Gaming was very much a pastime rather than a recharging time. Worse, with games it’s too easy to get sucked into a thread that keeps me up well past bedtime, in which case I’m more tired then next day, not less.
Other hobbies accumulate progress, and are sometimes more open to participation by friends and family. Now I spend a lot of time gardening or doing other hobbies, and more of my screen time comes when I’m resting or trying to limit my skin cancer risks (1 pm instead of 7 pm).
I’d take it one step further and say life also has compounding returns. What you invest today yields returns tomorrow. Not all hobbies yield the same returns.
Gaming as a hobby offers a flat return. The time you put in is the time you get out. There is no progress outside the bounds of the game (except for some fuzzier returns about societal commentaries and personal growth on par with the returns on a fantasy novel - or the future returns of making a game yourself).
The returns of a hobby like glass blowing is the improved ability to create on the other side of engaging in the hobby. Every piece you make sets the stage for the next piece. It’s a compounding return where the investment you make today is part of the return you get out of tomorrow’s investment.
I still play games, watch TV, and read fiction. But I no longer engage with them the way I used to. Now I engage with hobbies that yield compounding returns because tomorrow’s happiness is just as important as today’s.
There's a reason why most artistic pursuits are either completely nonviable as a profession or are a lottery where the top 0.01% become superstars and the rest barely break even or lose money. When the thing one 'produces' is something people will do for fun, supply massively outstrips demand, and more entries into the hobby doesn't produce more valuable items, it produces more tat that nobody wants.
EDIT: I guess it's worth mentioning a minor exception for basic life skills that some people do as hobbies, like sewing, gardening, DIY or cooking, but those have diminishing returns. You can probably learn everything you need to know to not be reliant on tradesmen or vendors for those sorts of things in a year, and beyond that you get stuck in the same place as the hobby craftsman or hobby artist, where the chance of real financial success is basically nil so you're just doing it because it's an activity you personally enjoy.
But where I’m getting tripped up: today I smoked out of a glass pipe I made. I can’t smoke out of my level 80 night elf druid.
Nor can I combine my level 80 night elf druid with my Diamond IV rank in Halo to get a compounded return. Those two games and skills are isolated. But I can combine what I read in John Dalton’s A New System of Chemical Philosophy with glass blowing to make interesting things that bring me joy (I.e. replicating experiments of John’s at home with purpose built glassware)
It’s not just production for productions sake, or production for the sake of society. It’s increasing my capacity to produce for myself. I feel like I’ve grown in a way that I can build on tomorrow after a session of practicing this class of hobby.
Maybe the distinction truly is arbitrary - but something about this path feels significantly more fulfilling the further down it I go vs. the literal years I spent in virtual worlds. In the virtual worlds the potential felt roughly constant while these hobbies feel like they have an ever expanding horizon of potential.
But this isn't a problem specific to games; this is a problem with predatory marketing. If you'd instead spent that time playing a wide variety of shorter experiences without grindy filler, I wonder if you'd feel the same way. Maybe niche hobbies don't have the attention of same predatory actors because there's not the incentive for them to do so, but that's not an argument for productivity, that's just an argument for obscurity.
I play games with friends and coworkers online that I wouldn't otherwise interact with much, and it helps us stay in touch with each other and foster a relationship that would likely otherwise burn out.
If I was playing the games alone, I'd maybe regret it over playing a different and "better" game, but I'd rather do inefficient things with friends than efficient things alone a lot of the time.
Lots of hobbies still tackle basic human problems like communication and organization, and getting any exposure to these is not only good, but it might take some of the pressure off by not mixing multiple things you struggle with at the same time.
Not all games, and not for all definitions of playing them.
Some games are tests and potentially builders of skill of various kinds, and the investments made are compounding: self control in the face of stress, economic decision-making, system design, tactical thinking in 3D space, and so on. Some games allow us to go Elsewhere and we change profoundly as a result.
