(Okay, before you wonder, the goofy title is a reference to an old video game.)
There's this pretty cool game called "The Sims". It's as profoundly simple as it is addictive. You create this group of people—maybe a family, or just a bunch of roommates—you design a house for them on a limited budget (which is really fun!) and then you set them along to live their lives. Quite frequently you nudge them along to maybe study their profession (so they can advance at work) or exercise (so they can be stronger, healthier) or if they're shy you can make them talk to people when company comes over, thus developing their social skills.
It's a bizarre little game. I imagine many people hearing about it wonder why the game players don't focus on living their own lives.
Each character in the game has half a dozen statistics like "hunger" and "energy" and "social" and "fun" and theirs a little bar chart on the side of the screen giving each a value. If one gets too low—like working too hard or long without sleep and bringing your "energy" down to zero—the character starts misbehaving, tottering around, turning toward the screen and yelling directly at you. Eventually if you don't get that character to bed, he or she will just collapse on the floor.
This is understandable for the obviously necessary functions like sleeping and eating, but "social" and "fun"? What's implied is that if someone doesn't get a minimal level of recreation and socialization, he or she will cease to function properly.
I think the last blog entry I wrote about having gotten burned-out—the equivalent to red-lining the "fun" meter. What also I think had been lacking was the "social" meter. You see, since I work at home and do work for London, I can spend a week never talking to anyone except my roommate (who's around much less now that he has a girlfriend) and the checkout guy at the grocery store.
[Material referring to my work in London has been removed.]
One of the reasons I'd gotten involved with the Stonewalll Young Democrats back in January was the hope of meeting some new people, maybe even finding a date someday. For the last five months there's been a little interaction, but most of the active members were too busy getting work done to be social, and many of them had significant others. I had also been hit by the unfortunate fact that my most effective contribution to SYD is doing web-work, which has me right back in my apartment NOT interacting with human beings.
Argh!
But this has finally begun to change. Last week one of our newer members posted a note on the mailing list asking if anyone wanted to see the movie "Saved!". I went with him, and afterwords we hung out a bit. It was fun. Then someone mentioned a cool beach with a great bar nearby that did a barbecue on Sunday afternoons, so I found four guys (from Stonewall) who were interested in exploring this place. So Sunday I had a day at the beach and then at a pretty cool bar afterwards. The next day a few of us got together and watched a DVD the following night.
Social batteries recharged! I've been much more able to get work done. It'll be great the next time I have a social activity happening (we've got plans to go to Alley's favorite club "Ms. Kitty's" Friday night) but the nice thing is right now I'm able to focus on work.
And speaking of work... I'm outta here!
Posted by Murray Todd Williams at June 10, 2004 08:38 AM