I'm quitting this addiction, too

If you've been reading my posts for a while, you know that I've gone back and forth about whether I wanted to play, rent out my cards, delegate them to a Herons Unlimited account, etc.

This time, I've decided to make it final. I am beginning the process of selling all of my cards and will no longer be playing at all. The year or so that I've been playing this game has also probably been the worst year of my entire life. I'm not blaming the game at all. In fact, I found some great comfort in it. Too much, in fact. Just like I took too much comfort in alcohol and cannabis.

During this year, I've found out my mother is terminally ill, my wonderful dog Ida got cancer and died, I've been laid off from my real job and had to work a temporary one that pays less, has no benefits, and frankly kind of sucks. My creative juices have all but dried up, I've stopped hanging out with any of my friends, and overall just made a lot of poor choices because I was in a depressed state of mind.

Changes were made and I have been able to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I've quit drinking, and I've also quit consuming cannabis. I'm quitting this game, too. I don't play any other games, but I would say I play this one enough to say I have a gaming addiction. It used to be the very first thing I did or thought about in the morning, the first thing I did when I got home from work, and then I'd continue until it was time to go to bed, basically. And repeat. This one has the downside of a cost associated with playing it, and a compulsion to get more and max level cards.

I don't want to spend any significant portion of my life playing video games or sitting in front of my computer doing unproductive things and chasing fake achievements that don't really matter in the real world. I need to start to learn to tread lightly when I say certain things about how I want to live my life, because it tends to make people defensive. I don't eat like normal people, so when I talk about how I eat around normal people, they get defensive. I don't drink alcohol, so when I talk about how good that makes me feel, people get defensive. Cannabis, too.

Splinterlands is a great game. Part of what makes it great, though, is that it compels people to spend a lot of money on it. While that can make for a successful game, it can really have some negative effects on peoples' lives. Gaming addiction is very real, just like porn addiction, alcohol addiction, sugar addiction, etc.

The writing on the wall is pretty clear when I step back far enough to see it, too. I think this game, in order to be truly successful, will actually have to try to move toward finding some sort of balance where it isn't required to have, say, $8000 worth of cards just to play at a top competitive level. When you get to that level, it's 8000 th12 accounts, and a few of the regular players (and their multiple accounts). Everyone sees this, and everyone thinks it's kind of frustrating. What that might mean is some of the cards won't hold their current values forever.

Do I think the values of the cards I sell will go up in the future? Absolutely. Do I think they'll hit a ceiling and eventually lose a lot of a value, too? Absolutely. That's how things go. I'm okay with getting of the train now. I've spent nowhere near the amount of money that my cards are worth on the cards themselves, so I still look at it as a good investment.

Someone has already asked me about buying cards outside of the market and if I'm on Discord. Unfortunately, I am not looking to do that right now and I'm not on Discord. I left the Splinterlands server a little while ago, before even deciding not to play anymore. Just as I don't want to spend any of my time playing a game, I don't want to spend any of my time chatting in Discord, either. Especially when it tends to just annoy me. Why let something annoy you? I'm not doing that anymore if I can avoid it.

I'm not in a rush to sell them and I'm fine leaving them on the market for as long as it takes, to some extent. Maybe I'll try making a few sets on Peakmonsters, and I'll probably just end up burning some that no one will realistically want to buy because they suck. We all know there are a few stinkers in the cards.

Finding a way to make the money received from the value of my cards work for me is what I'll be spending my free time doing going forward. Instead of playing, I'll be learning, reading, studying. It's not going to just investing in crypto, because that's a sure-fire way to failure in a lot of ways if you aren't extremely good at it.

Going forward, I wish everyone the very best of luck. I hope this game blows up and you all get super rich. As I alluded to earlier, please don't mistake what I've said as any sort of judgement about how people want to spend their time. I'm a believer in people having the freedom to do whatever they want so long as they're not hurting anyone else. I don't think there's anything wrong with being a gamer, being a cannabis enthusiast, eating ice cream and pizza, or drinking beer. I just find that my life is better without any of those things and I like to think I'm constantly on a journey of self discovery, change, and healing.

As for me, I'm feeling good about my life for the first time in a while. The positive changes I've been making were exactly what I needed to push the darkness out of my life and start living again.

This will be my last post form this account (and on sharkmonsters.com) for the foreseeable future.

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