Games aren’t created equally!
Also, particularly in video games, each time you engage in it you get better. I've been recently trying to get back into video games after over a decade of off time. The gap I feel is tremendous. Gamers have advanced so far ahead that a good gamer from 2000s will have incredible amount of trouble playing newer games.
This viewpoint is destructive. Your actions affect your future and the futures of the people around you. They are not futile. When someone learns to play the piano, it becomes a tool that can be used in countless applications in a person's life. When you learn to wall jump in Metroid, you learn to wall jump in Metroid and maybe in some other games. The variety of application just isn't there. It's just not comparable.
PS: Used those quotes because I don't think people have clear idea about what they mean by those terms.
They are generally soft skills because no games really let you physically do things yet, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful skills.
If that sounds weird, remember that a number people who were considered wise claimed that the "real world" is not as "real" as you'd assume and life is transient. And they'd probably say that it's not worth spending the effort to learn "real life", "productive" skills since they don't translate to the "meta-real-world" anyway, and the more you put effort into improving your "real world" skills, your "meta-new-world" skills suffers.
It feels like I might be paraphrasing some verses of the Bible at this point...
I don't really have a bias against games and it's puzzling to me that most commenters here completely misread my comment to that extent. I used to be an avid gamer, until real life took over. Just speaking from personal experience having logged thousands of hours on and off Steam. It probably helped keep me sane, but I have a real hard time pinpointing how it has affected/improved/touched my current life now that I don't play games as much.
I second dota’s take in a sibling comment, it was insightful. Not all games are created equally.
I don't get it, why is that not enough? Why can a hobby not be about only me and my personal growth/goals. Its a hobby, what I am failing to understand is why does it need to be productive? If I stick to playing challenging games, I feel a sense of growth which unfortunately I cannot articulate. That is enough for me, but yeah YMMV.
I think games have moved away from precision challenges to more abstract ideas. Like Doki Doki Literature Club, I have no f'ing clue whatever that is all about but I am experiencing it. Challenge for me comes from the fact that it relies on peoples knowledge of tropes to enable different story progressions. I don't have that because last game I played was in like 2009.
Another game I am having trouble with is watch dogs 2. I know, AAA game, made for less than pro gamers. But again, they are relying on my knowledge of AAA games for conveyance. I regularly have moments where I am thinking, what do I do? where do I go? Now I have played GTA vice city, so open world is not an alien concept. But the scale of it all, its just magnificently complex.
Edit: I occurs to me all this can just be the fact that I suck at video games. But I used to be good at them, that's the point.
Edit 2: This video explains my feelings better than me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw
> [...] Now I engage with hobbies that yield compounding returns because tomorrow’s happiness is just as important as today’s.
You may not realize it, but this defer-happiness-to-the-future attitude is what the original article is recommending against:
Putting things off for the future is the biggest waste of a life. You deny yourself the present by promising the future. You’re relying on the future, which is outside of your control, and abandoning the present, which is the only thing you can control. The whole future lies in uncertainty – live immediately.
Aye - I agree with you. The point I was trying to articulate: hobbies with linear returns traded tomorrow’s increased happiness for today’s happiness.
Hobbies with compounding returns still get me today’s happiness! But, after investing in that type of hobby, tomorrow I’ll be capable of more “hobbies” than I am today. Especially when hobbies begin to cross-over (I.e. chemistry and glass blowing)!
Blowing glass is a hobby. Today's multi-user video games are a competition.
That's the real difference.
Unless you're exceptional, no one cares about either one. So probably best to do whatever makes you happy.
Of course you will learn even more if you read essays, but I think if reading books in general is widely regarded as a good thing to do, it's for good reason.
I think it’s possible to weave socialization and accumulated progress into the gaming experience and have it be a fully enriching hobby. But many (most?) single player experiences are just a pastime for me, as you say.
He even admits it is theoretically possible to do it differently, but also observed people not doing it differently in practice.
