Kim said, “Did you work on your pilot?”
I dug into my pancakes with a fork. Stabbing motions. “Well, I did some research.” Which meant, I’d played a lot of World of Warcraft. They all sort of deflated. Because they’d heard it many times before.
The months I went to Chick-In coincided with the height of my gaming addiction. The main accomplishments I had brought in to the ladies every week were things like, “Raided Zul’Gurub. Got new armor for Keeblerette. Achieved maximum faction with the Argent Dawn . . .” I watered the vocabulary down for the civilian ladies as “Played a lot of video games,” but the result was the same. I was making zero progress toward my goal of writing and acting more, and that made me depressed. So I played more. Vicious cycle.
“You did ‘research’ by playing video games?”
“Yeah, but I’m definitely gonna cut back.” I filled the silence that followed with positive-thinking intentions.
They didn’t believe me.
I didn’t believe myself.
After a few more months of conversations like that, the guilt started to wear me down. That and the fact that I was gaming so much that my conscious and subconscious were bleeding together until I felt like a living gaming entity, a robot controlling the virtual character of my flesh-and-blood self. I knew I had to change SOMETHING. If only to make sure the ladies kept me on the invite list.
I went to the next Chick-In with newfound determination. “I quit the game.” It was like a bomb dropped into the nonvegetarian ladies’ corned beef hash.
“For real?” “Congratulations!” “That’s awesome!” There was relief on their faces, like they never understood this whole “video game thing” going on with Felicia, but they knew it wasn’t good. Quitting was a big step!
“Are you going to start your screenplay now?” Trina said, smiling. She had perfect teeth. I made a mental note to ask about her dentist later, because I was flush with proactivity.
“Pilot,” I corrected her. “Yeah, I’m gonna do it!” And in that moment I believed it. I could do it!
But . . . I didn’t. Yes, I quit WoW cold turkey, but that didn’t mean I could shake it instantaneously. An addiction isn’t something you say good-bye to without pesky obsessive-compulsive strings attached.
For a month after my resolution, I stumbled through life, sleepwalking from withdrawal. Like quitting coffee times 85,000 percent. I was in a daze, itching every moment to get back online. Time became SO SLOOOOW! Like driving behind a ninety-year-old woman in a ’72 Chrysler with a handicapped license plate slow. It was torture. I’d sit in my silent house, staring at the clock, the endlessly ticking clock, wondering how people endured the task of filling their whole lives with this LIVING thing. Inside I was screaming. There’s nothing to DO anymore!
“Cold turkey” slipped into “lukewarm turkey.” As a workaround, I kept up on all the blogs for the game, because that wasn’t technically “playing.” I followed the forums to keep up with my raid buddies, aching to rejoin them. At my lowest, I started sobbing when the game announced limited-edition pumpkin heads for people’s characters to wear during Halloween and I couldn’t get one. That amazing pumpkin would have covered my ugly penis hair SO PRETTY!
And all that time I was lying to my support group. I told the ladies, “Sure! I’m writing!” when I wasn’t. Yes, I could have filled all those newfound minutes with actual work, but I had no confidence in myself. I was a fraud. Who was I to pick up a pen and expect anything good to come out of it? I expected perfection as soon as the pencil hit the paper, and since that’s impossible, I couldn’t get myself to start. Then I felt guilty about not starting, which made me want to start even less. And with no game to bury the feelings, I got very depressed. No wonder I didn’t book any acting jobs in the last half of 2006. No one wanted to hire a clinically depressed person to sell snack foods.