I still have a lot of work to do, but winter has free'd up some of my time so I'll spend it with you all.

At first I wrote a pretty lengthy blog about video game addiction and how awful it is, but it was too argumentative and I didn't feel comfortable with it. Especially considering I'm still trying to figure out a good balance within my own life, I'd rather just talk about why I needed to disappear.

I'm keeping the title though, I enjoy it too much.

I was talking with my roommate at the beginning of the semester; my graphics card died and it would be very costly for me to upgrade my desktop. My roommate told me that this was an addiction, and it has taken more from my life than its given me. I pushed pretty hard at the idea at first, but it sunk in eventually.

After, I decided not to upgrade my desktop, and to focus on school more than I ever have in my life. I mean, I always got by, never failed, but never really tried. And so I focused, I dedicated most of my time to school and work.

Getting there was tough though, I packed away my desktop, uninstalled Steam from my Linux partition on my laptop, and blocked the sites that distracted me on a daily basis. For over three months I practically lived in the engineering building on campus, staying their until late in the night programming and doing homework.

Sorry, you guys were blocked a bit there, it's a compliment really :P

I still played games from time to time though, and I think anyone wanting to fix there addiction can too. I just always make sure it's a social thing, that I'm playing with friends and possibly making friends, in the same room. That last part is important, friends met in games are hardly reliable. Go to a friends house, meet somewhere, make it a scheduled thing and not something that happens every day. My friends and I play on a vanilla wow private server every Friday night, we invite other people to join us, and we spend most of the time talking.

Anyways, I'm trying to relax a bit this winter break, but sadly I've got about four different projects I need to tackle before the next semester starts. I'm going to be around as much as I can, it's great to see you guys again :D