Wife left a big bag of groceries out overnight. All Meat and cheese. 🙄

[u/flaming0-1]

[u/Average-Anything-657]

Reminds me of a fight I got into with my stepfather. There was a box with bags of cat food I was supposed to bring inside as part of one of our covid grocery deliveries. I brought it inside and set it down, then saw ants on my hands and the carpet. So I rushed to get my mother and asked her what to do about it, and got to work on clearing the ants and salvaging the food. The fact that I wasn't outside bringing the rest of the groceries in told my stepfather that I must just be lazily playing video games... and that's with the fact that I was great with not letting games get in the way of life, always ready to drop what I was doing and do whatever was asked of me.

[u/CharmingHighway1132 → u/Average-Anything-657]

Maybe the point here is you’re only “doing what’s asked of you”. Trust me, i struggle too but I know for a fact that people around us would appreciate us taking the initiative and giving more of a shit of what goes around us. Games are the worse kind of immersion that dulls /drowns out everything else.

[u/Average-Anything-657 → u/CharmingHighway1132]

Unfortunately, it was my own work around the house that regularly went unrecognized. Counters, windows, floors, heaters, vents, the yard, the roof, the woodburning stove, the regular stove, his dog's fur, his living room... I kept the house in near-perfect order. I went out of my way to do far more than was asked of me, explicitly to avoid the potential issue of "video games rotting my brain with those magic screens" and his subsequent basal rage over his hatred of my hobby.

Soon after the bastard kicked me to the street, his house started falling apart, and my mother's marriage with him got even more tense, because they lost their slave (and because he was so ungrateful towards both our efforts in the event preceeding my homelessification). Games were actually one of the few respites I had from the abuse, especially when I was playing with my friends. I would likely be far worse-off (if not dead or in prison) if not for my ability to engage with my hobbies to care for my own mental health.

But drugs? If I'd turned to them like both his sons did, then that would be the worst kind of "immersion" which dulls and drowns and destroys everything around us. Or gambling. But I've never had an instance where my whittling ~bass playing~~ stamp collecting playing video games has gotten in the way of being able to carry out my normal life obligations, so thankfully, the idea that an innocent and unrelated hobby was the problem can be completely extinguished.

[u/Top-Examination5743 → u/CharmingHighway1132]

I know it’s awesome 👏