Lit up by a monitor

[Peci]

You write about an interesting topic, so I want to share my own experiences. My path hasn’t been exactly the same as yours, but it has similarities.

First I want to tell where I’m “coming from”. I’m probably at least a decade older than you, and somewhere the “system” wants me to be: Master’s done, married and my wife is pregnant. I have also always been quite a social nerd, but still a nerd. A great part of my life has been and still is “lit up by a monitor”.

Have you heard the cliché “He/She should stop for a while and think about his/her life”. Well, it works the other way around too. I am quite an analytical person, as you also seem to be. Being alone with one’s thoughts too much AND being an analytical person is a bad combo. Thinking and analyzing one’s life is a good thing, but when you start to ponder the same things over and over again, problems start to look much larger than they really are. When you notice this, it’s best just to get some distraction. Thinking about it doesn’t help, it just makes it worse.

What about gaming then? I don’t have to tell about the good sides of gaming to a person who likes games. The reasons are obvious. But I have noticed that when I have been the most addicted, even obsessed to games (especially MMOs) there was something lacking in my life. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something critical, it could simply be that real life at the moment felt boring for some reason.

In my personal experience using lot of time for gaming isn’t that bad when you are in compulsory school. If you are smart, as you seem to be, good grades come without much effort. The challenges start, when you don’t necessarily _have_ to do anything. University is a great example for this. The target is years away, and you don’t see any noticeable progress. It’s easy to get distracted. This is also the time you don’t _have_ to see other people that much, if you don’t want to.

So all in all, there is at least one important reason to see real people – they work as a reality check. You get to see life in real proportions. If you just read stuff from the screen, and look at the pictures and stories in social media, where people deliberately shape their image to look as good as possible, it gives a wrong picture.

I’m not going to give any cliché tips how to “make friends” but I’d like to give an advice. If you are faced with an option to either a) go somewhere with real people you like or b) stay home and play, try to pick option a. Especially if the b-option always feels “easier”.