The MMORPG of Life

Since the current MMORPG offerings on PC are not really doing it for me, I am seeking to find ways to gamify my life so that perhaps I can get more interested in IRL activities than I am in playing video games.  This, however, will be a very hard endeavor to pursue since there are not really any ways to accurately track activities in order to level up IRL.  It also will be a challenge because as someone without a purpose in life, dictating what my daily life should entail is something that I will have to try really hard to think about in order to come up with activities to track.  Luckily, I did happen to find an application that I used a long time ago when I was trying to change up my habits, and that is a website called Habitica.

The Habitica website and application starts you off by asking what areas of your life you want to work on, then populates a dashboard with suggested tasks that are categorized by type.  There is a section for habits, daily actions, and longer term To Do's that are system generated initially to help you begin brainstorming what actions you should start taking.  Additionally, the game has a self-reporting system on if you are doing the activities that you say you are.  This part is very important to follow religiously, because as you do the things you want to do, you can gain gold and levels to purchase better equipment in game for your RPG character.  Of course, when it is self-reporting, you can obviously cheat if you are not honest about your activities, but the only person you are cheating by doing this is yourself.

I think a big reason why I have not been enjoying MMORPGs in general is that I am no longer making money at streaming as a career.  If I was making money, I would not be as miserable in the games that I am playing but seeing how far I have fallen from actually being able to make a living in streaming, it has brought me to a place where I view playing video games as a complete waste of time.  I am wondering if Habitica will change my mind set at all, since all of the activities that I will have to choose will directly impact my life, my health, and my mood.  This unfortunately is not something that would be very interesting to stream however, but it might be a way to build a community of people who may also wish to work on their habits and change their lives IRL.

What I think I can do is start a stream before setting up any of my Habitica tasks and use that time to develop my own version of a life MMORPG along with my twitch chat as a way to potentially hold myself accountable for the changes that I wish to make in my life.  This can be risky however, because if people know what I should be doing yet are seeing me not doing the things I need to do, then it could turn into a situation where I am embarrassed to continue showing people my lack of discipline. The books I read tell me to focus on what I do want instead of what I don't, but I need to find a way to silence the negative side of my being since it has become the dominant side of my personality as of late.

So, will Habitica and my IRL endeavors save me as a person?  Will they help me find some sense of enjoyment in IRL activities and perhaps help me find purpose in life?  At the end of the day, I need to try something, anything, to motivate me out of the darkness and back into the light.  I have started on my own to do some things right, I just need to continue adding more and more activities that I can handle to hopefully build myself up again to the man I know I am capable of becoming.  It is time to get to work and treat my IRL life as the most important MMORPG out there, because it is.

Until next time,

Blackboa