After my contract with myself stating that I will limit my gaming to those few games that are realistic enough to actually be useful to me as a source of learning, I realized that games aren't the problem. No doubt, the agreement I made with myself helped, but now I'm typing this blog and participate in myspace conversations and play bass guitar and walk to the store instead of taking a tram.My mindturned out to be extremely good at finding ways to kill time to compensate for the time I used to spend on games.

And now I'm thinking. I used to waste a lot of time on games but the times I had within those games are imbedded in my memoy forever. The dark journey I took across the mountain and through the dust storm to finish my great quest in Morrowind; the fires I sat near my buddies who were playing guitar in the wasteland of STALKER; the conspiracies I solved with a cold blooded shot from the darkness in Splinter Cell; the beautiful treasures of the unknown I found in the nebula clouds of Freelancer...These things make my stomach feel funny even when I just think of them. Now I have nothing to release my stress, and yet I'm still wasting my time almost as much as before.

The solution: find in your life a goal the way to which will be pleasant enough, so you don't have to look for ways to waste your time, all for the purpose of not doing what you're supposed to at school.