Give Me a Break

Life has been busy and tiring lately. Part of the tiring half of that is my own fault. I have a tendency to stay up much later than I should, including Thursday game night. You see, some years ago, Anne and I made a decision that each of us needs to have some time each week to ourselves. With Anne currently being a work at home mom, she especially needs time away from the children, as her job doesn't currently accrue vacation time, though there have been rumors of a union starting to organize.

Anyway, every Wednesday night I'm in charge of the kids while Anne gets to head out of the house or go upstairs and watch a movie or whatever. The biggest thing is that I'm in charge of the kids, and she's not needing to be concerned with them at all. At least in theory. My night is Thursdays. I'm a natural home body. My idea of a great vacation is a few days away from work and sitting around the house doing as little as possible except for spending time with family, reading, and doing stuff on the computer. It stems from when I was growing up, and we had dairy cattle so we couldn't go anywhere. So when Thursday nights come around and the kids are in bed, I make my way to the computer. It started with just myself, but then I realized that Frederick III might have free nights as well. Or at least that the kids might be in bed over there. I called him up, investing a few cell phone minutes. He was interested. After a couple of weeks of playing Diablo II, F3 had the suggestion of including his brother-in-law in the game as well. Through the magic of Skype, we were able to talk and socialize while enjoying the cathartic experience of smacking pixellated creatures with a virtual mace. A good time was had by all. We've since added another of F3's brothers-in-law. He currently only has one BIL that isn't playing with us. Which is fine with me. See, I've known his BILs prior to their joining the game, so it's all good. Let's hope that's the last time that I use the phrase "it's all good" in my writing. Ever.

Since we don't start until after 9 (9:30 if F3 is running late) and we want to get some good, quality gaming time in, we usually play until about midnight. Or so. We thought that we'd have a hard cap of midnight, but it's really turned into a soft cap. The big thing is getting to a good stopping point so that we can pick up very easily next time.

What's the point? Time to unwind. Time to spend with friends. More importantly, it's so that I get more time with my family. That might initially seem counter-intuitive, but you need to understand my personality. Before having that definite time to play games, a hobby that I've enjoyed since we would go to Pizza Hut and I'd play their Pole Position game, I'd try to sneak away for a few minutes here and there whenever I could. This meant that I had less time to spend with family. I have a personality that takes things that I like to excess. This way, I know that I'm going to have time to play games for an extended period of time, so I don't have to worry about sneaking it in when I should be spending time with my family.

I highly recommend doing something like this in any marriage. I know that it's helped ours.