a great idea, but it is so hard to maintain.

I guess the first step is admitting the issue? ;) Good luck on your Chicago journeys.