CrossFit Athletic Group

Cory is such a bastard. He knows exactly what he was doing by letting me "borrow" his Switch and Pokemon game a month ago.

But I was on to him. Sissy-ass goalie. I didn't even turn it on. Not once. After all, Michigan-Ohio State was merely days away, and my off time was best spent being serenaded by Bob Ufer's old radio calls.

Well... 13-10 happened, and suddenly I found myself in a very odd predicament: I was without Michigan football on weekends for the time being, but yet had this air of invincibility about me - a combination I've never felt at season's end.

So what the hell. I'm more disciplined than I was as a youth. I take my profession more seriously. I have a more solid grounding in my faith, and therefore have a better gauge of how to use my time. Let's turn the game on, just to show how far I've moved past my old obsessive habits...

Plat time: I wish that was minutes and seconds

I have turned on Legends: Arceus a grand total of 7 times since that sissy-ass goalie gave it to me. This means I've averaged almost 4 hours of mind-melting addiction at a time. And the game is crack. It does not have a start or a finish, it has missions layered into other missions filled with more activity and enthusiasm than I've ever experienced before. It's Mr. Ron: the video game, complete with Mr. Gjon sound effects. And the buttons... there are so many buttons. I need to learn them all! And while I'm at it, Anto is guilty of grand bastardry, seeing as his game tips opened up an aspect of the game I was previously unaware of.

After two times playing this beautifully evil thing I realized I had to do something to cut myself off. My first attempt was to keep the game at my house and the charger up at the gym, meaning the only way to play was in moderation (a truly pointless and depressing way to spend time with Pokemon). But the battery life on this effing Switch us unreal; it lasted me three hours. So soon after I resorted to Plan B: keep everything at the gym. That worked in totality: I recorded exactly zero hours of gameplay for nearly two weeks, at which point I can distinctly remember thinking to myself, Man, I really have no desire to play this thing any more. But I was soon faced with a dilemma: Christmas socializing.

There was this movie on. Something with The Rock. I know that doesn't narrow it down. I think he was telling the teacher from Whiplash that there were too many kids on the Naughty List. Something brutal like that. The food wasn't going to be ready for an hour. The channel was not getting changed to basketball, or football, or even that YouTube Zen station. But I had already messed up: I brought the game in the car with me, having a feeling I'd run into this dilemma, knowing damn well this wasn't going to be a one-off. And I did it. I caved in, and haven't taken it out of my possession since.

Hopefully examples like this make it clear why I have never drank or smoked, don't gamble, and generally avoid anything that could fit into a basket called "fun". There is no part of my personality that exists in moderation, therefore its best for me to avoid things altogether. Shoot, we kept stats for our Mario Baseball leagues on Excel spreadsheets (none of which are w/f safe). That had to go, too. Being obsessive about my profession (and the only official job I've ever had) even has its downsides, and results in me leaving my laptop at the gym for months at a time to avoid "working" when I'm at home.

I do give myself one exception during Saturdays in the fall. But even that is different: College Football has an end. There is a season (although, they're falling into the Deforestation temptation everything else is nowadays). It's planned. It's also time spent with my dad. And it builds on the previous College Football stuff: understanding, retrospection, and tradition are built by watching game after game, week after week, year after year.

Pokemon - any Pokemon game, not just this one - never ends. There's always something to do, always a little dose of dopamine that is just the next town over, or right after the next mission... only it never hits with the finality that I would hope... I just want more. And so I want to keep playing! Its the lizard brain, man. Feed the lizard brain!

...........

I am giving this game back to Cory. I'm writing this on here so I will hold myself accountable to it. But, oddly enough, this entire ordeal made me think of nutrition - which now brings the grand total of odd personal events that got me thinking about nutrition to two.

Go back and read that first segment again, but replace every mention of the Pokemon game with your nutritional vice: pop, alcohol, bread, pasta, candy, cookies, cigarettes, whatever... how is that really any different? Don't you have a friend, family member, co-worker, or classmate insisting you have a bit more? Isn't the food made and marketed in a way that gets us to consume more of it than we need... or even want? And how is it always around whenever you find yourself with down time? Cookies do not have an end point: there will always be a different flavor combination or different brand you haven't tried yet... and yeah those other ones were great, but this one!... maybe this one is the one to end all cookie flavors!

As you can see, I can't say a damn thing to you guys who routinely get on the nutrition path... then fall off... then get on... then fall back off. In my own way, I'm right there with you in my own way. All I can say is there are so many factors working to encourage us to consume more of the product (I'd imagine there's very little money in moderation) and it seems it needs to be met with an equal effort in protecting our environment, whether that's our house, or our car, or our room, or even our brain. I'm starting with my house and seeing where that takes me.