On why I hate "hiding"
Okay, so I was chatting with a friend here last night -- courtesy of the new Meebo bar (yippee!) -- and we spent a few minutes talking about my sister's wedding and a concern I had about basically being told to hide while the prep stuff was taking place at my house (see, I'm a guy, I have zero clue about these things. Nothing, nada, nil.)
I said I really hate the word "hiding", but then I basically did her a disservice: I didn't explain why. So, for her and everybody else, here's why:
I know, from experience, that it's incredibly easy to abuse anything if you're not careful. And I do not mean just drugs and alcohol. I mean anything.
I once had a puzzle addiction and still have a sizable pile of books to prove it (don't believe me? I'm posting a photo later tonight to show you). The same thing happened more recently with video golf (and part of that can be blamed on the fact that the copy of Links 2003 I have on my lappy I only paid $6 for...yes, it's that cheap on the game's official site.)
So here's where the "hiding" part comes in: Knowing my panicky nature, if something coming up felt uncomfortable, I'd just use something I had a lot of knowing that even though I probably wouldn't feel any better, I'd drown myself in it anyway because it felt better than thinking about the uncomfortable situation. You could say I was feeding my addictions to run away from what I didn't want to face (and sometimes dodged outright, but that part is a tiny bit too complicated to go into here).
It was hiding because the fun got sucked out of it; I'd want to the highest score or beat the highest difficulty or something like that. One night I almost killed my mobile phone battery on Platinum Sudoku, just to clear one of the Pro difficulty puzzles (which I eventually did, but the feeling once I did so was empty).
So that's what I mean by hiding. It manifests itself out of fear. This isn't so much of a problem with my reading list now (thank you Summerwind81 and WallyBear!). It is a problem everywhere else.
I said I really hate the word "hiding", but then I basically did her a disservice: I didn't explain why. So, for her and everybody else, here's why:
I know, from experience, that it's incredibly easy to abuse anything if you're not careful. And I do not mean just drugs and alcohol. I mean anything.
I once had a puzzle addiction and still have a sizable pile of books to prove it (don't believe me? I'm posting a photo later tonight to show you). The same thing happened more recently with video golf (and part of that can be blamed on the fact that the copy of Links 2003 I have on my lappy I only paid $6 for...yes, it's that cheap on the game's official site.)
So here's where the "hiding" part comes in: Knowing my panicky nature, if something coming up felt uncomfortable, I'd just use something I had a lot of knowing that even though I probably wouldn't feel any better, I'd drown myself in it anyway because it felt better than thinking about the uncomfortable situation. You could say I was feeding my addictions to run away from what I didn't want to face (and sometimes dodged outright, but that part is a tiny bit too complicated to go into here).
It was hiding because the fun got sucked out of it; I'd want to the highest score or beat the highest difficulty or something like that. One night I almost killed my mobile phone battery on Platinum Sudoku, just to clear one of the Pro difficulty puzzles (which I eventually did, but the feeling once I did so was empty).
So that's what I mean by hiding. It manifests itself out of fear. This isn't so much of a problem with my reading list now (thank you Summerwind81 and WallyBear!). It is a problem everywhere else.
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