For example, playing a game, or browsing youtube, or scrolling through social media, or reading the news, or even browsing HN for that matter you may think of as something you do to relax. It could be, however, that actually, doing some woodwork, or practicing a musical instrument, or learning a language, or going for a walk in nature, empirically recharges you a lot better, and you actually enjoy the days when you get to do these activities a lot more - and it makes your time outside those activities more enjoyable too.
These are just examples, it may not work for you in the same way, and all of these activities can be done in 'recharging' and 'non-recharging' ways perhaps. The important thing here is that what you think recharges you and what empirically actually recharges you may be very different things.
Many games turn into jobs. The sense of fun degrades over time, and the self recriminations aren’t baseless.
When I realized I needed a change I latched onto the fact that most people wouldn’t understand my excitement for an accomplishment in a video game, it wasn’t something I could bond with people over. But if I stopped fucking around and put that energy into programming, I could have accomplishments people understood (that turned out to only be only partly true. I still have programming accomplishments that my peers and communities don’t understand).
Bonding over games has shifted a bit since then. I know a hard of hearing kid who socializes online because conference calls make everyone have the same problem: differentiating two speakers is difficult. Everything sounds like hearing aids sound.
But it’s still easier for people to comment on my garden than whether I have finished the Thieves guild or stormcloak quest line in Skyrim, as an elf.
By this measure reading books would also just be a pastime? I see gaming more like an interactive story (especially singleplayer).
I see multiplayer experiences as just a past time, and singleplayer experiences the one that can have a meaning and are valuable by themselves.
I think the key point here is what singleplayer games are we talking about, because the offer is more varied than ever.
It depends on if you ever think you will regret it or not. I thought the same thing 10 years ago when I was spending years playing games and having fun. Now it feels like I wasted a colossal amount of time no matter how much fun it was at the time. I'd never made that choice knowing what I know now.
I cannot put a finger on it, but what is the difference between (a) reading a newspaper, magazine, book (fiction or non-fiction) and (b) playing video games or streaming films / TV shows? I cannot put a finger on it, but (a) reading activates some part of my brain that (b) streaming does not. Why? I'm not sure. I never read any research about it. One thing I can say: Watching documentaries is different than other stuff. Again: Not sure why. It might only be me and my brain that feels this way.
Also, this part: <<I suddenly felt more excitement about programming projects I had started but not finished, reading books, cello practice, little projects around my house and garden.>> Again, I cannot put a finger on it, but what really is the difference between these activities and playing video games or streaming films / TV shows? On the surface, not much, but the emotional satisfaction is so different when finishing a cello piece or novel versus a streamed season of a TV show.
[1] The flipside is that it can teach you bad habits as well. If the result of the game does not matter in any way, you have no incentive to try hard at it, and can just coast, turn the game off when you're frustrated etc. This is not how real-life is (coasting and difficulty avoidance don't work as well), so games can teach damaging habits. It's better in team multiplayer games, because in-game peer pressure can make you get out of your comfort zone.
Not to mention the benefit of say reading about your country's history, as opposed to the history of some ficitonal world in a video game - with history books, you're learning about the things which actually happened and have had a direct, large impact on your life and the world around you.
Novels, while being ficitonal, allow you to explore inner worlds of other people and complex interactions between them (and there's nothing more complex in the universe and at the same important to us than humans and interactions between them), something that games are severely lacking (cue in people telling me about Nier Automata and one or two other story-based games which are approaching the level of a bad novel).
Most video games are spatially-oriented and are basically more sophisticated version of children playing tag, football or similar simple games focused around interactions in 3d space. And the ones that are not that, i.e. that try to be about humans and not simple spatial and temporal relationships, basically suck for the most part. It's clear that the medium is not meant for them.
