What makes me lose track of time?

Last Updated on 2022-10-05 by Joop Beris

I like the new writing prompts that WordPress issues. Maintaining a blog can be a bit of a chore and sometimes you struggle to find things to write about. A writing prompt may help in that situation. I like the question asked today: “which activities make you lose track of time?” So I am adding my activities to the growing number of posts about the topic.

I’m afraid my answers may be a bit banal to most of you. I don’t think I lead a very interesting life and my hobbies aren’t that exciting either for most of you. Not having friends to speak of, I engage mainly in solitary activities. Instead of boring you with just describing them, I will add what I get out of each of the activities I will list. There are three, and I will list them in no particular order.

Gaming

Yes, I like to play video games. I don’t enjoy platform games or games where you just run around and shoot things. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, I just don’t like those genres. I prefer games where the goals are a bit more strategic, long term goals. Games that force me to plan ahead, that make me balance objectives. Or just games that place me in an alternate reality like that of a rich fantasy world. Notable games that come to mind, are games by Paradox Interactive: Crusader Kings 3, Europa Universalis 4, Hearts of Iron 4 or Cities Skylines. Also Sid Meier’s Civilization, of which I’ve played all versions. Notable fantasy games include The Witcher 3 and God of War. Also, Silent Hunter 3 comes to mind, for me still the daddy of all submarine warfare games.

I can easily sink hours into these games. I like the challenge of planning my goals, setting things in motion and after a 100 or so turns into the game, realize that I have forgotten to do something very important. That may sound frustrating to some but to me, that is the charm of complex games. They require me to think.

Reading

I love reading, have done so ever since I learned how to read. I have an eclectic taste when it comes to books but I mainly love reading about history, philosophy, biographies of famous people in history, books about science, atheism, humanism, privacy, information security and journalism. As for light reading, I enjoy fantasy and horror books, mainly.

Books allow me to escape my every day life and experience a fantasy world. Books are also great teachers and companions. Nowadays most of my books are e-books but I do have a small library of physical books as well. When I have all the house to myself, sitting myself down with a good book can easily make me lose track of time.

I suppose I should give you a small list of some of my favourites. I’ll list them below:

• Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
• Letters to a young contrarian, by Christopher Hitchens
• The blank slate, by Steven Pinker
• The moral landscape, by Sam Harris
• Beyond good and evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
• Nietzsche, philosopher, psychologist, Antichrist, by Walter Kaufmann
• The complete fiction, the collected works of H. P. Lovecraft
• The lord of the rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Blood of Elves (Witcher 1), by Andrzej Sapkowski

Do you have any books which you think I should read? Feel free to leave a comment below! If I read your recommendation, I might write a review.

Writing

It may not come as a surprise that I also spend a good deal of my time blogging. I am a blogger, after all. But my blog is not all of my writing. I dabble a bit in poetry when the mood strikes me and also short stories. And I swear that one of these days, I will start in earnest on this novel I’ve had stuck in my head for years.

A lot of the posts I write, require some research and putting together. The post about how to be a freethinker for instance. That went through quite a few revisions before I hit the button to publish. I also tend to go back to my old posts and tinker with them, changing a word here or adding a phrase there. They’re never really finished.

One of the things I would like to try, is to distil a general thread or a coherent narrative out of the many posts I have written over the years. That’s going to be a challenge because I don’t restrict myself too much when it comes to topics. I have a broad interest and my blog reflects that.

I’ve explained why I like or rather have to write in an earlier post. Feel free to read that too if you’d like to know. I’d love to hear why you blog as well. Please leave me a comment there if you like.

Which activities make you lose track of time?

This is my first “daily prompt” article. I don’t have the time to write daily but when more interesting daily prompts appear, I may join the fray again. So, which activities make you lose track of time? Feel free to let me know in a comment or in a blog post of your own.