Small book with big message challenges game addiction

“You’ve got a book to write. Stop playing games,” my publisher tells me in her ever-so-sexy guttural voice.

No big deal; it’s not a Pulitzer Prize winner, but it’s a small book with a big message, we both know.

We also know although we use the term “publisher” loosely, she’s the one who, like me, knows a good thing when we see it and just needs a dotted line.

But what does she know about what my mindless games mean to me; her, a full 20 years younger than me?

Does she know why I am, after all these years, still on Facebook? Games, Baby… I made most of my 1 000 friends through gyrating on poles – with words, of course – getting people to buy my ass in FriendStock more than a decade ago.

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I slayed monsters with another 200 in CastleAge and picked up more in a team sport with Mafia Wars.

I know it all sounds like Greek to you but in “those days” we didn’t have “apps” to download the solitary games you now play on your ownsome on your phone online.

We, with our towers, logged into Facebook, found our games and with a simple keyboard interacted with people from around the world on a “message board”.

Complicated as it sounds, it was simple for us who had only a pic – in my case a flying pig – and words.

But then the world got smarter than us: we now play online; and I do with abandon. Five games to be exact – and I hide behind “I need it for downtime. Tough day, you know”.

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That “downtime” easily becomes two hours of my life every day, if not more. I crossword with “Swedish Hunk”; journey with “Just Kitten”; break down some tiles on my own and Sudoku with myself, as I do with some stupid “Sherlock” game I even spent honest-to-God real money on.

And I’ve picked up not one friend since I started clicking on my phone. There’s nobody out there… So, yes. Addictive personality as I am, I took a major step last night: three games are deleted.

Give me time, please. The other two will go, too.

I need to wean myself off the “me-time” excuse and live life: actually wash the dishes because you didn’t waste hours, Carine. Plant those tomato seedlings overgrowing in their pods.

And write your little book. At least then you will reach real people – again…

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