I waste a lot of time on the internet.
One small example of this is that I have ascended 22 times in Kingdom of Loathing--that means that I have played the entire game 22 times over, which is a lot more times than is needed just to try out the occaisonal new content. It's kind of compulsive, and certainly doesn't take up as much time as other junk I watch or look at. Mostly it is symbolic of how I can take time every day to advance myself in the game, but hardly take time to do my laundry regularly.
Some time ago I started thinking about creating equivalent activities, for instance, applying for a job for every turn I play in-game, the idea being that I would use the in-game motivation to make me do things I would otherwise avoid. In this experimental phase I did some reflection and realized that "positive things that I would ordinarily avoid" includes just about anything.
Last Wednesday the game presented me another opportunity to start the whole thing over, this time with a voluntary challenge to accrue only 40 turns a day, for which I must perform 40 things, according to the rules I have created.
I decided that 40 wasn't unreasonable, because it only means doing one thing every 20 minutes that I'm awake, and some things don't even take 20 minutes.
During my first attempt, I read over 100 job applications and sent about 15. I decided that just reading a job application and finding that I don't qualify, has to count as a thing, because of how much I would otherwise avoid doing so--it takes reading a lot of job applications to find one for which I qualify.
Going from doing three or four things in a day to forty seems kind of insane, but a lot of simple things count.
Emailing a person counts. Taking a photo counts.
Since Wednesday I have accrued 200 turns in-game, this morning I had done about 78 things across the past five days. Highlihgts included doing laundry, getting lost in Brooklyn Park and trying to hold on to my education by watching a college lecture on Law and Climate Change.
I knew I wouldn't have the full 200, but I figured I could just push through the non profit job listings again, but in doing so I pushed back to ones I've already done.
So at the end of today I'm left with 32 turns, which will be added to tomorrow's 40, when I hope to be able to do a few things other than applying for jobs.
I really hate applying for jobs.
