(Illustration by Stripes Okinawa)
“Just one more game,” I’ve thought too many times to count, as my trembling finger clicks the digital button that will instantly deal me another enticing set of Spider Solitaire. I innocently fell into this deep abyss sometime last year, when I overheard the ladies in my boot camp fitness class talking about a game app on their phones. My life hasn’t been the same since.
As I lay, draped over the love seat, night after night in our living room, binge-watching morally bankrupt reality shows and disturbing true crime documentaries on our television, my reading glasses mirror my cell phone’s screen, hiding dark circles and crazed eyes. I tap madly at the miniature digital cards, jonesing for that burst of endorphins or adrenaline or whatever it is that happens when I complete the game without spending the 50,000 coins I’ve accumulated to buy help.
Years ago, when binge-watching became a thing, our family spent a rainy weekend holed up in our base house streaming “Breaking Bad.” I felt guilty for being a couch potato, but since the pandemic, sloth-like behavior is the norm.
Nowadays, I not only stream episode after episode of my latest shows, I also multitask to double my entertainment. During sheltering in place, I began scrolling through eBay — creating a watchlist of silly items I had no room to store like vintage ceramic Christmas trees and hobnail glass — when watching endless hours of television day after day wasn’t stimulating enough.
When I made my first purchase, I realized that this behavior could easily slip into compulsive shopping, drain our life savings, and fill our house with useless knickknacks, so I looked for games to play on my phone instead.
My first mistake was downloading Toy Blast. The geek coders who created this game not only made it super fun, they implanted some kind of irresistible stimuli that makes it impossible for players to turn away from their device until they run out of credits, alone and wide-eyed at 3 a.m.
I thought playing more socially acceptable, intellectual games would offer healthier brain stimulation along with something to brag about, so I began playing Blockudoku, Sudoku and the free New York Times games. Finally, I could hobnob with my social media friends who posted about solving this week’s Wordle in two tries, and I could beat my husband’s Blockudoku score.
However, when my failure to solve a Connections puzzle became a crushing blow that sent me into a spiral of self-loathing, I thought Spider Solitaire would provide a happy medium — a game that was not so silly that I’d feel the need to keep it a secret, but not so intellectual that I would hate myself if I lost.
Unfortunately, Spider Solitaire was the perfect fit. It filled my need for extra entertainment, its repetitiveness was soothing and it was complex enough to make me feel smart, but random enough to protect my ego. This perfect combination spelled doom for my already weakened circadian rhythms.
Soon, a new dysfunctional habit was formed. My husband, an early bird, would bid me good night around 9:30 pm, leaving me on my love seat with the television clicker and the snoring dog, where I was free to indulge my addiction in cozy isolation until the wee hours.
Before long, the resulting nightly sleep deprivation left me in a perpetual zombie-like state, unable to function at my age level, much less my potential. The time had come, I decided. Time to reverse the damage that the pandemic foisted upon my circadian rhythms.
This New Year, my resolution is to reinstate my previous routine of plugging my phone into the kitchen charger after dinner, not to be accessed until the next morning. I’ll still allow myself nightly binge-watching, which I now consider a basic human necessity after a day of tedious work. If sudden withdrawal causes me to crave a secondary form of entertainment, I’ll limit my activities to innocuous pursuits that won’t interfere with sleep, self-esteem or human relationships, like crochet or filing my nails.
Through it all, I’m learning that folding my hand and walking away from the table can sometimes be the best strategy to winning the game of life.
Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com
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