What happens when you let play become integrated into too many aspects of your life?

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This post is indulgent af, but comes from needing help to work this out.


Play, or things involving play:

  • Feed me and keep me sheltered, necessarily meaning it occupies 27% (45 hours in 168 hours) of my time with time. Not being awake included.
  • Provide me with a small space to occupy my mental model when the exagerrated or real stresses of my environment become too much.
  • Is where I direct creative energy.
  • Is an aspect of kinship and is a way for me to connect with others, during isolation and over distance.
  • Form a large part of special interests media, and social media output, that I consume.
  • A source of guilt as a result of the negative impacts it has on others, and the World.
  • Is currently how I conceive I will make a positive difference both to the fortunes of myself and my family, but also to the overall state of the World.

The above points are interdependent. They mix both the process of building and creation (making games) and, play and consumption. My use of the capitalised World describes something which is out of my sphere of influence but feels urgently problematic. Roughly the points further down cause more anguish and stress. The final point is probably the least acheivable but the one I feel most priority towards.

It's not surprising how much importance I put on it and how strongly it influences my day to day feelings. I have made it my measure of validation, proportional to my level of capital. I work on many hobby projects, driven by the self made narrative broadcasted by winners, and when those fail to become real entities, I do not feel that I am acheiving anything. Because of the amount of importance I have placed on play, it feels like putting my energies into arguably more useful output is outside of the realm of possibility.

So that's the problem. The questions I want to answer are:

  1. Is play now a negative influence in the World rather than a positive one?
  2. Can it become a positive influence?
  3. If the answer is no, would I stay as involved in it?
  4. If I don't stay involved in it, what's the path of least resistance to becoming useful? Where should I direct my skills and energies?
  5. How many other people contend with this?

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