 I've spent a lot of time playing computer games, video games, which when I look back on those many hours, when I was in those hours it really seemed like the most fun thing. I was absorbed, I was dedicated, I was immersed, I was putting all my energies into achieving some task and then I would be rewarded when I achieved it. But then looking back at that time, it's very easy to see that as being mostly a waste of time. I don't dismiss all entertainment and leisure activities as being entirely a waste, there's a value, but when I look at the number of hours, the whole days sometimes that I spent absorbed in some imaginary project, it really is like clouds, it's like building dreams on puffs of air that then disappear. All the worlds I conquered and the castles I built and the stories that I lived and it's all in this imaginary ether that adds nothing or a very small amount relative to the time it takes, it adds a very thin reward to my real life. And this is one of the biggest escapist vices which I thankfully am no longer engaged in, but I do sometimes feel this pull to dive back into a game and I don't rule it out that I will never play again, I might dive into a little hole for a day or two at some point and just allow myself to have that escape, but it's a very dangerous hole because it's just consumed so much time. And looking back, I'm amazed that I had that much time and now I can't so easily find such time and wish that perhaps I had used some of that time differently. So what is it about this pull? There's something about it that's calling me and when I think about the call to dive into a game, I think one of the things that was very attractive about the game is the way that it simplifies everything. A game is a system of challenges and rewards which is very pleasant to engage in. We work and struggle through the challenges and then receive the rewards. The challenges are relatively easy since don't have to leave the computer or the TV and the rewards are similarly small. It's all just blinking lights and the way the lights line up makes us happy. But there's something about that that is very appealing. This kind of simple cartoonish, bright, clear, colorful. There's something that I find that it calls out to me, it's like real life is so much the opposite of that where so much in the real world is awkward, undefined, unclear. Challenges are unclear, rewards are often unclear and especially delayed. Whereas in a game you can have these nice colorful clear buttons and you press some buttons, you make some choices, you move around in this colored cartoon world and then you get the flashing lights and the colorful badges that tell you what you have achieved. It's very orderly too, it's a closed system where the game is designed with only certain variables, only certain factors are included and everything else is out of the picture and I can simply focus on this limited set of clearly defined factors. Whereas in real life there is really no limit on all the variables that could be involved. We can learn to focus on the core factors but there's still so much always noise and there's imperfections and variations and so I find that call to simplicity and clarity seems to be part of what attracts me to that world. So sometimes I like to think of how I can possibly apply that to real life. Of course real life is always going to be much more difficult to do anything than pushing buttons and it's never going to be as fun and exciting to do regular mundane things as it is to participate in the high dramatic action of a game and the rewards are not congratulations you have conquered the world, it's small gains but what makes all the difference is that of course real world the rewards are real and it's that simple fact alone that makes everything. The video game world is a world of imaginary rewards that evaporate at the end of the day or as soon as I leave the world of the game but the game of the real world is a game that never ends as long as I'm here they may be small wins today, it may be comparable to a very boring video game where you slowly do mundane tasks and get unclear delayed rewards but what we do get is real.