changes

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

This is something I say, and believe.

My past behavior is. All sorts of things. Sometimes consistent. Sometimes inconsistent. But when I am inconsistent I am consistent about it. I am not making a joke when I say this. What I mean is: When I fail, it is because I’ve failed at something similar in the past. So I consistently fail at the same kind of things. Like making time for myself. Like pursuing things that actually matter to the private internal me instead of wasting time playing video games or donating hours and hours and hours of my life to caretaking my parents or my partner.

Then I consistently, a few times a year, try again to make a change and re-prioritize things.

The re-prioritization never sticks.

I wonder sometimes if this pattern will ever stop.

Here is a thing I know. I want changes in my life so I can be happier.

Here is another thing I know. No matter what happens in someone’s life, their happiness level tends to revert to a normal level.

If someone wins the lottery, for the first six months or year, they are happier than usual.

After that, not so much. Mo Money Mo Problems. Back to their normal state of general well being. New issues, new things to worry about and deal with — your aunt who is hitting you up for cash, your new house that requires renovations, figuring out how to avoid the maximum amount of taxes.

But now you are dealing with your own new problems and you are still yourself and you are back right at the beginning: Wondering how you can be happier.

Cocaine? Polyamorous relationships? Becoming a DJ and dropping sick beats? Winning the lottery again? These things will get boring quickly too, and you will then want a change away from them.

People have set levels of dopamine and general well being and we return to them no matter what. No matter who we’ve married or what we’ve accomplished or how famous we are or how many amazing places we’ve gone or sexual partners we’ve had. We revert. We have new problems and we complain about those instead.

If we know this — if we know we will always be restricted, rubber-band style, to our set level of happiness, why do we try to change?

Maybe we simply want the new problems.

Here is something else I say sometimes, and usually believe.

The devil we don’t know is better than the devil we know.

Here is the devil I know.

I work my IT job, I exercise, I run the household, I cook, I clean, I caretake elderly parents, I caretake my wife’s elderly parents, I do dumb activities with my wife to keep her happy, shopping, movies, television series. I value these things — I must, or I would not spend so much time doing this stuff. When I am tired, my go-to entertainment and downtime is video games, and books, in that order.

But when I play video games, mostly I’m simply aware that I am wasting time. I don’t really value the time spent playing video games.

I value the social credit it gives me sometimes. Many of my real life friends play. I can say things like: I beat Zelda or Mario Wonder or Spiderman 2 on the playstation. I can talk about the new graphics card I got for my PC that renders games in native 4k. Admire texture detail and so on.

What my real life friends don’t do anymore is read. So reading feels — more isolating somehow — because the social component is missing.

But reading is more internally rewarding to me. While I’m doing it — as long as it’s something interesting — I’m not as aware that I’m wasting time.

Here’s an example of wasting time. I beat, for the second time, Shadow of Mordor — a lord of the rings type game where you play as an Aaragorn clone killing orcs. It takes eighty hours to beat. When you beat a game for the second time, you are not experiencing anything new — you are re-playing scenes from your past, essentially, for eighty fucking hours.

I wonder what would have happened if I wrote for eighty hours instead.

Maybe nothing. Maybe something.

If both of these activities (gaming and writing) produce nothing of value in my life, is one better or worse than the other?

Yesterday afternoon, I had off work.

I did the usual things. I exercised. I shopped for dinner stuff for my wife J. Surprised her with Home Raw Bar which I like to do sometimes: Fresh oysters, jumbo shrimp, lemon juice, cocktail sauce. I did some straigtening in the basement.

Then I did something new. I packed my playstation 5 away in a box.

I am considering packing my Nintendo switch up too.

It’s such a stereotypical thing to do. Making changes in the new year. Swearing you will do things differently.

I tried this once, in earnest, over half a decade ago, when I was about 40 instead of 46. Packed up the games. Tried to do other things with my free time.

I wound up playing more guitar, and reading — and feeling more lonely. I didn’t get the same level of distraction out of the alternate hobbies. The serotonin and dopamine rewards weren’t as powerful. I often just felt like a failure — when I wrote, my output was bad and I had no one to share it with anyway. I played guitar in a vacuum. I read books and couldn’t discuss them with anyone because I wasn’t reading. I did journal a lot — and often wrote about what I read there — analyzing and parsing and thinking about the meaning or marveling at the plot construction. But that’s not something I could share with anyone either. So much of our satisfaction in life comes from connections. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth pursuing any activity at all if it doesn’t result in new connections, maintaining connections, or making other connections stronger.

I wonder if it will go any differently this time. This time I’m not single, this time I’m not living alone, this time maybe the changes will stick. Maybe I can find better ways to make hobbies of mine more rewarding, more social.

I want to challenge myself to do something different even though I know it won’t make me any happier.

2024 will be the year of no video games. If it’s absolutely miserable, I will allow myself to bring them back in 2025.

Time to go and pack the rest of them up.