Also, you sound extremely prejudiced and close minded: > Novels, while being ficitonal, allow you to explore inner worlds of other people and complex interactions between them (and there's nothing more complex in the universe and at the same important to us than humans and interactions between them) How do you even argue with that? Can you somehow support this claim? Though from reasoning like this i can deduce that you must hate House of Leaves, and kinda understand why you dislike Nier Automata.
Arguably, any consumption activities are better done when old, and investment activities when young. Effort when young pays off with tons of compounding over your lifespan. Effort when old is not as important, and so pure consumption non-productive activities are probably better enjoyed when old, are they not? Especially if it is something like videogames that doesn't exactly require some great physical abilities.
Nah, that is not how it works. Effectively, you want people to tell you about some grand plan they would executed it, if they did not played.
The way it works when you stop gaming/reading too much facebook etc is that you start being more active in other areas. You get more fit, you suddenly read more about history without planning to, you do crafts here and there, learn to draw or play music instrument on and off. And overall you feel calmer, more creative, sleep better. And after after months/years it accumulate and you look back happy. It does not feel wasted, cause you have that picture on the wall, your dad has your the thing you created, you are really proud about that song you can play.
An adult who is free to do anything and chooses to spend a lot of time gaming has a higher opportunity cost and a higher likelyhood of regret later.
I see this more of a waste of teenage years time than playing videogames with friends
but enough about being in an MMO guild
if that's what you like, yeah. I prefer to have sat with my friends playing bomberman or fighting games, laughing at each other when they died, eating popcorn and chilling.
What about people who read a lot in their childhood / teen years. Their minds seem to be wired differently than those who play video games. (Probably mistaken cause and effect on my part...)
I look back on that stuff fondly, and I feel like doing that stuff helped me a ton today.
Whoa, that's a bold statement!
I know what I want for myself in five years. I don't and to large degree can't know what me-in-five-years will wish I had wanted.
My approach is to go for the things I want for myself now, while always being cognizant of providing options and opportunities for the future. It's not perfect, and it never will be because I don't have perfect foresight. But it works well enough.
I wrote a short blog post on the idea of judging your past self based on your current values: https://www.samvitjain.com/blog/regret/. Curious what you think!
However upon introspection, i realize that this regret is always based on not wanting to work more now.
edit; to quote "The Idler" from the RT-11 operation system kernel source code (and my new favorite quote).."To be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy"
Everytime I finish a project I ask myself was it worth it. It's like buying a new device, you want it until you have it.
I don’t think you should blame yourself for ‘wasting’ that time. I’m sure past you would have considered it a waste to do what you do now.
There’s many things I may wanted to do differently, but I’d never actually do so since they brought me where I am now.
I really wish I had started with it when I was in my 20s, ideally as an early teenager or even kid, when breaking some bones is not something which keeps you concerned for many weeks.
I wish I could drive into the alps and ride the trails, but I'm currently "recovering" from a crash which ripped a tendon. In quotes because it can't really be fixed and I have to see if the system is still usable enough. But it is enough for having a lot of fun outside.
Today at 17:00 I was completely tired laying in my bed after watching hours of a TV series, half asleep and feeling badly rested, was struggling to motivate me to ride. But at 18:00 I pulled myself up and went, and I had a blast during those 1:30 hours, was even making screams of joy (I ride alone, so it's no show, but a feedback expression to myself). I was congratulating me for making the decision to go and ride, had super beautiful views of the nature at wonderful 27°C (80°F). Dry but planted fields, juicy green forests, sounds of birds and insects, breathable, clean air, warm wind being felt by the hairs on the legs and arms, what an experience.
I have a lavalier mic attached to my backpack's breast strap and an app where I can press record, to record notes of 1 minute length. I will quote you one of the recordings from today:
rec60s--1656265743723--19-49-03.q128.mp3: "Well, thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you that you overcame yourself to then get up, go out and ride the bike, because it was really, really nice! Thank you very much! It was good, it was worth it, you have to do this, always, always. Always force you to do this. Regardless of how weary, how tired, how uninspired, you rode extra. Extra, because it was so nice. Other ways, new ways, new trails"
With "extra" I meant that I had initially decided to ride my minimum of 23 km in a relatively dull track which I know I will be able to complete under any circumstances (except when I have migraine), but then decided to leave the asphalt, ride up a hill through a forest into some fields, where I then took this photo.
