Coping Strategies with Game Hobbies

 “It is hardly possible to build anything if frustration, bitterness, and a mood of helplessness prevail.”

— Lech Walesa

I am resisting retreating from the world for a while, as I occasionally have when everything seems overwhelming; my usual euphemism for doing so is going to the “Hermitage on the Edge of Oblivion.” Much as I’d like to temporarily remove myself from social media and the madness of the world at large, I cannot. In the absence of actual day-to-day friends I see in person, online interaction remains my primary engagement with other relatively friendly humans (such as it is). So while maintaining awareness of the horrors unfolding in the news, I take the time to indulge in “self care” activities to maintain my ability to function daily and prevent my further descent into madness. Most of these relate to my activities in the adventure gaming hobby and peripheral interests. In outlining them here, I hope readers might find helpful strategies; if not an exact match, then some inspiration for similar pursuits offering temporary respite and renewal before braving the monstrous indifference and active misery our current reality forces upon us.

My OSS Guilty Pleasure Reading

 “A judicious mixture of rumor and deception, with truth as bait, to foster disunity and confusion.”

— William J. Donovan

Every so often I return to read a beloved novel, something to help distract me from the woes of this existence and provide some level of entertainment and, in some cases, further enlightenment. I return to Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in A Strange Land occasionally, despite its obsolete and often biased views of “future” society and other issues. I’ve read aloud J.RR. Tolkien’s The Hobbit numerous times to my son when he was of bedtime-story age. I make the pilgrimage of reading A Canticle for Leibowitz when the world seems teetering on (or careening over) the brink of madness. But I’ve never before mentioned my guilty pleasure, a series of novels about the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II: W.E.B. Griffin’s Men at War series. Given the stresses of the holiday season combined with <waves hand> everything else, well, it seemed about time to revisit the young heroes of the novels and lose myself in their rollicking if not terribly historically accurate escapades.