Just over three weeks abstinence from playing games on my phones.
Having a pretty hard time resisting the lure of special seasonal challenge events on my favorite match three phone games / puzzle games.
The magic of the lunar new year stuff on Three Kingdoms. The allure of Valentiney stuff on Myth Wars and Empires and Puzzles. The absolute cuteness and SOUNDS of some of my FAVORITE Plants & Zombies 2 plants with their “Valenbrainz” event.
I feel like I’m missing out on so much. 🙁 And like I’ll forever lose the opportunity to enjoy special gifts and hero drops and opportunities going on right now.
Fortunately (?) I’m experiencing enough benefits and rewarding progress in other areas of my life after almost a month without blowing hourS every day gaming that I have competing FOMO (fear of missing out) that’s beating out the game temptations. I don’t want to lose the progress I’ve made in life. I don’t want migraines coming back with a vengeance. I don’t want the momentum I’m building every day with big projects to dissipate. I don’t want my vision to blur and lose sight of what I really want to be doing and accomplishing and creating just as those things are coming into better focus.
I don’t want to turn fifty-one the month after Valentine’s Day and have maybe one sweet Valentines-ish hero or new-to-me legendary five-star hero to show for it.
Curiosity killed the cat. That’s really the main thing. I am *curious* and don’t want to miss out on having my curiosity satisfied.
These are the times and kinds of temptations that really require being committed to full-blown 100% abstinence. Otherwise it’s way too easy to make bargains with yourself:
I’ll just check in for AFK rewards and scope out what’s in the summoning portal
turns into
I’ll just play the easy level of the challenge event
turns into
I’ll just buy this awesome cheap deal on gems (to save time on trying to earn them, so it’s really *efficient*and worth it, right?).
“I’ll just play for half an hour” ALWAYS winds up being much costlier than that, if not in dollars, for sure in hours, stiff muscles, and remorse, regret, and (for me) agonizing shame.
Knowing I missed out on more important things.
I wonder what I could have accomplished if I’d have used that time on any one of three dozen projects I really want to see realized … or even “squandered” the time on something I feel more embarrassed about for some reason: just resting, or reading a book, or lying in bed listening to music.
*****
While writing this it dawned on me I can actually satisfy a lot of my curiosity by just looking stuff up online: going to those games’ sites, forums, or discord communities. Even though I want very much to stay out of that stuff, if I do it on my desktop or laptop instead of on my phone it is pretty easy for me to stay focused on what I’m trying to find and am actually interested in, since most of the chatter Ifind on discussion boards does not hold my interest long. In that way, it might even help strengthen my resolve to stay away from the games when I see I am not really missing out on a whole lot.