• Home
  • Releases
  • Blog
  • Design
  • Posters
  • Submission Guidelines
  • About
  • Privacy Policy

Loser City

Multimedia Collective

  • Home
  • Releases
  • Features
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Art
  • Submissions
You are here: Home / Features / Your Soul Will Not Wither Without an Abundance of Easy Comforts: Mistaking Enjoyment for Identity

Your Soul Will Not Wither Without an Abundance of Easy Comforts: Mistaking Enjoyment for Identity

January 28, 2016 By Chris Jones Leave a Comment

As those of you who’ve kept up with my writing on this site may be aware, I spent a stint in rehab last year. I’d recommend the experience to anyone who knows they have a problem (and has the health insurance to cover it), and I’d like to think that I picked up a lot of tools and skills for how to manage my life during my month long stay. That said, even after successful treatment every addict still has a hornet’s nest of questions buzzing around in their life. Questions like, “what’ll happen if I relapse again?” Or, “will my friends and family forgive me for everything I’ve put them through?” On down the line we challenge ourselves with these worries and regrets, finally arriving at the ultimate quandary, the lynchpin of our recovery: “will I still have time to play Fallout as much as I want to?”

Not a problem you’ve ever given serious thought to after a major life change? Then you may not be Ben Kuchera, senior editor at Polygon and author of the descriptively titled thinkpiece Ambien Is a Wonder Drug That’s Killing My Gaming Habit: How a Busy Father of Five is Sleeping Better, and Why That Sucks.

In fairness the headline is more grating than the piece itself, but just barely. Kuchera describes how when he was a younger man he was able to get by on less sleep, and thus had more time to consume media and write, but at a cost to his productivity and mental wellbeing. Since going on Ambien he has had better sleep and become a happier, healthier man, but he has also had less time to play video games and watch TV. He describes this tradeoff as, I am not kidding, a “devil’s bargain,” and proceeds to describe the hole in his life that has been created by not getting to read all the comics he wants to.

Kids reading comics

Ben Kuchera and his posse before he started using ambien

You may be wondering why I’ve drawn a parallel between recovering from an addiction and complaining that being a functional adult leaves less time for Mario Kart. I do this because I recognize what it looks like when someone is afraid of losing what they believe to be key parts of their lives for childish, nonsense reasons. During my drinking I spent most of my free evenings swigging five dollar vodka and watching clips of Tables+Ladders+Chairs wrestling matches on Youtube. Every drunk thinks the life they live is the best and only option available to them, yet even after I had thoroughly detoxed in rehab and my mind was becoming clearer, I still wondered how I was going to have fun if I couldn’t drink, as though blearily watching Game Grumps while wondering how many benzos it would take to let me sleep for 15 hours was the pinnacle of human ecstasy.

Kuchera’s behavior is not addictive in this exact sense, but it’s similar in that he has hitched his identity to a vacuous pastime simply because it is familiar. Remember, he has admitted that his current lifestyle is superior and that he enjoys it more than what he was doing before, and yet he still thinks of it as a trade-off, not a gain: he describes his lifestyle adjustments as “banking my time as an investment in hopes of getting more of it when I’m older.” I’ve never seen a grown man talk about being more productive in such grudging terms, certainly not when the investment in question is “less Xbox.”

I want to make it clear that I’m not coming out swinging against video games; what I am cautioning against is mistaking enjoyment for identity.

We have this pernicious notion in our culture that having fun is the same thing as being happy. If it’s not making you money, and it’s not something that gives you an immediate serotonin kick, it’s to be avoided as a waste of time. This is how someone like Kuchera can wake up “feeling like a million bucks” as opposed to spending his days bitter and exhausted, and still believe that he has made a compromise. There’s nothing “fun” about sleep, or ease of mind. There’s nothing “fun” about sobriety, for that matter. But only an addict in the thick of their delusion will tell you that the alternative is preferable.

There’s a thing I hear at a lot of my AA meetings that I’ve been trying to become better at internalizing. Often someone will speak up about how lately they’ve been cranky about their obligations, like driving their kids to baseball practice or having to clean up the backyard, n.b. things they didn’t care about doing when they were drunk. Then they say: I must remember that I don’t have to do these things, I get to do these things. I get to be a productive, healthy member of society, I get to follow through on my promises. When I was drinking, I could not. I did not have the choice.

