Cold, cold, cold. Windy, clear, and cold.I
am utterly addicted to Minesweeper. I used to think people who played
computer games were wasting their time, and that I was above doing it. I
was right about the first point, wrong about the second. I am not above
doing that, and I love it.
I
used to be addicted to Tetris on my old Win95 box, and that's the main
reason I recycled the machine, to try and break me of my habit. It
didn't work. I long for Tetris to come back (I still use a widget
version -- but it ain't the same as the classic), as well as Mah Jongg
(wasn't called that, but ...*). But I have Minesweeper, and FreeCell and
Spider Solitaire to console me. Substitute addictions, you might say. I
got bored with Hearts. Too much like light beer (burp!).
What's
odd is that the games I've gotten hooked on have reflected where I am
in life, or at least where I feel I am. When I played Tetris over and
over, my life (if you could have called it that) was falling to pieces.
My entire life "fiction" was being rewritten, and I wasn't the editor.
Not even close. But playing Tetris soothed me (a little), because it
felt like I was maybe putting back the pieces of life into some order as
they fell to me, but I couldn't predict the outcome. Naturally, I had
to actually start confronting my life eventually, but I had to see where
some of the pieces would fall first, before I could begin the
reconstruction project.
Minesweeper
is attractive now, I think, because I often feel the insecurity of
being in a "minefield" metaphorically, as I test new things and venture
sloooowly into uncharted territory. This is hard, very hard for me,
because I used work for so long as an excuse to avoid living, that I ...
well, fell apart. Now I have to confront who I am (what's left, anyway)
and what I need to be doing to be that person. You'd think it would be
easy, and it might be, if not for other people. Other people, the
relationships we depend on and the community we seek, are factors in
that process. And there are people who oppose you in any effort. You
have to deal with that too, and not with malice. Sometimes your
opponents can teach you more about yourself than your friends can. And
friends can teach a lot!
Anyway,
that's why I think I'm hooked on Minesweeper. The dual (at least) layer
of strategy (the mine patterns themselves, and where the computer is
placing them to try and fool you, for instance) is really the attraction
-- and the repulsion. Attraction and
repulsion? Yes, I think you gotta have both, if you really want to be
obsessed, my friends. To me, obsession can be a good thing, or a bad
thing. Which one you get certainly depends on what (or who) you're
obsessed with, but it may depend also on your attitude toward your
obsession. If you are so obsessed with having an obsession, it can swamp
you. But if can laugh at yourself while your obsessing (or maybe after a
round or two), you may just make it.
Am I right? Heck, I don't know. Isn't that what the experiment called 'life' is all about?
Ooops. Blooey!
___
*The Mah Jongg game in Windows 95 was called Taipei.
LJ orig.: 12/08/06
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