• 14 Dec, 2025 *

i have finished a large project, i finally have a break. i finished a week ahead of schedule too, so this time in particular feels earned. so i decided yesterday to be as lazy as possible. no coding. no learning.

i, as a consequence of burnout and the objectives described above, spent a large portion of the day scrolling through steam. only scrolling - i bought nothing, i played nothing. while this is within the parameters of the goal (nothing productive was accomplished) i feel i failed in the spirit of the exercise.

part of this is because of the fact that i am not, as it is called, a gamer. i don’t want to spend a lot of money, if any, on a videogame, because i will likely not spend much time with it. i don’t know much about videogames or what is available in the first place.

what i do know about are mobile games, specifically all the ones i had on my phone until recently and then deleted. and then reinstalled. and then promptly deleted again.

they are almost all designed to be addictive; i can feel that as i play them. one in particular felt like i was just compelled to click the buttons to see the numbers rise, without much in the way of other game mechanics. perhaps this is just the price of a free product. there is no upfront cost, so they have to convince you to pay or watch more ads. they have to convince you to open the app. and open the app again. everyday. there’s an event. there’s a new banner. don’t forget to do your dailies. there’s a new card, a new character, you could miss out! gambler’s fallacy and so on and so forth.

however, i’ve gotten the impression that many games with full price tags also operate like this. the grass might be greener on the other side, but only if i squint.

my online experience is often as if i went to the store to buy some simple dessert - oatmeal raisin cookies, for example. but it seems like all they have is giant double fudge cookies the size of a toddlers head. well sure, i’m sure that if i kept looking, if i dug on the bottom shelf, if i sat down on the dusty floor and reached past everything else, i could find something that wouldn’t make me sick. but it becomes much easier to leave the store empty handed. which is disappointing. i only wanted a small treat for a job well done.

perhaps, if this is the metaphor, i need to spend more time with my own creative projects, i need to learn to bake. or i need to stop hanging out in supermarkets and start attending local bake sales in my community. (i’ll stop stretching this metaphor now, any more and it might snap)

i did pick up my guitar again the other day. i did find that more rewarding than any blinking puzzle game. its a shame that lesson didn’t stick.