Last weekend was the biggest amount of time I’ve wasted in ages.
I let a strange addiction take me over, something I had buried a long time before and thought I had passed.
Axis and Allies.
Not necessarily because I love to PLAY the game.
Because I try to modify it.
I want to make the game perfect.
As comprehensive and historically accurate as it can be. Exciting.
And, inevitably, unplayable.
It’s embarrassing, really, but I spent 30 hours researching WW2 data to try to change a board game and control for as many variables as possible. How many divisions were in the Battle for France… adjusting slightly for tactics / skill of units… standardizing the size of each divison… adding artillery proportionally.
You get the idea of how unbelievably nerdy and pointless this all is.
The reason I mention it?
Because people do variations of this stuff all the time in relationships.
They try to reach out to people (like me) for advice, read blog after blog, think constantly how to make their relationship perfect…
And because they’re so obsessed with this perfection, they stop remembering to BE in it. To enjoy it.
They’ve focused on the ideal, not what exists, and so they’ve missed the point.
Even now I’m tempted to go back and modify my file, move one more infantry from say Shantung province to Jehol in China to “balance” the Japanese invasion more.
But the truth is no matter what I do the game will never be a perfect model of the war.
And the more I try to make it one, the less easy I make the game to enjoy.
Don’t do what I did to my game to your relationship.
Don’t waste energy thinking about how it could be better, when you haven’t even made yourself present and enjoyed what’s there.
And if you need help breaking that pattern in your relationship, come talk to me.
I may screw this up with WW2 Strategy games, but with women I’ve seen the light…
Link is here: www.patstedman.com/application
– Pat
