Lately I've been fairly worried about my gaming habits, not because I game too much, but because Im not gaming enough or as much as I used to. I've been getting urges here and there but something is holding me back. I remember growing up I was a very outside person, used to love riding my bike, skateboarding or rollerblading wherever I could every day after school, but then around the age of 8 for Christmas I got given a PS1 from my parents. Little did I know, that 8 years later, this would eventually lead to a massive change in lifestyle for me. After my mischief outside I would come home to play my PS1 for about an hour or 2. Back then games to me were just some form of entertainment, I barely took notice or understood the stories and never really understood the controls and at times I never really finished most of the games I did play. I remember when my older brother had returned from serving in east Timor, they had stopped in Malaysia and he had picked up literally over 100 PS1 titles which he gave them all to me. As I grew older and started to enter high school this is where I started to understand games a little bit more for their artistic value but not quite as much to push me into long and constant hours of gaming, but I gradually started spending more and more time in front of a console and PC, this was also due to lack of income. Then around the age of 16 when life itself slowly started to become more understandable my passion for gaming started to form into something I would later almost lose control of. I remember being able to wake up in the morning during the weekend at around 8 or 9am, do all the morning stuff I needed to, then be right on the PS2 all the way through to lunch time. The day didnt change much for me, right after lunch Id be back on the PS2 gaming all the way through to dinner time, finish dinner then back on the PS2 until it was time to go to bed and repeat the cycle the following Sunday if I wasnt hanging out with friends. It reached a point where I would even stop hanging out with friends frequently as most of them around that time eventually had better things to do. I remember reaching more than 150 titles on my PS2, again some of which not finished but this time I did try to play through all of them as I understood the stories a lot more. I would always pop down to the local blockbuster rent a couple games, burn them and return them so I could finish them off later. This attitude towards piracy would later significantly diminish all thanks to Rockstar Games.

When I got my PS3 things didnt change at all, I actually think they got worse, but in no way do I regret my decisions to choose gaming over a full blown social life at all, well kind of. Coming home from school, I had nothing else to do but to change and hop straight on the PS3 to knock game after game off my play list. Keeping in mind I didnt have the internet until I was around 18 which kind of reduced the amount of things I had to do around the house. But gaming then became something I HAD to do, if there was a big AAA title coming out I had to get it the day of release, finish it as soon as I could and knock it off my play list, obviously still being able to easily take in the story and other values the games provided. I didnt care if the game cost me $100 or more, I had already done enough research watching and reading information off game spot. Then things changed a little, TAFE came along, studying reached a whole new level for me. I started to game less after hours but during weekends, my free time belonged to the console and PC. During the holidays or breaks I would easily game for 8-12hrs a day. I loved it, and it was because games kept getting better and better to some extent. 1 thing I do regret for sure was picking a Computer Science course, fortunately I dont regret the people I met.

After graduating came the workforce. I dont know if its age or the added stress of working in a channel store as opposed to a proper functioning retail store but I know that my plans all went to shit. The plan was to get a part time job, study some web design on the side to keep my mind fresh, and game the **** out of my PC and PS3 like there was no tomorrow. Make my mark in the industry and even become 1 of the best web designers and developers out there and eventually run my own web design agency, become my own boss and have all the free time in the world to game and do whatever else I wanted. But now, coming home from a shift I feel dead, like almost doing nothing and thats what happens sometimes. I mixed things up a bit by trying to be more outgoing and social. Tried watching more movies and TV shows here and there to keep my mind fresh from games, sometimes I go weeks without gaming, just watching TV shows, episode after episode season after season. But things got worse to a point where I just procrastinate from gaming or watching stuff. Ill just sit at the PC browsing the web or 9gag, with the thought in the back of my head Im going to spend 5mins on here then Ill play something, but it never happens. Ive reached a point where Im buying games and not even playing them for a month or more, some I havent even played at all.

What worries me more than anything else in my life, is that Im straying from something that I grew so passionate about. Not about what career job Ill have in the next few years or whether Ill become a hermit or if a terrorist is going to bomb the city, just worried about what Ill have to turn to when I have nothing to do, or nowhere to take out my aggression. I still play games, I can still do a long stretch of about 3-5hours but afterwards I feel burnt out. Its not really a major issue in my life, but does get me thinking. How does something Ive done for so many years become something I just do on occasion now?

I ask myself and others to help me find the answer, is it what age does to you over time or is it just working for terrible companies that drain the joy and life out of you? Ive only ever worked for 1 company since, so its very hard for me to tell.