I remember wanting to be a forum mod when I was like 15 and thought that it would make me cool on the forum. As a grown adult… no way. I am so busy between work, grad school, and my personal life, I have no time for such silliness. I have a lot of respect for mods that donate their own time to run communities.

Probably not a popular view here but I’ve found my hobbies more fulfilling since I started doing stuff other than gaming. Native plant/food gardening, reading books, working out… all of this stuff can be affected by capitalism too of course but I’m less beholden to it. I still game a bit now and then but much less than I used to.

AI-generated articles, books, coloring books for example, are all a thing now. Behind the Bastards did a podcast episode on the latter two.

Remote workers are overall more productive, report a better work-life balance, and suffer less from occupational burnout. It also saves companies money because they don’t have to spend as much on office space.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/intentional-insights/202303/the-surprising-truth-about-remote-work-productivity

My time is the most precious commodity I have. Unfortunately I’m in a career where I can’t work remotely, but if I was I would refuse to go back to the office. Life is too precious to waste it sitting in traffic if you don’t have to.

Stasis was in the first game, yes. You were required to use it several times to be able to pass through a few malfunctioning doors. You get it for free early in the game and don’t have to upgrade it at all to open the doors, preventing the game from soft locking itself.

There also isn’t any guarantee that a quality game will actually sell well, especially if the dev takes a risk and creates something new instead of releasing the 14th installment in a well-established series. It sucks but this is what it looks like when you have gigantic businesses steering video game development.

Did you know they’re based on Japanese history?

https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/how-often-do-happiest-couples-have-sex-it-s-less-ncna828491

Once a week or so is the average. I’m at about the same amount of time in a relationship as you and we’re about once a week. Personally I feel like sex is nice but it takes time and effort and I’m not always in the mood to spend time pleasing someone else (and I’m not going to initiate unless I’m willing to do that). I could see myself having sex a little bit more often if I had a better work-life balance where I felt less pressed for time. This gets me thinking that I should check in with my partner about this topic though!

Here’s my advice as someone that quit drinking about 6 years ago due to my inability to drink responsibly.

Do you want to quit? If you feel like you can’t handle playing a game in moderation, maybe it’s time to think about quitting it entirely. If you feel like playing other genres of games will eventually draw you back into playing more addictive games like WoW, then you could think about quitting that too, it’s up to you. If certain music makes you think about playing WoW and you can’t control yourself if you listen to it , make a sacrifice and don’t listen to it. I avoided bars for years and still don’t really love being around when people are drinking. The sacrifices I make are well worth it though and I’m much much happier as a result.

Have a long, honest conversation with yourself about what you want from life and how video games fit into it. That’s what I did with alcohol and realized I didn’t want to waste my life on stupid shit any more and decided to quit.