What a perfect way to describe the constant struggle I have with whittling away evenings drinking beer and playing Overwatch vs investing time in learning new skills or working on side hustles to generate additional income.
There is a difference in what the article presents as an escape for young men with no job vs someone who plays games in the evening to relax.
That free time you have is a luxury if you are working. It can still be very enjoyable to do interesting things after work, but I wouldn't look at them as investing time or learning new skills or hustling (i.e. working). That's a great way to get burnout. Burnout can be horrible if you never have leisure, but you can still make some that off time productive in some way without it feeling like work. For myself I like to put together projects in new tech that seem interesting for an idea that is absurd. It doesn't have to be even a full demo, just some examples where you poked at something and can talk about to coworkers. Arduino / Raspberry Pis are great too - super easy to get in to and you can make stupid fun little trick things. Same with chat bots and cloud infrastructure - slap something together and everybody can have fun.
I'm just wanting to say be careful how you look at your free time. That relaxation with video games and a beer is OK. But if you're wanting more out of it then turn it in to some way to get conversations and cool hacks working with coworkers or friends. Also - try switching up some video games with board games. There are some incredible board games out there these days and it'll be easy to get a group together at work for a quick round of some games.
While I agree with what you're saying re: Relaxation after work vs no work at all, the use of words is perfect to describe what I and probably many other people struggle with in regards to bettering their situations. I understand that I have a degree of self-improvement impulse that would be destructive if I indulged it fully, but I definitely have ideas for products and side businesses that I would really like to get around to but it gets washed away by this "narcotic undertow of cheap entertainment" as the author so eloquently puts it.
Yeah, have to agree here. Further, sometimes after a long week I don't have any creative energy for even thinking of side project ideas, and games are the only way I can recharge.
I used to be fine with that. Now as I get older I see it as a vice which causes major cognitive dissonance since it is my main way to recharge.
Very indirectly and entirely personally: EVE Online.
I unintentionally became more accustomed to delayed gratification, taught myself how to make micro-optimizations in my life to clear up time, chose to re-invest my time saved investing in new skills, learned (when trying to get a job/promotion) to frame my value in terms of what fulfilling someone else's needs, learned the value of researching both how to do things AND why people recommend those methods over others, and developed a decent sense of risk:reward-informed decision-making.
as maligned as mmos are, being the gm of a guild gives you a lot of free training on how to be a manager: you have to learn how to motivate people to work together, defuse issues, deal with egos, even try to figure out ways to incentivize "unfun" activities so they get done (i.e. farming for raid materials etc.)
Not sure if you would put it on your resume, but IMHO if I was a hiring manager and I was hiring for an entry level mgmt position and somebody had "ran a successful wow guild with 50 members for 2 years" it would definitely be something I would see very positively
The local office manager was a successful wow guild leader, and he does put it into his resume and bio :) (not sure if it actually helped him land the job).
Honestly, compared to Dota 2, where you're spending probably 45 minutes playing with uncoordinated teammates, everyone doesn't speak the same language and you probably lose, its a walk in the park (I love both of those games).
What a perfect way to describe the constant struggle I have with whittling away evenings drinking beer and playing Overwatch vs investing time in learning new skills or working on side hustles to generate additional income.