Maybe I'm a psycho for talking to me like that, but I know that I switch contexts very hard so that I'm a different person when I do different things and tend to forget the experiences. So this was a "thank you" and reminder from the biking me to the baseline me. Usually I only record new ideas or things I get reminded of which I forgot.
I wasn't really sure if I was going to ride today, I didn't yesterday, because I rode so hard and long distances last week that by butt was really hurting, and no amount deer tallow cream (Xenofit Second Skin) seemed to be helping. But it turned out that I had zero issues with it today.
Most of the riding time is a relatively hard exercise with heavy breathing and lots of sweating. No video game will ever be a replacement for such a thing.
But I know that I very likely already have my best years behind me (and lost them to a screen).
It's a great way to think about it.
Edit: I just tested it with the recorder app on my Pixel 3 (played back via headphones pressed against the phone's mic) and it was able to transcribe it with almost no errors, so there is hope.
A very inspiring story.
I agree with your first point though. Perhaps the OP doesn't think playing COD is a great way to pass the time -- but video games are certainly not a waste of your life if you really enjoy them. This applies to any hobby.
Ultimately we have a short time here and it's up to us personally to decide what is a waste of our time and then act accordingly. Judgement on these efforts is hardly effective. RVing with my wife sounds like an incredibly suffocating experience -- trapped with another person in such a small space -- akin to buying a boat and spending 3 years "sailing", without seeing land for many days on end -- just figuring out what to do with the day when you wake up. But some people yearn for it, and that's great.
1. It's not cheap to park a RV anywhere. Pretty much every road is off limits to overnight parking. Those fines are very pricy too. (Watch Something about Schmidt.)
2. Living out of an RV is a pain. Stuff breaks down, and I don't know of one public street, or parking lot, that allows the owner to repair their disabled vechicle.
3. They get horrid gas mileage, and their are state/federal taxes on gas. Registration, Insurance. Plus because they are on the road, they are more likely to get one of those ever increasing traffic tickets. A parking ticket in SF is 80.00. Crazy! (Neusome has a bill on his desk that would do away with late fees on parking tickets. I hope he signs it.)
4. RV-ing is fine, but they pay in indirect ways.
5. I worked with a guy who tried to live cheap in a small camper truck. Every other night he would get a knock, and flashlight shined into his eyes. It was always, "move along, or I will ticket you!". He tried the shower thing at 24 hour Whatever gym. Once the manager figured he was just using the showers, he was told he needed to workout. (Yea--I can't believe how petty some people are.). We worked construction, and the last thing he needed was a workout before 7:00 am.
Another guy I knew tried the RV lifestyle. He too was harrsssed by cops. Cops would tell him straight up he was not breaking any laws, but if he didn't move along he would get another ticket. Oh yea, the next sentance I'm about to write still gets my blood pressure up. One night my friend was sound asleep on a rural county road. He tried to hide. He knew the drill. He did have a 25 lb dog. This cop pounded on the side of his camper. He opened the door, and the dog growled. The officer took out his side arm and shot the dog. I have so little respect for some of these cops.
The last time I looked at what it would cost to park/sleep in a private RV park it was $79 a night.
This is in the Bay Area though.
Their is a pilot program in the Bay Area for low income RV'ers. I believe it's near the bay? It basically a lot that RV'ers can park for free. It's only available to county residents though.
My point is uless you have money, that whole RV lifestyle can be a nightmare.
Walmart used to let RVers park overnight. I have a feeling that privilege is gone. America the great? Our biggest concern is finding a place to sleep.
Off topic, but the one thing Russia did well under Communism is build apartments. I didn't realize just how many units they built until I saw pictures of Ukraine.
