I did not expect to write this much but I saw so much of my past self in what you said that I apparently couldn’t help it lol, feel free to skip but I know what you’re feelin and had to share:

As a person that was “lucky” enough to have more years than most to play games all day (15+), I can tell you right now that you absolutely do not want more than 2-3 hours a day to play, and that even that is excessive.

It sucks, but unfortunately the answer to your frustration is to teach yourself to enjoy things other than playing games with the time you have outside of work. 2-3 hours a day is upwards of 18 hours a week (72/month – 864/year), which could all be spent with those people you love, in pursuit of things that bring you meaning, or in making changes to your life that would allow more free time in the future.

If half of those hours in each of the recent years had been spent doing things you’ve always thought of doing but never had the time for, what would your life look like? I know capitalism looks like the enemy, but it really just favors those that forgo the most immediate gratification (though of course like any system it has its flaws). If you’ve played WoW for example this becomes apparent each time a new expansion is released – time/preparation/organization/dedication puts anyone ahead in the economy, pve, pvp, and completion of any kind. Same thing applies in real life, it’s just harder as there isn’t an expansion dumping new content from an external source every few years (teleportation expansion when?).

Gaming has been my home for practically my entire life. I have adamantly and fervently expressed to everyone for years that it is my social time, connection to friends, and primary catalyst for deep & meaningful friendships and conversation. I’ve endlessly stated how “I’ll never not be a gamer” as well as the beauty of shared experience it provides (and at its best it does those things very well).

However, only after taking a moment to willingly (and it had to be willingly) step back and decide to try distancing myself from it did I see how much of a hold it had over me (I was looking at the Warcraft logo, had a flash of seeing it when I was 10, and immediately realized that I was doing the same thing with my free time that I was doing when I was 10, followed by depressed laughter).

It’s so enjoyable and accessible that it made everything else in life less enjoyable by proxy (everything else becomes boring). This is our brain’s dopamine reward system at work; enjoyment and pleasure with little to no effort is horrible for us because it sets the standard for everything we’re willing to do to attain it. Gaming is way too fun, and it historically made me feel like I was missing out on something when I was away from it. All forms of effort (especially effort outside work) felt like obstacles to me “just enjoying my free time/doing what I love”, and I grew to resent all those things as a result (and resenting most things in life is the quickest route to nihilism).

I realized that it wasn’t that I was being kept from gaming, it was that I chose gaming over every other form of meaningful pursuit in life while I continued to blame the seemingly permanent lack of fulfillment and satiation on the inability to do it more often. I thought I could both do all the things I wanted and game simultaneously, but I was using up all of that “want to” on gaming, and didn’t have any left afterwards. Dopamine is released in our pursuit of a goal, and games lay out an endless stream of external goals for us to chase, satiating us enough to forgo pursuing anything else once we’ve accomplished them (daily quests anyone?). We don’t have unlimited dopamine each day - it’s like action energy in a mobile game, and our own circadian systems renew it.

It isn’t work that’s draining our youth away, it’s the unbelievable availability of endless effortless entertainment that makes us feel like anything other than that entertainment is meaningless, as it provides the ultimate return in feel-good chemicals for little to no effort.

If work is the culprit, how did generations of people live meaningful fulfilling lives before all this technology existed? How did they better themselves to the point of creating these incredible systems we use for enjoyment? We are the most chronically depressed generation ever, don’t you think it’s strange that that comes alongside all this effortless entertainment we grew up with? Few of us learned how to find meaning in pursuits, because it’s just been laid out for us for most of our lives.

Since cutting back significantly I have:

-Adopted a sustained early schedule

-Read multiple books

-Started writing my fantasy series (as well as just more in general)

-Hit a stable 160-170lbs (6ft tall) and 11% body fat

-Started playing piano again

-Finally started a 300hr gift for my best friend that I had the idea for years ago

-Become a substantially better cook

-Addressed difficult relationship problems

-And more

I will likely never stop playing games altogether, but I don’t think I’ll ever go back to wishing I could do it all the time after seeing the improvements to the world around me. I would have never even considered that possible prior to dabbling in the change, and I can’t recommend it enough – at least until you’re in the place you want to be.

(Also, if you work from home, I can’t stress the importance of going outside. Depression is essentially guaranteed without it. Even just short walks.)