Mind Your Own God Damn Business

So, I’m a little bit over 24 hours into being able to play games again, and it’s rapidly becoming clear why I wanted to give them up for a year.

On New Year’s eve, I went to a friend’s house to celebrate. I was having a good time, so I hung out until 3. Then, when I came home, I was pretty tired, so I figured I would play some games the next day.

On Jan 1st, I woke up and started up Torchlight, which I’ve been excited to try out since it came out.

Since then, I would estimate that I’ve spent somewhere around 6 hours NOT playing Torchlight. That includes sleeping. Even now, as I’m writing this post, it’s taking every ounce of self control that I have to keep myself from shutting this browser window, opening up steam, and cranking out a few dungeons to get some sweet, sweet loot.

Some of the problem is that Torchlight is a fun game. I keep noticing tricks that it took from World of Warcraft that made that game so addictive (I immediately get a boner when anything orange or purple drops, I’m willing to spend as much time as necessary to get sweet enchantments, and I’m getting embarrassed as I type this so I’m going to stop). It runs so smooth on my now seven year old computer, since it’s system requirements are ridiculously low (800 mhz and 512 MB of RAM – those are, like 2004 system requirements. I’m embarrassing myself again, aren’t I?)

A larger part of the problem, though, is that the forbidden fruit is suddenly up for grabs. For the last year, every time I sat down at my computer, I would always think about games at least a little bit, clench my teeth, and then do something else. When my brother would come over with a Street Fighter IV, or Punch Out!, or Brutal Legend, I would start visibly sweating and twitching, and sit on the couch and watch him play…

…funny story. My little brother just came in. He brought over Brutal Legend for me to play, because he knows that I’ve been wanting to play it. My little brother is awesome. I’m going to bite my lip so hard that it bleeds and finish this post first.

I’ve spent a lot of time on my various blogs lamenting how stunted my development has been in life. I spent most of my early and mid-20′s feeling like I accomplished far less than I could have (and maybe should) have. In my late 20′s, I came to terms with it, realized that everybody I know feels the same way to some extent, and even people who I consider extremely successful seem to have similar feelings of doubt or sometimes feel even worse than I do.

Now that I’ve gotten a more objective look at my video gaming habits, I’m mostly just impressed with the sheer volume of things that I’ve accomplished. While all of you lazy assholes have been struggling to get everything done in a 24 hour day, I’ve essentially been working with 5. At least, once you factor out all of the time I spend sitting in a dark room with no pants on staring at a monitor. Working with less than 1/4 of the time other people do, I’ve managed to get through school, hold down a job, have sex a couple of times and even get myself into legal trouble with a poorly maintained blog! Someone needs to give me a pat on the back!

I have to say, though, giving up games was a good thing. It gave me a better look at how much time I spend on them, I think it will help me alter my habits, at least after I spend the next week playing all day and all night, and it was just kind of cool to challenge myself to do something hard.

I decided about a month ago that I needed to do something similar this year, but it was hard to figure something out. It’s difficult to find something that I can give up that I never actually need for anything. I use the Internet a lot, but along with the endless supply of porn and sites like fukung.net that I frequently accidentally spend 2 hours clicking through, it has some practical uses as well that I would need. I’m not giving up masturbating, because I’m not an idiot, and I doubt I would make it two weeks. I’m not giving up being a hateful little shit, because I CAN’T HELP IT.

I had been thinking about it a lot last month, when I ran into a guy in one of my classes who was at a Starbucks editing some papers. I asked him what he was doing, and he explained that he was finishing up the editing on a book he wrote, which is apparently going to be kind of like Harry Potter but a school for ghosts (After trying to decide if that will be good or bad, I finally decided that it all hinges on his writing ability. There are a lot of stories that sound goofy when you only have 15 seconds to sum up the premise, and those books about a school for wizards did pretty well).

So, I think I’m going to try and write a book. Don’t ask me what it’s about, because I don’t know, or maybe I do and I just don’t want to tell you because I always feel like that guy that’s trying to describe an SNL skit or a scene from the Simpsons when I do that. Either way, I plan to have a book written by 2011. It will probably be terrible, I may never show it to anyone, and it will probably just sit here on my hard drive, where I can be proud of the fact that I wrote a terrible book, but it will be a book nonetheless.

I’m also going to try and get back on the “Three Posts a Week” wagon here. Things were going well, then I slipped a little, then I slipped a lot, then I started to stress out about what people thought of the posts, which always makes them worse, which makes me post even less, which makes me feel more pressure to hit it out of the park on the rare occasions that I do.

Either way, Happy New Year, everyone. I’m going to go play some Brutal Legend with my little brother. No pictures in this post, because I’m ready to play NOW. I barely had the self control to put in the links for Torchlight and fukung before running off. Take care.

This is going to be awesome.