Nutritionally Dense Entertainment
I find that some entertainment choices are better than others. This may seem self evident, but bear with me here as I explain. Some entertainment seems more satisfying, for example, I could spend an hour playing Planescape: Torment, or I could spend an hour looking at lolcats. After the hour is finished I’m going to feel more satisfied if I spent the time with Planescape. It’s almost like Planescape is more nutritionally dense than the lolcats. Like the lolcats are a Twinkie and Planescape is an apple. The lolcats might be tasty, but too many will just make you sick.
I don’t think that you can say for sure that one form of entertainment is definitely superior to another. I think it’s primarily a matter of figuring out what forms of entertainment are best for you, and then having the restraint to seek those out. For example, I do really enjoy action RPGs, like Diablo, Titan Quest, or Torchlight. They are fun, and they’ll suck up lots of time if I let them. But I find that they aren’t as satisfying to me as other more story driven games. So I have to exercise restraint, and enjoy the action RPGs in small doses, while spending most of my entertainment time on other things. That was especially difficult the day after Christmas when Torchlight was on sale for $5.00. It was really tempting, but I knew that I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as some other games, and I’ve already got Titan Quest to give me my action RPG fix.
It’s kind of an interesting journey, figuring out what kind of entertainment really does it for you. Kind of difficult too, but I’ve found it’s helped me to enjoy my free time more. Just thought that was kind of interesting.
posted by Darius @ 6:04 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
This reminds me of the "Law of the Clock" David Christensen talks about in his book "Inner Victory: Winning Strategies for Managing Life's Transition". He says that the clock, or time, is the great equalizer of people because we all only have 24 hours in a day and we have to decide how to use that time. Maybe we don't all have the same amount of time for entertainment, but we still have to decide for ourselves how to use the time that we have. How we decide to use the time is dependent upon our values and what we hope to accomplish or gain from the entertainment. Mario 3 isn't the most complicated game, but I enjoy it because of the nostalgia it invokes inside me. I also like it because learning to master such simple games helps me to gain skill to play more complicated contemporary games. I would like to be able to play Metal Gear but my skill level is so low that I know it would just be frustrating. As you said, it's "a matter of figuring out what forms of entertainment are best for you, and then having the restraint to seek those out."
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