YukiErr, writing an intro to this doesn’t seem to be turning out well, so I’ll just get right to what I’m thinking about! Apologies if it’s tl;dr, but here goes!
When it comes to doing things, there are some obvious differences between my brother and me, even when it comes to how we do the same types of things. For example, my brother plays videogames. So do I. Where is the difference? The difference lies within the amount of time spent gaming and the types of games we choose to play. My brother plays many games, including Pokemon, Batman, Naruto, Dragonball Z, Star Wars, and many others on a variety of gaming systems: Gamecube, DSi, Wii, Playstation 2, PSP, Xbox, and his computer. I play Pokemon and, on occasion, my kanji game on only one gaming system: my DSi.
The amount of time we spend playing can be estimated easily by what happened yesterday. As early as before 8:00 AM, being out of school thanks to Presidents’ Day, my brother was on his computer watching how-to/walkthrough videos about the Lego Batman game he has. After I ate breakfast and began prepping for juicing, he went back to his room and began playing said game. When my friend Michael came to visit at around 11:30, she played a different Batman game with my brother for about an hour before she came out into the living room to work on her homework. But my brother continued playing, only taking a break to shower and eat two bowlfuls of chips.
Eventually, he switched back to Lego Batman and played that until my mom came home. I’m sure he played Pokemon as well, and he might have watched more Youtube videos or TV in between, but I don’t know. Long story short, he played or watched videogames practically the entire day, at least 8-9 hours!
The only gaming I did that day was less than an hour of Pokemon White 2, which is the only game I’ve been playing since my birthday (November 10).
I’m sure you can clearly see why I chose to title this post “Too Much & Not Enough”.
It’s difficult when you’re not sure what to suggest for the videogame addict to do; when all your suggestions are things you would do. I suggest things like drawing, writing, and reading a book. But my brother doesn’t like reading (unless there are a lot of pictures and only a few words), hates to write, and sometimes gets discouraged about drawing (caught up in comparisons) and won’t draw. He could learn Japanese, but he presently is unwilling to put in the time to do that. He could take up photography, as he mentioned he wanted to before, but all he seems to be interested in camera-wise is figuring out how to record his gameplay.
It’s quite sad, I think;; But what can I suggest he do, then?
That’s both a rhetorical question and a literal one. He has too much of videogames and not enough of real-life activity going on.
As for me, my time is so divided by so many things that I have too much stuff going on and not enough focus on each thing. It’s such a trap, falling into the multitasking mindset!
Whereas my brother essentially has only two things on his plate–school and then playing games the rest of the time, I have many things on my plate. I’ve talked about this before, but I’m bringing it up again for sake of comparison and to bring more clarity to myself as to what specifically I should be focusing on right now.
I am an artist. Yes. I draw all the time and I have many drawings all over the place. Those are divided amongst many different categories, such as fan art, commissions, and personal-random-sketches-and-stuff. 😛 In addition, I have assignments for AIS. I write as well. Clearly I write blog posts, but I also write fanfiction, songs, the occasional poem, and a bit of original fiction when I feel like it. I am learning Japanese, so I have many things to do which pertain to that, such as WaniKani and other resources, posting on Lang-8 for practice, reading actual Japanese, doing translations, and more. I like to sing and dance, and make videos. I have a website, the ends of which I need to tie, and afterwards maintain said site.
This, and then there is real-life interaction, which includes face-to-face talk as well as texting, comment/note responses, and Skype. You can see why I don’t get on Skype very often, because I can’t really multitask with it–most of my energy goes to talking rather than drawing/whatever I’m trying to do at the same time. XD;
Perhaps I need another plate to put stuff on so mine won’t be so full. Lol!
I feel that other people have only one thing, or maybe two things, that they do a lot of. People learning Japanese who post on Lang-8 a lot because the only other thing they do is, say, listening to music. Artists who basically just draw; they don’t dabble in other things. People who do a lot of song covers (vocal or otherwise) because that’s their hobby; they don’t have a whole lot of them to fight for time.
Too much of one thing and not enough of another. Both my brother and I need a balance. Time wasting is never a good thing.