Gamer

I consider myself something of a gamer, in that I spend a considerable amount of my spare time playing video games, thinking about playing video games or watching videos about video games.

The good news is that it's probably not unhealthy, simply because I don't have enough spare time to dedicate to the task, as a result of being able to prioritise other things over gaming.

Where is all of this going?

I have no idea, but I imagine that I'll probably come to some sort of meaningful conclusion by writing this blog post and you get to come along for the ride.

I've been on holidays for the last two weeks, which has been great, because I don't have to care about work right now. I mean, I know I'll need to care about it again in the near future, so it's not perfect freedom, but it's good enough for a bit of a mental break.

As you can imagine, I've been playing a lot of video games.

My wife and I were already playing V Rising, so I've put some more time into that, but I've also delved into Final Fantasy XVI, and I'm trying to get back into Crusader Kings 3. There are a smattering of smaller roguelikes and other appetizers in there as well, but those three are the main ones.

Worryingly, I don't know if I'm actually enjoying myself.

V Rising is good, but we're at the final part of the game now and my interest is flagging. In the same breath, I don't want to give up before finishing the last couple of bosses, because that goes against my nature.

Final Fantasy XVI is...alright? The story is okay, though not amazing, and while the combat felt good at the beginning, it's becoming more repetitive as times goes on with no real challenge to it.

Crusader Kings 3 meanwhile is an interesting beast. It's a fantastic emergent story generator, but it's also hideously complex and every time I sit down to play it, I think about how long it's going to take for anything to happen, and I swerve off to the side to play something else.

In at least two of the examples above, I'm mostly continuing to plug away at a thing that I only sort of half-enjoy out of a sense of obligation.

Maybe I shouldn't do that.

Obviously, I don't want to just flit in and out of things on a whim, because that's not a good way to accomplish anything, but I could be better at pulling away from stuff that is either not useful or that I'm not enjoying.

Oh look, a meaningful reflection on my own personality, that's probably useful.

Keeping that train of thought rolling, because I've had a larger chunk of time to dedicate to video games, I've noticed something else.

Something that makes me sad.

I don't think I can just play video games for hours and hours anymore. I get tired now, and that tiredness manifests as a general malaise, and I either need to go and force myself to do something different (like exercise) or just go have a sleep like the old man that I am.

You might think that that's not such a bad thing, but it contrasts with other parts of my personality, like impatience and obsessiveness.

If I'm going to do something, I want to do it all at once, I don't want to wait. Also, I want to really dig into it and understand it and master it and so on, dedicating the majority of my brain and time to the task.

The reality is that mastery and achievement do not often happen in a few hours of focus. They happen over tens or hundreds of hours applied incrementally over time.

I need to be better at understanding that things take time, and they don't have to be done all at once.

Hey, another meaningful reflection on my personality!

I wasn't sure this blog post was going to go anywhere, but here we are. When I start writing about a topic, I almost always learn something new, whether it be about the topic itself or about my own weird and irritatingly complex psyche.

Funnily enough, both of the reflections in this post basically just come down to doing things in moderation.

And with that realisation, I feel like I've accomplished something, so I'm going to go play video games for a bit.