You’ve spent the day showing old men how to print a .pdf. You’ve re-sent the same replies, again, because you’re the only one who reads the emails you send. You’ve then spent more time responding to text messages, about the same emails, answering phone calls, because they can’t wait for a text response.
It’s been a day. You’re finally home.
The Urge to Nap
You fight the urge to nap, because God knows, you’ll close your eyes for just a few seconds, and then wake up at 3am, losing your entire night of free time.
So, you sit at your computer, or on your bed with your handheld in… uh, hand. That’s when it gets you. You don’t know what to play.
You could try to finish that one game that you’ve been playing on and off for a year or two. But you don’t really remember what was going on, and you don’t really remember the controls. You should just restart it from the beginning, again.
The Backlog Problem
Or, or, or! You can play one of those new games you just bought on sale. The one that KIND OF looked interesting. The one you couldn’t pass up, because it was so cheap.
You don’t want to commit to that game just yet, because you bought some other games on sale last week. There was also that one you bought a few months ago, because you saw a YouTube video about it. They said it was a hidden gem. You couldn’t let a gem pass you by.
You then spend the few hours you have away from the daily monotony, doom scrolling, trying to find a game out of the dozens, hundreds, thousands, that you own.
Therapy, Sort of
Instead of scrolling, you should be talking to your ChatGPT therapist about your shopping addiction.
The way you spend a little money, here and there, and there and here again, all in a bid to try to get a little serotonin. You need something to keep going. You need something to distract you from the fact that your life didn’t turn out the way you planned or thought it would.
My real therapist asked me if I felt like I needed to keep seeing her, so I stopped. That’s why my new therapist prescribes me two half-priced games and says
“Call me in the morning.”
Happy Enough
But you’re happy enough, right? Your life is a little boring, but it’s peaceful.
Aside from work, your life is pretty drama free. You get to do whatever you want now, even if you don’t feel like doing anything at all.
Life could be better, but it could also be worse. It HAS been worse.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
Scrolling the Feeds
You pick up your phone. Thank God. No messages from work. You forgot to turn on Do Not Disturb, but luckily, nothing. You’re unneeded for once.
You turn on DND. Open the vertical feeds. Dogs, cats, fail videos, scrolling, scrolling, hot girl doing an outfit of the day, random dance video, politics, game review. This dude again. All he does is complain.
You comment, “TLDR, nobody is ever happy with anything.”
You then hit “not interested” on the video. You don’t want to screw up your carefully built algorithm.
You finally reach the end of social media, there’s no more videos, you hit the bottom.
Victory! In all actuality, your phone’s battery was going to die, but you don’t like to use it plugged in, because the cord blocks where you like to rest your pinky.
The Cycle Continues
You then grab your Switch, let’s see what we can play on that one.
You give a quick scroll. Nothing stands out.
You open the eShop, let’s see what’s on sale.
Ooh, that looks kind of fun. It’s only $9.99. You might as well buy it, the sale ends in 30 days, you don’t want to miss out.
Now you’re waiting for it to download. You’re out of space. You now must choose a game that you don’t play to delete, to make room for the new one.
The game finally downloads. You launch it.
Wow, this intro is long, there’s a lot of text. They’re really leaning into setting up this world’s backstory.
You read one line. Next.
You read another line. Next.
You read another line. Next.
Your eyes get heavy. Blinking is slow.
You read another….
You’re asleep.
3:26 a.m.
You wake up. Your bedroom lights are still on. The windows in this room are blacked out so you never know what time it is.
You’re thankful you didn’t sleep the entire night away. You grab your phone; it lights up as you pick it up.
It’s only 3:26am.
Fuck. You slept your night away.
And tomorrow, you’ll show another old man how to print a PDF.