Finding Balance

I have noticed lately, and it's partly to blame on the fun video games on Facebook.com, that I'm struggling to stay in balance. Balance means not spending so much time on line that your accounting suffers, or your relationships with the 3-D people suffer, or your career suffers. Each day has to have some fitness time, some spiritual time, some intellectual time, some sexual time. Because we are complex people. We are like gardens. In a garden, you can't just water, and never have sunshine. You can't fertilize too much or too little. You can't let the weeds eat all your nutrients.

Video games are a lot like weeds. They can steal your focus for hours on end. Especially if you are compulsive like I am and can't break the inertia to go do something else. Sometimes I'm relieved when the game goes down for maintanence. That means I can finally go to bed. Or go do laundry. Or water the garden. Too much of anything is not that great. You can't write for 5 hours straight. Or juggle for four hours a day. Or knit till your hands feel like falling off. Gotta mix it up a little.

Learn A New Game

I think computer games have a plus side. You are challenging your mind in new ways. I recently started playing Evony (which I found via Facebook). Unlike some of the Facebook games, which are too juvenile. I found Evony appeals to a side of me that likes to be challenged. It's a strategy game. If you go there looking for quick action you'll surely be disappointed. In the game you are building a city and you can only build one thing at a time. That alone seems to drive a lot of gamers nuts. They want to build the whole city in 5 minutes and it doesn't work that way. So my theme for today is Learn a New Game. It can be on the computer, or it can be boards game, yard games, card games or whatever strikes your fancy.