I’d done nothing for the last four months but get up, go to work, come home, help clean the house, help make dinner, give the baby a bath, put the baby to bed, hang out with my wife for an hour, go to bed tired, wake up exhausted - rinse and repeat. Every night I sat on the couch and stared at the growing collection of games that I had no time to play but refused to stop buying. Invariably the task of actually picking one, just one, to play to completion would prove too daunting and I would spend the night in search of even more sedentary activity.
Usually this devolved into trolling gaming sites or curled up on the couch, eyes slowly glazing over as the latest in a long list of depressingly banal, and thoroughly unentertaining, rom-coms sent me into an inevitable eight-hour coma.
It was okay though because soon, I was going to take at least part of my life back - I had a plan. I was going to play Fallout 3 as both a good guy and a bad guy (experiencing all the game had to offer both times). I was going to consistently be the dude with the most kills on my deathmatch team in Modern Warfare 2. And lastly, I was going to play through all of those quirky XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare games that my impulse buying seemed powerless against.
At first, these didn’t seem like such tough goals to attain. After all, my love affair with gaming has waxed and waned over the years. I’d fallen out of love at the end of the N64/PS1 era but become smitten once again with Metroid Prime and GTA: Vice City. I’d called it quits after Resident Evil 4 but reconciled with Oblivion.
This was just cyclical, I told myself. It was a phase, right? Why should things be different now?
Well, mostly, because now things are different. I’m different. I don’t get the same thrill out of pursuing achievements, or doing the 15-hour quest that offers you a purple sword for finding every last little collectible. I didn’t feel like sticking it out when it became apparent that God of War is a whole lot of “Whoa, boobs!” and “Decapitation? No way!” or when Ratchet and Clank felt like an upgraded Jet Force Gemini (I love my PlayStation, I really do).
But I didn’t want to give up gaming altogether. That didn’t feel like the right answer - it wasn’t that I felt that all games were childish or stupid (or not worth my time anymore). That wasn’t true either. Whatever the problem was, I needed a solution. I couldn’t keep spending money on games that I had no real intention of playing.
So, just like everything else, I decided that my priorities needed to change. I had to take a different approach to how I got my game on - and since then, I’ve felt a whole lot better about it.
Read on to see how I used five simple rules to do it and how you can too.
Now this list isn’t a cure-all and it’s not supposed to be. But it is a good base to start with if you’re having a rough time adjusting to the full-blown adult thing because, let’s be real here, who isn’t?
With just a little discipline and a lot of patience, you can be a full-time dad and a full-time husband with a full-time job and a not-quite-full-time hobby - thanks to these five simple rules.
Is it hard for you to find time to game? What tips do you have?
