Mind Your Own God Damn Business

They say that if you want to quit a habit, you need to do something else in its place. Apparently, I write about the habit and then put it on the Internet.

My first day was alright, which didn’t really surprise me. The first couple days of something like this are always fairly okay. It’s only been a few days since I played games, so I’m not too desperate, and my resolve is still pretty strong.

After a few weeks, though, I start having to deal with a three pronged attack: My resolve weakens, my desire increases, and I sometimes completely forget that I gave them up in the first place. The first two are pretty self explanatory. Let me elaborate on the third.

I’ve given up games before. My Mom used to force lent on us, and back before I could refuse, I would sometimes pick video games (I always tried to give up things I didn’t really care about or do in the first place (“I’m giving up fucking pigs for lent!”) or slip a double negative in somewhere (“I’m going to give up not looking at nudie pictures on the Internet!”), but my Mom was too shrewd to fall for either trick. She’s a sharp one). Every time that I did give up games, the following scenario would always play out in one way or another: I would go to a friend’s house. He would be playing something. He would offer me the control. Without thinking, I would say “sure!” and grab it. Thirty minutes later, I would realize what I was doing and start sobbing. Then, if I listened carefully, I could hear Jesus’ voice drifting down from the heavens, comforting me with kind words.

“It’s cool, my son,” he would say. “Video games are a difficult vice to shake. I’m just glad that I just gave up food and fucking water for 40 days and 40 nights, instead of something really crucial like fucking N64. Maybe I was a little bit thirsty by, I don’t know, day 2 out of 40, you know, while I was in a FUCKING DESERT, but I would have been a goner for sure if I’d been out there and I hadn’t been able to play a few rounds of Golden Eye. No, this is totally understandable, you weak-willed little bitch.”

And somewhere, from the depths of hell, I could hear Satan’s laugh as he wailed on his electric guitar.

I’ll concede that the second half of that story was a lie – if you can prove that it didn’t happen.

Like I was saying, playing games – it’s one of those things that I normally do so much that it’s almost a reflex. It’s like not flushing the toilet, not not wearing pants or taking my job seriously – After 29 years of doing something a certain way, it’s pretty much muscle memory. Try it tonight. Use the toilet, and then don’t flush it. You’ll sit there, thinking about it, finish up, stand up, flush it, wash your hands, and then realize that you weren’t supposed to flush it. When I worked as a line cook, the same thing would happen when people ordered a club sandwich with no mayo. We would end up having to cook it seven or eight times because after preparing fifty club sandwiches a day with mayonnaise on them, we were almost physically unable to make one without. It was infuriating.

Anyway, that is my fear – a week from now, I will be three hours into playing Metroid and suddenly realize that Metroid is, in fact, a video game, which I resolved to not touch between now and 2009.

For now, though, I’m in that phase where I’m cool – I’m not going to forget, I’m not quite at the point where I will offer to suck my brother’s dick if he’ll just let me borrow his Wii for a few minutes, and I still remember that I’m not supposed to be playing them.

Well, I guess that’s all for now. Expect another post in 10 minutes, if the first 48 hours of 2009 are any indication.

I will leave you with a video that will reveal a most unholy secret to you: the only thing that Satan loves more than my missteps during lent is The Golden Girls.