I mean, I guess I don't really play CoD vs more narrative games, so I can't speak to that specifically, but I greatly credit my time in virtual worlds with a lot of my intellectual flexibility.
In my experience there's a palpable benefit to exploring impossible worlds and carrying out a personal story shaped by my actions within them. Making hard decisions that I would never be faced with in reality informs me about myself, and encountering stimuli well beyond what reality has on tap conditions me to look beyond the box in what reality does throw at me.
I can't really say that any other medium or activity offers the same mental exercise as an engrossing game.
To each their own, and people are welcome to decide that they found a greater purpose in a national park vs a spaceship exploring unknown worlds. But people are also welcome to find greater purpose in the other.
As someone who does (though I find variety the spice of life and also do enjoy national parks - just not as much), it's interesting the ways in which people pass judgment on each other, and themselves.
I'd value a gamer spending decades in video games over a monk spending decades mediating and in a vow of silence, and yet I suspect given the general fetishizing of traditionalism and demonizing of modernism many would disagree and see one as pursuit of a higher truth and the other as a pursuit of nihilism.
It's useful to check in with oneself as to if our choices are actually giving us value or are an escape from things that would give us greater value. But if they really do give you value, then value them. And if they do not, don't make the mistake of thinking that equation would hold true for others as well.
This irks me wrong, because it does not distinguishes between reality and fantasy. None of the in-game decisions is hard the way real life decisions are hard. Just like, murder on TV is not the same thing as real life one. Real life combat situations frequently changes people, makes them bitter and forever angry or give them PTSD. People regret their real life decisions till the end of their lives - that is why those decisions are said to be "hard". Video games dont do the same thing.
You are not facing equivalent of real-life decisions. None of the decisions you made in game had any real consequences to the outside world and you know it.
Most people when asked would say they wouldn't obey authority over their own conscience. And yet if actually put into Milgram's experiment most would likely result in different outcomes than they'd think.
The idea has certainly been put forward that there's a merit to the self-knowledge gained in real tragedy. A Hemingway-esque self-discovery in the trenches.
Arguably we could extend that to conclude that given the relative timeline of humanity, that anyone who doesn't end up slowly devoured by a pride of lions in the savannah or sees several of their children die to the elements hasn't really discovered their 'real' human self.
IMO that's a BS argument.
What games engage isn't the self-discovery of who we are, but the self-discovery of who we would like to be.
And frankly I think that pursuit in fictional worlds is both more worthwhile and of import than the lessons available to be 'learned' in a foxhole.
I can honestly say that some of the hard decisions in games had me reevaluating my personal philosophies much more than my experiences making harrowing medical decisions for family or life altering changes.
Reality is seldom ideologically binary enough as to prompt extrapolated self-reflection on the principles of decisions as opposed to the relatively much greater focus on the complexities of their fallout.
Triviality is a tool for archetypical self-reflection, and it is precisely the low stakes setting that allows for such rich self-discovery.
Not facetious - for me it's all about whether you build memories,and whether you'll regret time later.
Mass effect, deus ex, back in the day Another World or Sierra's space quest and Rama etc - these are important memories and experiences to me.
Overwatch (nearest call of duty analog I played, maybe), let alone all the phone games, are just time killers in the sense I do them to pass the time. They are games I actively regret playing moments, not even years after I'm done.
This winter I picked up all three Mass Effects and played the first two through for the first time. Loved them, and will definitely get to the third when the snows come around again.
I think Deus Ex is one of those games every gamer should play through - it's like reading a classic - so what if the graphics and gameplay are a bit outdated, the philosophical debates with psychotic AI alone are worth it!
The next 20 years are going to be quite the wild ride, even in contrast to the past 20.
Sure we've had a few gems here and there, but in general it's much more profitable for a company to cap any novel, exploratory gameplay or story at 10 hours, so that after a day of play it just becomes another online interactive generating subscription and DLC purchases.
