It never fails. I spend all day at work wishing I was at home playing a game. When evening comes around and I can sit down and play anything I want, nothing sounds like fun. Often this is just a case of wanting to do what I can’t, but sometimes it’s because of moodiness.
It’s a lesson I’ve learned before but seem to often have to relearn, and that’s to listen to my moods and not try to force activities. Some nights I’m very much into gaming in general or just a single specific game. Some nights I’m seized by the muse and just want to write or doing some world-building. Some nights I just want to read.
The problem is it always seems like when my mood shifts from an interest in gaming to something else, or from something else to gaming, that I miss the switch. So, I have nights like tonight where I’ve been sitting at my computer trying to find something to do. I’ve played thirty minutes of Minecraft (somewhat half-heartedly), patched up all of the MMOs that I have installed (but haven’t actually played any of them), poked around on Steam and Raptr, checked my email (three times), and caught up on all or my RSS feeds. It is only after wasting an hour, that I’m realizing my interest has shifted and what I really want to do is read a book.
Spot on how I spend many an evening. I can’t count the times when I’ve sat at my computer, wandering from thing to thing, never accomplishing anything, only to realize I’ve wasted all my game time. Enjoy your reading!
It’s the wasting time part that bothers me the most.
Same thing happens to me often too. Usually, it’ll be during the afternoon. I’ll finally have enough free time to really commit and dig in, then, when I sit down, I feel a little apathetic about it. Usually, I’ll go and plug around through Google Reader until I have all of twenty minutes left until it’s time to start dinner. At that point, I usually log off and busy myself elsewhere. Glad to hear I’m not alone, hehe.
You’re definitely not.
I can always tell when I enter these moods too, because that’s when I make alts. I’m so restless, that it doesn’t really matter what game I pop into, it’s not REALLY what I want to do – so I get restless and create an alt. I don’t really want an alt, and typically end up deleting them sooner or later, but that seems to be how I deal with it.
You’re certainly not alone. 🙂
Always good to that other people deal with the same issues. I don’t actually create alts, but I’ll launch an MMO I haven’t touched in weeks to patch it up and maybe login for five minutes to poke around, but usually I just star are the character selection screen and then close the program down.
Reading a book isn’t bad, but I hear playing Dawn of War II is better!
Still haven’t finished the Chaos expansion, I think I stopped right before the last mission.
I guess this must be the case for many gamers, judging by the number of similar responses on this page. Thinking about playing a certain game often makes it easier to get through the day, and gets me really amped up to play it. But when I finally get home, it feels like a chore to play. I’d usually rather do something more relaxing like watching tv or read a book too. It always bothers me that the game just doesn’t feel as fun as I’d imagined it would.
Sometimes that happens to me, and sometimes I end up enjoying playing. It doesn’t bother me much when the experience doesn’t live up to expectation, but feeling that I’ve wasted time trying to force myself to do one thing instead of something I’d be enjoying more is aggravating.
Happens to me far too often. Spare time is too precious, I think I over think it sometimes.
That seems to be a common theme. At least you’re not the only one. 🙂