This morning, I quite literally forgot to write.
I’ve been busy trying to get ready to move, and also to do all the things that pile up during the school year which I save for the summer: I have books to read and books to write, shows to binge watch, movies to re-watch, and of course I have to lose twenty pounds and go visit Las Vegas.
In no particular order.
No, actually: the books are first, after the move. All the rest of it can wait or simply not happen.
But while I was thinking about moving, I thought about the Sims. And I wished that moving in real life could be as simple as moving in the Sims: you click on all of your possessions and put them into your inventory; then you click on the house, click Move Family Out, and then go to the new house and click Move In, and BOOM! Done. Then you just move the furniture back out of your personal inventory, and everything is perfect.
The only realistic touch in moving in the game is that it is absurdly expensive. Though again, point and click and you can instantly make money, by selling furniture that magically vanishes into thin air once you make the decision to sell, without a single awkward phone call or visit from somebody from the depths of Craig’s List. You can even sell the paint off of your walls.
That’s another thing I’d like for real life to be like the Sims: money. First, I’d like to get paid every day; I’d like to get promotions basically every week; I’d like to have increasingly nice vehicles come to pick me up for work every day, ending with either a limo or a helicopter. Though I’d hate getting those phone calls from your boss when you miss work; that would be a pain. I’d like to get hired for every single job I ever asked for, and to be able to go back to an old career at exactly the same spot where I left it. I’d like job searching to comprise between three and seven possibilities every day, every single one of them at least potentially appropriate to me and my needs.
I’d like to be able to gain or lose weight in a matter of hours with a treadmill or a refrigerator. I’d like the refrigerator to supply all the materials of a meal, with only a little chopping and mixing for meal prep. I’d like the food to be cooked in seconds, and I’d like to be able to store leftovers in the fridge simply by picking up the plate of food and shoving it in the ol’ Frigidaire. I’d also really like to be able to pull leftovers out of the fridge and set them on the table exactly as they were when last served: and also steaming hot the second I put them on a plate.
I’d like to be able to learn important and complicated skills like machine repair and cooking with a few hours and a book. I’d like to know what all of my needs are, and how to fulfill them in simple, straightforward ways, and I’d like to reach any of those reward-type events that come from satisfying all of my needs: I’d like to enter the Zone, or turn all gold and sparkly. I’d like to dance with happiness, spontaneously and often.
I’d like to be able to leave my life — though it had better stay on pause when I do; the console version of Sims 3 was an atrocity for that reason — and go visit other people’s. I’d like to be able to manipulate both my own story and other people’s, though I’d like to be able to say that I would only do it benevolently. I’d like that to be true. But I know perfectly well that my Sims play has not shown me to be a benevolent master: I am far more likely to torment than to guide, to debase rather than uplift. What can I say? It’s more fun. Besides, I’m not talking about whether I should be allowed to run the world like a massive game of Sims: clearly I should not, as my long history of Sims serial killers should show; I’m just talking about what I would like.
I would really like to control Donald Trump.
There are certainly aspects of the Sims I would not want to reproduce in my life. First is the time frame: Sims don’t live long. I would not want my life to be measured in days, no matter how efficiently run those days could be. The Sims are always more interested in socializing than I am; my Sims’ social interactions are inevitably rote and reluctant, stuck in between more interesting tasks (where they are not strange and warped as part of my more diabolical plans), and I am always annoyed by their constant need for other Sims in their lives. I do indeed need other people in my life, specifically my wife and my pets, but I don’t suffer the Sims’ rapid disintegration of mood in their momentary absence, and I don’t want to change that. Sims are much too materialistic for me: they are made instantly happier by buying slightly more expensive versions of the stuff they already have, and I have very little interest in that. And, of course, I want to be able to open a door even if someone did leave a plate in front of it — and I would really hate it if I left a puddle on the floor just because someone was standing in front of the door to the bathroom when I had to go.
I’d kinda like it if there were actual fireworks in the sky every time I WooHooed.
Anyway: I guess the point is that I wish I had more control over my life, that every thing I did could be intentional and a valuable use of my time. (Clearly I also want rewards without effort, but hey, who doesn’t?) My Sims play is marked by efficiency: I love nothing more than lining up a dozen tasks for my Sims, and then letting them run through their entire day while I watch and intervene as needed. My life is very much the opposite of that: as you can tell by my rapid decline in posting a This Morning post every morning, as soon as my school year ends. I am nothing if not inefficient. But also, I don’t want to do what would be needed to become more efficient: because it’s my inefficiency, my wasted time, that allows me to be the one thing my Sims can never, ever be:
Me.
Just Dusty 