NaNoWriMo - Day Eight: Resisting the Siren's Call - (Frontierville)

I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook's associated plethora of time-wasting, soul-sucking games like Farmville and Frontierville. I hate them because of all the, you know, time-wasting and soul-sucking. (Admittedly, the jury is still out on the soul-sucking - that's hard to prove in this lifetime, but I have my suspicions. . .)

On the other hand, I also love the games because they are extremely fun, and also because I really, really like to earn things - even so-called "things" of very dubious value. I never got to be a Girl Scout, but if I had been, I'd have collected every single badge I could possibly get my mitts on. I just love completing goals and earning badges and pins and things for my efforts. Even badges made of bytes, like the sort they gave out on my most recent obsession, Frontierville.

By the start of NaNoWriMo's writing-an-entire-novel-in-one-month-craziness, though, I had finally gotten a little tired of the amount of time and energy it took to keep my frontier town thriving. I already had a neglected Farmville account languishing in my rear view mirror, and I'd learned from that experience that once you manage to go a few days without checking in, the game loses most of its allure, and you can suddenly step back and see that it is, in fact, just a silly game that is striving (futilely, in my case) to get you to spend real money for fake stuff.

So it has been several weeks now, since I bid the (fake) frontier farewell and headed off into the sunset. But Week Two of NaNo has been nothing but a big temptation to relapse. See, here you are, staring at the computer screen, and suddenly you can't write another word without your head just exploding, so you click over really quick to check email, and . . . nothing. For like ten minutes at least, your friends haven't sent you a single silly rhyming email designed to drive their sisters crazy (true story) or even a decent chain email threatening death and destruction if not forwarded to 80 friends in the next 14 seconds. Not even an email with cute pictures of kittens!

So there you are, with nothing, and then Facebook starts calling your name. Frontierville is luring you back like a true siren, pulling you away from your novel-writing and towards the terrible dangerous rocks of time-you-don't-have-to-waste. Don't you deserve a break? You have a terrible headache from all that serious writing. Don't you deserve to have some rest and relaxation and good times with your friends, sending and receiving items and earning . . . badges? What about the badges April? How could you forget?

Well so far, much like Odysseus on his great, well, odyssey, I've tied myself to the couch and kept my mouse away from the "Frontierville" button with success. Okay, so Odysseus tied himself to the mast of his ship to avoid answering the sirens' call, which isn't much like a couch at all, and I'm pretty sure Odysseus would have thought a WriMo was a disaster sent by the Greek muses (well, actually, hey - that part might be pretty accurate) but anyway, my POINT is, this is the 21st century. We modern day heroes have to adapt!

And so, at least for now, my Frontierville bookmark is safely tucked away. Just in case, however, I do have a secret weapon if the urge to earn badges becomes too great! How cool is that?!

Words written today: 1,779. Total: 11,006. Badges: None yet, but I can order them in a jiffy if I need them!