I weighed myself this morning. It wasn't a pleasant experience.
I realized that at work I sit down for 8 hours at a time, and then I come home and generally sit down for another long stretch either at my desk or on my bed. I've been leading a sedentary lifestyle, without any physical activity - not even taking a walk. I have been neglecting things I used to like to do - reading more, playing with video, what have you - in favor of games and more games. My excuse was that I get off work in the morning and I've got nothing to do. Plus, my stack of games to play was getting enormous. A year ago I learned about a site dedicated to finding the best deals on games, and I've embraced it wholeheartedly.
It's crippled me, in some ways. No good deal is worth passing up; no "lowest price this game has ever been" worth missing out on. I'll never play all of these. I've completed a fraction of Dragon Quest IX - why did I buy DQ IV, V, and VI? "Good deal! In for one!" They're still sealed, and in no danger of increasing in price. Sell sell sell!
My Steam account has something like 200 games on it - mostly crazy low price deals on stuff. Those I can never get any return on, unlike the physical games I own, but I keep buying more of them without playing what I have.
Gamestop had a deal going on last month that netted some bonus trade-in credit on older games, so I got rid of a dozen or so. It wasn't enough, obviously. Even if I focus on the big name franchises like Assassin's Creed and Red Dead, there's too much to play. Just what made me think I'd get around to Blue Dragon and Spiderman: Web of Shadows? There's another deal going on that nets 50% extra on trades; for games that normally get less than $5 of credit, it's not really worth it, but I should probably dump stuff just so it's out of here. I might even enjoy games more if I wasn't constantly looking at the giant stack of them waiting their turn, despairing that I'll never have time to play them all.
Well, duh.
And if I try to, everything else suffers. Ok, yeah, working nights puts a certain amount of lame in things and makes getting out of the house a little less appealing, but surely I could find a place to play tennis during the week. I've got videos from 3 years ago I never did anything with, and a video editing program I bought to do it with somewhere around here. Boxes of unread books in storage. And I appear to be back to relatively low self-esteem, despite good job performance.
I've made far too many claims over the years about changing my behavior and then utterly failing to follow through, so that's not going to happen here. Maybe it will be more effective if there's no silver lining here.
3 comments:
I have to say the best decision I ever made was to stop playing video games except for social fun occasions here and there and to start mountain biking and playing guitar. I lost 35 pounds in 3 months, my confidence went through the roof, my social life got a lot more fun doing real world stuff, I developed better relationships, my physical and mental health improved. Things like self control, being considerate of others, etc all started getting better due to my awareness on my body and me as a person increasing. Not to mention I can rock out on my guitar and have a blast, and I get to see tons of nature now that I am riding. I hear you on this one man, my list of games is huge too and I just don't care anymore :) It is an amazing feeling. The best of luck my friend!
I could whip you into shape Boonable :) You'd have to promise not to hate me though...
I'm game. Just don't know how we'd schedule that. I'm absolutely dreadful at motivating myself.
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