All in moderation

I often wonder if I am spending too much time engaged in activities that entertain rather than deliver, hobbies that cost money rather than a job that provides it and devoting myself to time consuming goals that serve no purpose other than to be something to achieve. I do believe in balance. Working all the time is just as bad as playing all the time. As much as obsessives enjoy obsessions, it's not good practice to obsess. Most things succumb to the law of diminishing returns and both work or play can quickly become a waste of time.

Efficiency, Chris says. Plan meticulously, I say. I'd like to think that I manage my time well, particularly since such a large chunk of it is spent being unwell. I have been drawing up time tables since I was 9 and was always criticized for not sticking to them religiously. It didn't bother me - neither the criticism or gap between the planned schedule and the evolving schedule. Life is inherently unpredictable and sticking to a schedule simply because there is a schedule seems like a very silly reason for sticking to the schedule. Getting the most done whilst having fun doing it seems like a more alluring reason for having a schedule and deviating as required to try and achieve just that.

I relish in the dichotomy that Warcraft is both an excellent teacher of how to use time and how to waste it. Killing an ordinary monster takes seconds, not minutes. The series of steps taken within those few precious seconds determines the outcome. Any good player spent an inordinate amount of time reviewing statistics and planning to the smallest detail. Where you place your keys may be paramount. Having to click with the mouse button on a health potion rather than to be able to press a key may determine whether you success or fail, live or die. The details count and loom overhead when you are working with seconds, rather than minutes or hours.

The converse is also true. Players spend hours and hours playing. Most play almost every day, if not every day. People play at home and away from home, in coffee shops and airport lounges. Each hour spent playing warcraft is an hour of not doing something else, possibly something more productive.

I often wonder if there is something more productive that I can do. I do have other hobbies. I do have social activities, domestic errants and job responsibilities that could always do with a little more time. However, the route of always engaging in activities that require a certain level of seriousness is not one I would want to return to. I play the piano and guitar, but playing musical instruments are similar to working. It's fun playing, particularly when you learn how to play a particularly difficult piece flawlessly. However, most people do not know that 90% of playing a musical instrument is practicing small bits repetitively. I still recall the sage advise of all my music teachers over 15 years of being a student - you only play a piece of music as it is meant to be heard once at the end of a practice session. Oftentimes, practice sessions were hours rather than minutes - hours of playing a few bars or a few notes over and over again. It's not exactly the stuff of relaxation.

Currently work is writing and writing is hard work. Writing for money is not as much fun as writing for fun. It's less writing than you'd think. Again, 90% of the time is spent planning, organizing, editing and re-writing small bits of text. It all about finding the right word or the right phrase to make the right sentence and the right paragraph. It's checking word length, sentence length, paragraph length and making sure nothing is either too long or too short. Writing is work, not exactly the stuff of relaxation.

I know many people who find household chores relaxing. Women particularly are known for cleaning when they're stressed. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those women. Cleaning is one of the most difficult tasks there is. Very little about it is intellectual, it's 90% physical labour and physical labour is not exactly my strong suit. Thanks to my particular genetic make-up, I have poor proprioception (i.e. being very very clumsy). I'm prone to drop, knock, crack and break things. Apart from that, using my hands in the wrong ways hurt. My fingers joints are particularly affected and small tasks are difficult to carry out without injury or causing severe pain. Practically speaking, this limits the amount of time I can spend pottering about.

Life is a difficult struggle. Everything is difficult from rinsing a coffee mug to reading a book. Warcraft at times is difficult to - there is awful lot of buttons to press - but it is easier than life. I am finding more and more that having a hobby where I can run, travel, learn, explore, craft, shop and spend time with other like minded people is not a luxury or an indulge. It's an outlet and a good one at that. The hours spent in-game is not a waste of time. In fact, it's an excellent use of time - as long as I keep doing the little bit of other things that I can do outside of it as well.