OT: burn out from gaming.

A little Background here...

My wife this last week, went to visit our youngest son, down in the big city, and I thought, man, this is going to be great, a whole week, where I can relax, just feed the dogs and cows, and If I remember, myself, and game.

I resubbed into a few games also, thinking, I'll have a blast. EQ2, Terra, brought up some of my old WOW accounts, even had a few RAF, DC Universe, SW:TOR, even loaded up some Warhammer Dawn of War and old school C&C. Diablo 3 Age of Conan, I was gonna hit it all.

I just couldn't do it. I maybe put in 5 hours in the last week. Every single game I logged into, I was just all Bleh. Was it over immersion, Been there done that way too many times? I have no clue.

Hell, I wound up tearing down walls, and rebuilding the wiring in the home, just to have something to do. (Mind you, my wife is recently in a wheel chair, so I had been planning this for quite some time.), But still, I just could not get any interest in gaming. The sad thing is, I would go to sleep, and even plan out a gaming schedule, thinking, now this is something I really want to do. Sounds fun.

Every morning, I'd get up, Back aching, feed the cows, and come back, and sit at my PC, and just stare at it. mind you, I had a few laughs with our fellow member Candle Box, But as for gaming, the thrill was gone.

I thought, ok, maybe it is just that the wife is gone, and I am having a hard time being my self, but she came home early today, and went to bed about an hour ago. I still just cannot log into any game.

Have you fine and August people ever had a time like this? It's not apathy, as I think about it late at night, But then when I have the time, I just don't have the interest.

Stephen

Sounds like stress to me. I have some downtime during December after getting my third book written. I tried to play some games, and take some time off with the holidays coming up but if I go more than a few hours, I end up feeling strange. Like I could be outlining the next book. Researching some ideas. Polishing a blurb, or learning about the changes HTML5 brings to the latest edition of Kindle Fire devices.

In other words, if I'm not working on my books, I am just wasting time.

I also found the joy of twich.tv. It's like football. I can just watch someone else play and not worry about not having the time to put into it to get my monies worth or getting a torn ACL out of it.

Ya know, that very well may be the best advice I have heard in a long time, Just watch others play. I know I came here, and watched quite a few vids this last week.

The Stress part even makes sense, as I am not used to having so much free time. For years, I worked as a fire chief, before that, I taught JKD, and then there was the early days and the Marine Corp.

For the longest time, Gaming was what I did in retirement, and maybe that is just not enough for me anymore.

Hey, thanks Starbuck, that makes a lot of sense to me.

Stephen

I have the same issues Stephen, some days, I'll log into wow and /camp immediately. I know that bleh feeling.

In my free time, I like to take it easy and play when I want to play, work on Jamba when I want to, read when I want to. It's easy if I know its okay to stop and I can always come back to gaming. This way I never burn out and I can support gaming (esp. Jamba) indefinitely (edit: or until I've really, really lost interest). I'm finding I prefer playing online board games with my friends (as long as the games have some strategy). I find games more interesting if I'm playing with friends, solo games don't fire me up like they used to.

It's good to have a few hobbies, not all computer related! Sometimes its good to sit and do nothing.

For me, I figure the bleh feeling is because I work with PCs all day and at nights, I just need a break from a screen.

Also it's summer here, so it's nice to be outside. :-)

It's also possible that you have something else in the back of your mind that you've been putting off or wanting to do but just never got motivated enough to start on, and that's serving as a bit of a mental block. I'm like that when work gets crazy; I have a hard time unwinding enough to be able to relax and game. A tasty adult beverage does tend to help a bit (if it doesn't put me to sleep lol).

I think both of you raise a good point here. I know of a few projects that I've been really wanting to dig into, but keep putting off till I buy a new centrifuge, so that very well could be the case here. Add to that, I am tired of looking at the Screen, hell, I'm tired of watching the TV also.

Perhaps I should try and find something else to do, away from the PC, the Ranch, and the ole Lab. (Yeah, I'm a mad scientist of sorts, always playing with things like distillations from Poke Salad, or Copperhead venom, cause I get that damn bored).

It very well could be, that I've been so forced to slow down over the last few years, due to health issues, that I used gaming for a long time, to retain a kind of Edge, and that now it is failing to keep me entertained.

Ya know, this is why I love this place, and my friends here, they always give me a new direction in which to think.

Thanks guys.

Stephen going to catch Pygmy Rattlers now instead of Copperheads, cause those treble hooks won't area Denial themselves. :P

Manual labor helps recharge your batteries sometimes too.

Could be a number of reasons (maybe stress), I have had a week off wow now and don't really care that im missing dailies or point caps, just want to get home from work and sleep. I'm sure the bleh feeling will wear off for both of us soon, but in the meantime, take advantage of wanting to be more active in other things... it's not a bad idea imo :P

Variety is the spice of life.

I go through phases where something is fun and interesting.
And then it gets old...

After a time way from it, it is exciting again.
Often, not playing much (or at all) over the summer months is my recharge.
Once, I didn't start gaming again (after the summer seasonal work/gaming break) until Feb or March of the next year.

There's nothing wrong from having hobbies/priorities/interests change over time too.
Maybe gaming was a primary interest earlier, but is a secondary for the foreseeable future.
It might become a primary interest in the future, or it could remain secondary.
As long as you have something that interests you, it doesn't really matter if gaming is a focus or not.

Sound advice again guys. Maybe that is what I need to do, is just step away for a bit, and try something else. I've been wanting to put in a storage bunker for some time now, maybe instead of getting on the old backhoe, I'll just do it the old fashioned way, with a shovel.

Some good back breaking work may be just what the doctor ordered, to get the whole mind and body back in a good place again. Come to think of it, When I play, I usually have a news feed going , and the like, it is possible that has sub consciously tied itself into my own gaming, and let's face it, things have not been cheerful on the news for quite some time now. Doing something where I'm not listening to that all day, should go a long ways also.

I was so used to listening to my scanner back in the day, in case I had to run out and put out a fire, that I think news just replaced the back ground noise. Think of it as Pavlovs news gaming I suppose. I might even take this time to teach my grandsons how to shoot in a colder temp.

Stephen

You could also try playing different games then hot-key MMOs? I have recently been playing a lot of strategy games such as XCOM and the redone Baldur's Gate and have surprised that I've had to think again when playing rather then just mindlessly grinding XP or rep in WoW.

I'm so over hot-key mmos it's not funny, I played swtor, TSW and GW2 this year for a bit but at the end of the day they all seemed like WoW in different clothing. As I type my 5 WoW subs have expired and I have cut and pasted my WoW folder onto a USB stick that's now in a box somewhere.

MoP made me realise how much I was playing WoW as a second job mainly to get mounts and pets I didn't ever use as all the enjoyment and challenge I once felt when playing has gone for me. This isn't surprising considering how many hours I have played since I started 4 years ago!

I've recently been enjoying terraria; I strongly recommend it for diversity.