If someone was bragging about the thousands of hours of television they watch and was then later complaining about their dissatisfaction with life, I would feel the same way. It isn’t watching TV, playing video games, or training for climbing everest that’s the problem, per se. It’s how much a given activity consumes of your finite time, how much of an effect that has on the rest of your life, and your level of satisfaction with that exchange.

Learning to play music, having friends and a social life, being really good at video game X or Y, having a significant other, excelling in your career, educating yourself, and so on: these are all time-intensive tasks and there are only so many hours in a day. Letting any element of your life consume a majority of your time necessarily comes with sacrifices in other areas.

I get sad when people can’t seem to connect the sacrifice of having thousands upon thousands of hours invested in various video games with the dissatisfaction in their lives caused by not giving time to other areas. Again, I know people who balance video games into their life and are satisfied. I also know people that basically game and work and that’s it, and they’re satisfied. I’m not judging how “full” someone’s life is, as far as that goes.

I just sometimes see people that think it’s unfair they don’t just automatically get those other aspects of their life, but they are simultaneously unwilling to give up some gaming to spend the time working on them. Sure, gaming is easy, immediate, and can be fulfilling. But, it can also feel like “what did I do for the last ten years that weren’t in-game accomplishments in games I don’t play anymore?” That’s really up to the individual.