The real reasons behind it all being quiet on the writing front

The other day I wrote a post titled All quiet on the writing front.  It was a little explanation as to some of the reasons as to why I have not been as frequent in my post as I would like to be.  In case you didn't read it (or can't be bothered to click the link about to go and read it) I blamed poorly children, school fundraisers and the busyness of life as a whole for my absence both here and over at Making it Matter.

What I neglected to say though was that sadly am slowly falling back into my old ways of mindlessly wasting hours on pointless and essentially stupid games.  It is like I will not rest till I am at the top of the leader board of every game my Facebook friends play.  Okay every game is a bit of an exaggeration but even one is too many.  The fact that there is also one that no one else I know plays is also sign enough that things are starting to spiral out of control for me once again.

Source

A few years ago when I first discovered the joys of Facebook, I would spend hours and hours (no exaggeration) playing a whole new world of games that had suddenly opened up before me.  I had farms, cafes, shops, cities, the whole works and jerks.  Somehow I managed to exist on only a very short amount of sleep and seemed to program my waking life around what needed to be harvested, sold or hatched.

If I put as much energy into life as I did these virtual worlds my house would be immaculate and my second best seller already on the shelves.  Realising the horror of what was going on (and my obvious addiction) I deleted all games and friends that I knew purely from gaming.  As lovely as some of them were, our only connection was time wasting games and I needed more than that.  All of this was made easier by the fact my computer had crashed and burnt and therefore replaced with my lovely Mac.  I did not want to pollute such beauty with such poison.

Suddenly my days seemed to have more hours in them and I found myself  with much more time on my hands.  Children stopped being late for school because Mummy had to just get these last few fields of carrots harvested.  Dinner started to be served at a reasonable hour and life in general started to run a bit smoother.  To top it all off I suddenly had more time to write and slowly but surely my blog started to grow and readers started to follow.  Life was so good that it started to feel like dreams really could come true.

Anyway fast forward to now and all of that seems to be slowly slipping down the drain.

Over the last few months, but more so the last few weeks I have found my defenses are low and I am letting terrible old habits creep back in.  Thankfully I have managed to limit myself to timed games with limited lives so that I don't have to rely on my non existent self control to make myself stop.  However there are now so many of these to choose from that by the time I have done the rounds of them all the lives have been restored and I can start again.

Mind you before I turn myself completely black and blue from the self beating I feel I deserve for succumbing to the perils of mindless games I should stop and look for a positive spin to put on it all.

hmmmmm.....scratches head.

The only bright side I can come up with at the minute is that at least I am aware of my problem and can do something about it.  Naturally this is easier said than done.  You see I need to look at the reasons behind the attraction to these mindless activities.  Why is is that I feel the overwhelming need to let myself get sucked in to these pointless and time consuming games?  What is it that I am trying to escape? (other than the never ending towers of dishes and piles of clothes waiting to be washed, folded or put away)

So there you have it.  My secret is out and the truth has been told.