On Computer Games

I sit in GP3 playing Football Manager 2007.

I love this game. And it really gets me involved: I feel stress, real stress, as if what I’m doing actually mattered and whether they won or lost would have real-life consequences.

But I thought that I’d leave this virtual world alone when confronted with non-virtual realities. So imagine my horror when my real-world companion started talking to me while I was playing the game, and I started to wish she would just quickly finish what she had to say and let me get on with my life.

I knew I had a problem then and there.

“I think I should stop playing,” I told her, “playing too much is not good for you.” I paused a moment, looked up at the clock and realised, to my horror, that it had been almost a couple of hours since I last started.

I then said, “playing computer games don’t improve you in anyway,” with reference to a Brian Tracy audio I had heard just a day earlier, where he mentioned something along the lines of always do the most important things you know that will take you toward the achievement of your goals.

I doubt she knew the real reason why, but I do think that she’d have noticed a slight change between the me who was playing the game, and the me who is currently writing this blog entry. Even if there wasn’t a noticeable difference from the way I was acting, there sure is a great effect from within.

I feel so much freer and so much more at ease than I was previously. Sometimes I wonder why I even start.