The hard, simple truth is that not everything you like doing is necessary to make your life whole, and not every enjoyable activity you cut off in order to reach your goals amounts to a sacrifice. If you have to lose video game time so you can like your life more, you didn’t actually lose anything in the first place. Your soul will not wither without an abundance of easy comforts; in fact, the more of these comforts you can excise from your life, the more you can look at and say “I like who I am without this,” the happier you will most likely find yourself.

When I was drinking, I wouldn’t have been able to decide if I wanted to write this essay and send it to Nick or if I wanted to watch the video for “We Built This City” for the umpteenth time because I would not have had the energy or focus to do anything that required such effort from me. If you ever find yourself in Kuchera’s shoes, grumbling that your efforts at self-improvement have sliced time away from doing the things you like, please remember that the conscious choice to self-improve is something not everyone is blessed with. Growth is natural, change is good, and every moment you spend a healthy, happy human being is one more of those moments you didn’t have before. Try not to worry so much about whether or not that moment happened to be spent in Skyrim.


Christopher M. Jones once wrote a comic about dogs people liked a bunch. He ostensibly does other things too. You should follow him on Twitter.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: addiction, Ben Kuchera, leisure, Polygon, rehab, video games

About Chris Jones

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

SOCIAL

FacebookInstagramTumblrTwitter

Buy Loser City Apparel

loser city T-shirt

Be a Loser

Sign up for Loser City's mailing list to receive weekly updates about the latest articles, shows, and releases.

TRENDZ

Anatomy of a Page art Austin CBS comedy comics Dark Horse DC DC Comics documentary Fantagraphics Film Fossil Records Games HBO hip-hop horror humor IDW Image Comics Indie indie comics jake muncy manga Marvel Marvel Comics Melissa Benoist Music penny dreadful Pete Toms punk Questionable Comics Review Ryan K Lindsay sci-fi Seattle Showtime Supergirl SXSW Television the CW TV video games Video of the Week ymmv

Top Posts & Pages

  • Codeine Crazy
  • Mind the Gap: Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
  • Lost in My Mind: I Believe in Unicorns is a Gauzy and Inventive Exploration of Girlhood
  • Trophies of Over Indulgence: A Look Inside the World of Gainers
  • All Things Must Change: Silk Rhodes' Debut is Delicious Audio Foreplay
  • Visual Domination: Angelina Jolie's Sexual Power in Mr and Mrs. Smith
  • The Transfiguration of Fiddleford McGucket
  • Fossil Records: Lee Hazlewood's Requiem for an Almost Lady
  • Fluid Exchange: I Roved Out by Rupert Everton
  • Below Her Mouth is Yet Another Disappointing Film About Lesbian Experiences

Follow Loser City

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
Instagram did not return a 200.

Follow loser_city on the Gram

Loser City is…

Comics, shows, a secret critical network -- we aim to fail big.

Danny Djeljosevic: Co-Founder

Morgan Davis: Co-Founder

Nick Hanover: Glorious Godfrey of LC

David Fairbanks: Creative Writing Editor

Kayleigh Hughes: Film Editor

Julie Muncy: Games Editor

David He: Assisting Consultant*

Contributors: Nate Abernethy, John Bender, AJ Bernardo, CJ Camba, Liam Conlon, Daniel Elkin, David A. French, Rafael Gaitan, Dylan Garsee, Stefanie Gray, Johnson Hagood, Shea Hennum, Zak Kinsella, Austin Lanari, Marissa Louise, Francesca Lyn, Chase Magnett, Justin Martin, Diana Naneva, Claire Napier, Joshua Palmer, James Pound, Mike Prezzato, Lars Russell, David Sackllah, Keith Silva, Nicholas Slayton, Carly Smith, Ray Sonne, Tom Speelman, Mark O. Stack, Dylan Tano, Mason Walker

Art

Why So Angry: Refusing to Forget Stories of Abuse

Poetry: My God, My World

Comic Cinema Club: Sorcerer by Rafael Gaitan and Mike Prezzato

Nonfiction: Progeny in Crisis by Kayleigh Hughes

The Persistence of Synergy: Scenes from the Stock Business Photo Prison Hellscape

More Art

Interviews

Dhani Harrison Plots His Own Path With Solo Debut In///Parallel

Boston Terriers and Desert Vibes: A Conversation with Jay and Sanders Fabares of “The Pale”

Questionable Comics: Becky & Frank and Rachael Stott

More Interviews

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in