I very rarely play video games now - a handful of times a year at best. I’ve had a bad month and felt the urge to game a bit, justifying it under needing some down time.
I ended up buying Hades II on Steam, and effectively burned through the entire bank holiday weekend. I woke up at 7:30am yesterday, and save for daily essentials, burned right the way through to 9pm. I had a whale of a time, but fully recognise how unsustainable that is. That much screen time alone left me feeling dazed the day after.
I’ve since reinstalled Cold Turkey and have blocked Steam with it (blocked entirely until 6pm daily, 2hr gaming limit, with laptop shutdown enforced at 9:30pm on top of that).
I was previously ‘game-free’ for five years and made a conscious decision to allow it back into my life again, but days like that do serve to remind me of why I stopped in the first place.