Will AI be significant in improving game story quality and play-ability? Provide us with worlds we cannot even imagine, infinite explorations?
Or will AI be used as an excuse to avoid employing expensive and risky human imagination? Instead push everything to a bland middle-ground, lowest common denominator based on the safest and most profitable options determined from the training set...
We're already there, considering most games people play are some kind of optimized hyper-addictive candy crush with guns.
Sure, I can imagine a new Elder Scrolls installment where each npc was actually unique, with meaningful interactivity possible with every contact. Where every side quest is challenging, interesting, and fills out the story universe with depth.
But will we actually get that? Technology tends to be used to increase breadth rather than depth. Quantity, rather than quality. What we'll get is more of the same, Skyrims with ever bigger and more realistic (but not deeper) worlds, optimized to find the cheapest and easiest way to keep you subscribing.
If you worked hard to improve at Overwatch and your goal was to make it to top 500 on the ladder, or join an amateur team and play in tournaments, etc - it's no longer the same time waster, you have goals to work towards.
Does any of that matter once you stop playing and do something else? Not really, but you can be proud of yourself, or thankful that you learned something about yourself, etc. I suppose it's about being active vs passive.
You didnt have that information when you were young and your worldview is fluid.
The idea that you can operate with the same amount of information when you were young with your brain and social circles still in development is a fallacy in itself.
I did think the same way as you only to realize that my caring for intellectual and social stimulation was sparked due to its lack in the past.
You have no guarantee that you would develop it in the first place if you would have taken a different path.
And even older you likely wont care much at all about those things and think you wasted your life away pursuing those goals instead of enjoying it.
GAMES ARE FOR CHILDREN AND A WASTE OF YOUR LIFE :)
Getting outside is the best thing you can do for your health and the dog park next to a busy city street is not going to cut it.
Thinking like "But what if everyone did that?" or "is it fair that not everyone can do that?" are just ways to get you to 'agree' to take away other people's freedom or yours.
For instance that's why I quit social media (excepting intermittent HN). I really enjoyed it in the shortrun, but I wasn't happy with what I was getting out of it in the longrun. We all convince ourselves we're making an "impact" by expressing ourselves, but I think that's something we all know is just a self delusion - we're just one voice ranting alongside a billion others doing the same. By contrast I've also spent tens of thousands of hours dedicated to chess, and it feels extremely good in both the short and longrun.
However, there are many local minima in entertainment and life and many great things require going through a learning curve and preparation. Even the greatest couch enthusiast can remember, say, a magical moment during a pickup basketball game, and surely those kinds of moments are happening in this city right now...
I would see a pickup basketball game as “pissing my time away”. I don’t like basketball and loathe playing competitive sports.
Further, I really enjoy doing things by myself. I often play video games to challenge myself — it’s me versus a previous version of me.
Just goes to show ya — those “magical moments” are highly personal and defined by the things that give a person joy. And for some folks — like me — that includes video games!
I think the reply would be: If you get joy and fulfillment from gaming, do that instead of working really hard to earn money that you don’t need. If you think you’d rather RV than work & play games, go RV now instead of putting it off for later/retirement.
It’s easy to delude yourself.
Yes, I call this the "Dave Ramsey Syndrome". You know, he wants everyone to save money and not spend it so they can be debt free and have millions of dollars in the bank. But if everyone did that the economy, our consumer economy, would crash.
And you are right. I have been living in my Van since before the pandemic. It is impossible to find camping spaces now in national parks and even the Wal Marts are starting to get pissed at all the RVs again. These people too, these rich people, sit out on BLM lands longer then allowed, because it is free and they could most likely afford an RV park.
I've been doing #vanlife on and off since 2012. Camping spaces in most national parks were already hard to find most of the time. Municipalities and Walmarts made overnight parking illegal in their lots in many places years or even decades before the pandemic.
What you're describing is real, but not new.