Figured it was time for a VERY local newsbreak.

Not a lot going on in my life right now, to be honest.

I probably should do something about that, but meh.

Doing things in active pursuit of my own pleasure interferes with my video game playing time so clearly that’s not going to happen.

That’s how much of an addict I am. Must maximize gaming time at all costs. Petty things like making myself happier via other means, improving my life to make me hate it less, or even doing what I should be doing to stay healthy don’t stand a chance.

Maybe what I need to do is concentrate on the fact that if I am sick in the hospital or otherwise incapacitated, I might not be able to play video games any more.

Then what the hell would I do with myself all day? READ?

Makes me twitchy just thinking about it. This might actually work.

Speaking of which, started a new character recently in Oblivion. This is my fifth character so far.

It went like this :

1. High Elf Mage. Usually I start these medieval RPGs by playing a nice, simple warrior, but I decided I wanted something a bit more colorful this time.
2. Orc Warrior. Specifically a giant skull-cracking Orc who wore heavy armor and specialized in hitting things very hard until they stopped moving. After playing a mage and dealing with all the spells and such, playing that aforementioned simple warrior made for a refreshing change.
3. Wood Elf Sharpshooter/Thief//Assassin. Lots of fun poking holes in baddies with arrows. Even more fun after I installed a mod that added crossbows to the game. I love crossbows. They’re so cool. Did the entire Thieves Guild plotline, which was a lot of fun. Was doing the Assassin’s Guild (aka the Dark Brotherhood) plotline till the point came where in order to continue, I had to kill all my fellow assassins who had been super nice to me up to that point. And all because some half-crazed upper management type told me to? Um, no.
4. Human Mage. Yup, mage again. Missed magic. This time, installed a mod that added over 350 spells. Had fun with those. But eventually it all got to be a bhit much for me. Did a bunch of quest mods.
5. Human Warrior. Swords and speed. That’s my current guy. Right now I am doing the main quest in order to activate a mod that happens after it.

I found the second mage surprisingly hard to let go of. I hadn’t gotten all that attached to my previous characters but this one had a grip on me.

I think it was the quest mods that did it. I’d been through so much with him. Plus I had gotten him to level 25, which was a new high, and I had maxed out all his magic skills so there were no more spells he couldn’t cast.

And there was technically nothing forcing me to make a new character. But playing the game had started to seem like work with him, and that’s a no-go.

So I forced myself to make a new character. I still miss the previous one but it’s fading.

Video games are super emotional sometimes, y’all.

More after the break.

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More on video game addiction

Let’s start from familiar territory for patient readers : I spend all my time playing video games because that’s the closest I can get to being happy.

While I am engaged in my games, my mind is too full of that particularly rich stream of mental and physical stimulation for there to be any space left for neurosis.

Video games therefore push the bad stuff out of my (conscious) mind and suspend me in a world where I feel relaxed and comfortable and safe. There is no danger of overstimulation by a world with far too many unbound and therefore unpredictable variables I am expected to somehow be able to process all at once, in realtime, without any time to think about it.

Maybe I have an input filtration problem. I dunno.

Instead, my world is reduced to just sound and light, and even those are able to be instantly turned off (or turned down) if they get to be too much for me.

Alt-F4 and they stop instantly.

If only real life had that option.

In short, the world of video games is much. much easier for me to handle, as well as being far more rational and fair than the real world.

This result in what I have enumerated before : while I am lost in a video game, I am not anxious. I’m not scared. I’m not depressed. I’m not despairing. I don’t feel overwhelmed. I don’t feel trapped. I don’t feel like harming myself. And I don’t feel like screaming.

Instead, I feel relaxed, and peaceful, and engaged, and calm. The world doesn’t seem like such a scary and hostile place and I feel competent and capable and decent instead of feeling like a nightmare and a disgrace and a very broken robot.

I’m not supposed to be like this. But it’s okay.

(WARNING : SUPER sad song. I mean it. It will break your heart.)

I don’t want to be so broken. I want to be whole and happy and normal. I want to be able to function in the world and have a normal life. The sort of life most people take for granted as the minimum for everyone.

What’s it like to just… go outside? I’ve never been.
And I never will

At least it sure feels that way. Like I am trapped in this hollow shell of a prison cell in downtown Hell til the day I die a miserable and pathetic death.

And nobody will really mourn because I had all those chances to save myself and I did nothing instead so it’s really all my fault.

I chose to die like that.

It must have been what I really wanted all along.

And they’re not exactly wrong.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.