The contact lens product advertisement in my Sunday newspaper asserts thats that the average gamer spends 22 hours a week playing video games and demands to know if my contact lens solution handle that.

Ugh, who on earth can handle that?

22 hours a week, average, playing video games. That’s right in there with the 3 to 6 hours we hear people who watch television (or whatever form of streaming video they prefer) spend on their habit daily. Hmm, what could you do with 22 hours a week?

• Take a walk and do yoga every day, spend one day a week building houses for Habitat for Humanity, or working in a food bank, or some other form of service, and still have time to read a book for an hour a day.
• Train for a triathlon.
• Earn your HS diploma, your tech certificate, AA, BA, BS, MS, MA, or Ph.D.
• Learn a new skill: paint, fly fish, built a robot.

The possibilities are tremendous. They are all life-changing.

In five years, what story do you want to tell about the person you will be tomorrow? Do you want to look back and say, “Hey, I was a serious gamer and invested a lot of time and energy into mastering levels of this one game for hours a day”? Is there any other sort of story you can imagine you’d rather tell in a few years, about the person you will be tomorrow?

What about the person you want to be in five years? Will playing video games (or watching television, or streaming video, or surfing the internet) for 22 hours x 52 weeks x 5 years turn you into that person? That’s over 5700 hours. Do you think you could manage to pack some great memories and amazing changes into your life with 5700 hours?

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2015

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.