With my self diagnosed ADHD brain, keeping my body busy has always come naturally. I have often had more energy to expel in a day than most of my friends and acquaintances whom often need a daily nap to recharge to make it through the evening. Lots of studies have been done in the past few years to validate the use of short 20 minute naps each afternoon to recharge the body and mind. On the rare occasion I have allowed my body to partake, it has proven restorative.
Yet as a mother of 2, I often power through the evening after returning from work by cleaning up the breakfast and lunch dishes, making and eating dinner, putting on a wash or folding laundry and then either going to the gym or sitting down for an hour or two of television. This routine made more common for my generation than the previous, has come to be the norm for women across the US. The sheer energy expelled each day on the mundane has created a world of the walking dead. Our creative juices all but dried up. The painter or writer or dancer in each of us, all but a shriveled memory from a past laden with broken dreams.
A few years ago I noticed a lot of women I knew with pencils and these little sudoko books in their hands. I asked a friend, while seated in a church pew waiting for our kids to finish confirmation practice, how to play. She explained there are nine boxes and you need to fill each one with the numbers 1 through 9 and every row has to also have 1 through 9 in it with no repeating numbers. I started playing sudoku in any paper or weekly laying around and loved it. I taught my young son, who was great at it, and anyone else who asked me to.
It was a natural transition from doing sudoku on paper to playing spider solitaire on any random “black mirror device”, as they became common appendages of our bodies. I played spider solitaire on my phone or computer or years later, on my iPad. I played whenever I was forced to wait around for appointments to begin, my husband to wake up in the morning or distract myself in the car when anyone else was driving during a long trip. I found these games a perfect way to shut my brain off and basically turn off any racing thoughts.
You see I’m an early riser and most of my friends and family are not. For years I would get up and just start cleaning or cooking or doing any number of chores around the house so I wouldn’t be tempted to wake anyone else. In my brain there is always something to do or talk about.
As a child, I can remember my father saying “my goodness why do you ask so many questions?” As the sixth of seven kids, and all the rest boys, I wonder now if that was unusual in my family. My young son used to talk so much I remember long rides to the beach in my old Nissan pickup with him sitting on the bench seat next to me in his booster seat. I would tell him after exhausting multiple games, of finding the letters of the alphabet in order on random signs and license plates to make up and spell words that, “it’s ok to talk but I need to stop listening now. “
The brain is wired to build connections with others and to try to figure stuff out. Talking out loud may help the young brain develop and grow wider synapses. I surely felt the same way my Dad did about all the questions my young children asked, even though I knew, it was their way of untangling the complicated stew of friends and aspirations they were grappling with on any given day.
In the early days of marriage my husband would say “I just need a little more sleep”, when I would try to start talking in bed as the sun was rising. But as the years went on and we sought counseling for communication tactics I learned to read during this time and catch him in the evening after his nap for the heavy conversations about “the relationship “ or “money.”
As I got older and my eyesight dimmed I pulled out an iPad one early morning and not wanting to disturb by watching a video, I tried a game of spider solitaire on my phone, a variation on the old card game my dad taught me to play in my teens, and I was hooked. I played random games for years of one color cards and suit and then got better at two, and even three suits with different colors.
In the last few years I noticed some silly enticements to playing online. In the early days, when you solved a game, fireworks would splash across your devices screen. Now when you solve one, “You Won”, splashes across the screen and any number of playing cards form into a design of a 3D three leaf clover, heart, apple or sailing ship and so on. I am intrigued by the creativity of modern programmers and enjoy viewing new designs.
These little rewards have morphed into earning a little gold crown with red ruby diamonds in it for successfully untangling a daily game in the day it is offered. If for any reason you solved it a day or so later the crown moves across the screen sans rubies. You win a silver virtual trophy for successfully solving half of the games in a month and gold for winning all games offered each month.
The challenge was daunting at first and even though there were unwinnable games in random solitaire I found that if you kept replaying these daily offerings you could invariably win each of the daily games. I always avoided the prompts asking me “Are you stuck?” with hints on how to solve the game preferring to untangle it on my own. Maybe not that day but, I could revisit them after being successful in subsequent days and then go back to them afresh and untangle them. Sometimes the words, “There’s no shame to undo and start over” would appear at the bottom of the game screen.
The free online game I prefer sells ads in between every pause or start of any new games but it allows you to tap a little x in the top corner of the screen to bypass them in a few seconds. Some online games I have tried make these ads so long I quit playing because they don’t let you opt out with the little x for up to 20 seconds, which feels like an eternity in today’s world of instant gratification.
Last year I vowed to myself I could win every daily game offered in 2018. This took some dedication on my part to upload the games everyday or every few days as they became available at midnight.
Most of the ads were for clothing companies, diet drinks or movies but randomly I started getting ads asking, “Are you addicted?” This question asked in a variety of ways started to be echoed by my grown kids and husband. I had to seriously ask myself if this is what addiction looks like in 2018? Is it an addiction if you only do it when nothing else is going on and it doesn’t cost anything?
I really grappled with these questions and in the end I’ve come to determine that yes it is. These modern handheld black mirror devices and full access to daily challenges, as they are called, have robbed me and my family of hours of my time be it creative or mundane. I vowed to give it up after this year. And replace it with what exactly? I started writing again and the poetry and prose I write in the wee hours of the morning or in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep is way more edifying. I feel proud instead of embarrassed that I just wasted a couple predawn hours goofing off.
I have 7 more days of daily challenges to complete till New Years and I’m determined to finish 2018 spider solitaire strong. But after that I will focus my efforts on my writing and listening to more music and even prayer because it’s in the quiet and reflective spaces in life that your true essence can be revealed. Somehow I lost sight of that along the way and you may have also.
