Worked Hard? Game Harder

Todays’ Postaday daily prompt is all about what you do to relax. Specifically…

“After an especially long and exhausting drive or flight, a grueling week at work, or a mind-numbing exam period – What’s the one thing you do to feel human again.”

This is an easy one to answer.

In order for me to function as a human being, and not some weird combination of a brain-dead zombie and a stressed-out psychopath I need to absorb a large amount of gamma radiation by way of a TV or computer screen, or to put it more simply, I need to game.

The video game can be anything from a small app on my mobile, to an expansive RPG on my beast of a gaming computer it all as has the same effect. Gaming temporarily takes me away from whatever I am worried, stressed or tired about and gives me something else to think about. Generally speaking, the larger and more thought-provoking the game the more significant the relaxing effect that it has on me.

For example, playing something like ‘Elder Scrolls: Skyrim’, ‘World of Warcraft’ or ‘Simcity 4’ on my PC is much more effective at relaxing me than the mobile game Candy Crush. Though, in my mobile’s defense it’s a lot easier to carry around than all that PC equipment.

For most of my life gaming has been there as escapism or in its more psychologically damaging sense, a way for me to hide away from anything that may have bothered me. Though these days it is mostly escapism… unless that thought is just a way or hiding from…. Well, I’m not getting in to that now.

Time is not even a factor, sometimes just five or ten minutes playing a game can have significant effect on my level of stress.

Though, I have always wondered if I am addicted to Gaming. If in the above text, If I was talking about smoking in the text above rather than gaming you would just think that everything I was feeling was simply a way for my body to get what it needs to fulfill

the craving. Maybe it’s as simple as that. Maybe playing video games makes me calmer and more relaxed because it is functioning in the same way as a cigarette. The gaming is not relaxing me per se, it is the absence of gaming that is causing the stress in the first place, playing that video game just reverts me back to normal.

Well, whatever it is I have no intention of giving it up. After all, it was video gaming that helped me quit smoking as well as getting me through some not great times in the past so it would be rude to abandon it right. <cough> psychological dependence <cough> <cough>

Hmmmm anyway, when I can’t game there is always pizza, and a good film to fall back on.

So what gets you back to being a normal person after a bad day, or week?