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+++
title = 'Gaming to Stay Sane'
slug = 'gaming-for-sanity'
date = 2026-04-18 01:45:49
draft = false
toot = 'https://akk.eltr.ac/objects/4e8644b8-3f2f-4c31-ba94-3728ecd4f5a5'
+++
I've been playing a lot of [DST](https://www.klei.com/games/dont-starve-together) lately, pushing towards 1000 hours of total play time. It's odd that I actually stopped playing video games for months (more than half a year I think?) before this. And I've been thinking about why I started it again all of a sudden.
One of the many reasons is that I had to look for internship opportunities and I'm sort of overwhelmed by... everything. Sure, I can blame bad economy, AI hype and coding agents making it objectively hard to find jobs because there are fewer available. But I feel like I'm not really in the position to put any blame because, well, *I haven't sent out a single resume yet*, when I had planned to do so for weeks.
"Why not?", I asked myself. "I don't know.", I respond.
I actually found some interesting jobs. One of them is founded by YC. They are located near me. They want someone who can read and write in English, which I'm *obviously* capable of. They're hiring backend interns. Everything seems nice.
"So why not?", I asked again. And again, "I don't know!"
I realized there are some internal obstacles keeping me from making any real contact with any company, probably because they're too *real* and it's scary. I feel like a little baby saying this but it's brutally true. My anxiety is real. I find it psychologically and *physically* impossible, even though I know I meet their requirements and it wouldn't hurt to try.
But I can't. There is a huge gap between rationale and action that people seldom talk about.
I guess it's one of the *4 F responses*, Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn. I was *frozen* in action. My mind went blank. And then I fled. I tried to get busy with other things and hopefully they'll ease the pain. Uncertainty is the greatest pain that a human can bear, *apart from giving birth I assume*.
And video game was one of the other things.
I just spent the last two or three hours beating Deerclops, gathering resources, taming my beefalo and constructing my base. Before that, I cleaned my apartment, the floor, the tables, the closet and everything. I finished reading *La Mort Heureuse*, written by my favorite author, and I wrote a [book review](/library/2026/la-mort-heureuse/). I exercised and sweat the hell out of myself. And that was my day. I did nothing *productive*.
For readers who are not from China, I probably should fill you in with some information. Universities here usually don't permit students to find intership on their own during a semester, because the courses are scheduled (and we don't get to choose the major courses either). Skipping class is possible but the counselor can be annoying, which I will not elaborate. In the meantime, I have a course called *Career Planning and Employment Guidance*, which is pretty much pushing me to get a *fucking* job. The teacher was like: If you want an internship you should apply now! However, tell the employers you wouldn't be there until like two or three months later.
I don't know if this is normal. It feels nonsense to me. But I wouldn't know. I'm too scared to even try. It took me 2 months to draft a resume and god knows how long it'll be to actually find a job.
By the way, my DST save is named *I don't wanna find a job!*.
As I mentioned, I haven't played video games for months. I had been reading, writing, coding and doing other productive things. I had a job actually, but it was way less frightening. I worked in a tuition place where I teach spoken English. It was easy and the people were nice. And I got that job because I took classes there, and they just offered me the job. My colleagues were my teachers and classmates, not strangers on the Internet from a *big scary company*. Wow, I really am a baby.
So, here I am, stuck in an awful situation where I'm not allow to do the thing I was told to do, and everything is too new and too strange for me. Worst part? Nobody understands.
I hate being around people so I moved out of dorm a year ago. It was nice living alone but it feels lonely (I do have a roommate, but again... I will not elaborate). My only friends are older than me and they're working their asses off these days. And I suck at being vulnerable to people online (and I probably shouldn't anyway). I feel miserable and unheard.
I never felt comfortable running away from my problems. I know life is a never-ending series of problems, and solving them was one of my life purposes. I like solving problems to be honest. But I hate being unable to solve problems I'm aware of and that are slowly sucking my soul and energy with its mere existence. It's a black hole.
So I had to run away from it. I know things will look up in a few months, or maybe in a few weeks. But there's nothing I can do at the moment, at least nothing that I'm mentally capable of. With my hands tied and a giant black hole sucking me dry, I just had to run. Or dance, if you want to be poetic or a swiftie[^1].
I ran straight into *The Constant*, the world where DST lores take place. Filled with scary-looking monsters, *The Constant* is not really that scary. There are constant troubles I had to deal with and the problems are what kept me moving. I had to kill the winter boss and make an umbrella out of its eyeball to survive rainy spring. I know I also had important problems in real life and I had to get moving to solve them, *but not while I had drained my sanity.*
I listened to a podcast. They were talking about what to do when you hit rock bottom, or just had too much chaos in your life. One of the solutions was to do nothing, lie down on the bottom and rest. As long as it's a cautious decision, there's nothing to be ashamed of, because you knew you will bounce back, just not now, not while you may go insane forcing yourself to bounce back.
I will live with chaos, because chaos is constant in life. I can solve some problems, but it's a sickness dying to solve them all at lightning speed. On days like this, I should just do nothing and play video games all night long, for I know I will bounce back eventually.
And you know, it would hurt to indulge occasionally.
[^1]: OK. I'm guessing nobody gets this, so I will explain. Taylor Swift have a song called *Dancing With Our Hands Tied*, my favorite track on that album by the way.
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