My little treat to myself was buying a Nintendo Switch. This was my first games console since 2002 and my trusty Game Cube. And my first game is Zelda – Breath of the Wild (or Wind, or something).  I have no idea where the time goes now that I’ve got over the first few hours of accidentally falling off cliffs and getting in to stupid fights. I’ve also, got over killing lots of ogre looking characters sitting around a campfire with a stick.

This isn’t really about Zelda, or a review of the excellent Switch – and it is great. What it really is about is some escapism that I can’t get from reading a book, or watching TV. It’s about letting a little of my childish self out, and letting myself waste some time.

My first night’s sleep was a little weird. It’s difficult to explain. Real life feels like I’m rotating a camera and looking around. This is a glimpse of what virtual reality would be like. It’s a little like the feeling in your legs after going ice-skating. Your legs take a little time to re-adjust. But in this case, I feel like my brain is being re-wired.

If I can re-wire my brain to play a game, surely I can do it to play guitar. Maybe, but probably not. The feedback loop is there with a musical instrument and movements are complex. With a game, the movements are much more simple, even if there are several buttons to press, the constant timing required to play an instrument isn’t there. So, a game allows multiple bad moves without making the player give up, but multiple bad moves on a guitar makes you want to give up. But the training in the brain will be essentially the same. The difference with the guitar is knowing winning your first crystal or whatever may be months away, as is any feeling of reward.

It seems that there is a big difference between things that are inherently a waste of time, and things that are genuinely rewarding. But there are many similarities. It’s just that one type is easier than the other. Perhaps, if parents hired tutors for children to show them how to play video games they’d rebel and start playing musical instruments, or take up painting instead. Maybe, they’ll start writing.

Every now and then, I look back at some of my blogs. And my first feeling is that they are mostly good given that I never go any further back than one sentence to correct anything. Maybe, one day in the future I’ll find a use for them.

I have the same misgivings of using my time to write these lines as I do playing Zelda. Can I really justify the time? It’s not as if I was going to do anything else more useful, but I find a problem finding a a use in this. Sometimes I enjoy it, and I certainly don’t hate doing this, otherwise I’d just stop. And looking back at my old blogs grow in number gives me a lot of satisfaction. And reaching and just passing my 500 words is like winning a crystal!