Instant Gratification

What's on my mind this week . . .

playing tetris

I have an enduring memory of learning card games as a child. My mother loved to play cards and knew a number of games that she shared with my sister, our cousins and me. And she was a great teacher, handling conflicts as to the rules with a pronouncement that always started with the words, according to Hoyle . . .

Who was Hoyle you might ask? Well, it seems the rules for games, card and otherwise, were the passion and province of one Edmund Hoyle, an English lawyer (1672-1769) who analyzed games mathematically, writing instructions in easily understood language. I wonder what he would think of online games.

I took my mother’s love of card games with me into the workplace, spending lunch hours at my first job playing pinochle with three co-workers, a habit that became deeply rooted. Not playing pinochle at lunch meant that I was distracted doing anything else. Yes, I am firmly a creature of habit. Aren’t we all? Give me any action that I repeat often enough and I will develop a compulsivity about it.

Perhaps my tendency to play card, and other online games, repetitively is a response to a world filled with conflict and chaos. Perhaps. Perhaps the child in me is still very much looking for instant gratification.

When games such as Pac-Man and Tetris came out, they were arcade games. I can still remember the big arcade machines and the sounds and smells that enveloped me when I sat to play. This was the early 1980s and it didn’t take long for those games to migrate to the home computer. At least, when in the arcade, I had to make an effort to go and play. Once they were available at home, an addiction was formed.

Today I can play solitaire on my phone while sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for an appointment, and continue to play it when I get home. And there are always new puzzle-type games (like Tetris) that are fast-moving and provide that pump of instant gratification as levels are conquered. And that pulls me to the challenge of the next level, and the next . . .

I think about what playing these games does to my visual cortex. When I played Tetris a lot in a single day, I would fall asleep at night with blocks falling and shifting behind my eyelids, so deep was my concentration during play. It was similar to a day at the beach. I would sit and watch the waves and then behind my eyelids at night would be waves crashing into shore. I think I prefer the waves over blocks tumbling as I’m trying to turn off my mind and ease into sleep.

But, it’s what I’m NOT doing that bothers me when I give time to compulsively playing online games. I’m not working on my writing and my creativity is instead going into figuring out how to beat whatever puzzle is before me. Writing is not a game of instant gratification. And therein lies my problem. I find I go through periods where I play these games often and then periods where I put them aside until they are almost forgotten. In those periods, I delve into the perseverance and patience that writing demands.

woman's hands writing on a laptop

I think my early introduction to games built in me a need for tangible rewards, and games provided that and still do. Instead, as a writer, satisfaction comes from completion and those moments when I am fully in the creative flow. Yet, I live in a world where instant gratification is heightened. Social media, as an example, is one big pool (some might say a cesspool) of immediacy. Quiet, uninterrupted time, must be fought for, and the battle rages within.

That’s where you find me this week - fighting the battle to turn off the distractions, release the need for instant gratification, and taking steps to let a compulsive behavior die from inaction. Maybe, when next in the doctor’s office, I will write a scene in my head instead of looking at my phone. Maybe I will meditate and sink into the stillness that is so restorative.

There is so much available today that can turn into new forms of compulsivity. What I know is that whatever I devote significant focus to during my waking hours each day reverberates as my eyes close at night. What do I want that to be? That is what I am pondering this week.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits. – Twyla Tharp

On to building some good habits this week.

With love,

Cathleen