Quit Gaming and Start Quilting with Luann Fischer
Luann Fischer is on the show with me today to talk about how video games were limiting her quilting time. She quit gaming cold turkey after listening to my Word of the Year episode in January and… what happened next? Hear her story in this new quilting podcast:
Listen to the podcast or download the episode to your computer using this player:
Quilting News from Around the House
Click Here to find the new Dream Big fabric panel. Let me know if you’d like to do a Dream Big quilt along. Maybe we could quilt new free motion quilting designs in each petal of the flower? That would be cool!
I want to practice a bit more before quilting this pretty fabric panel on this frame!
I’m excited to do more quilting on my Q-zone hoop frame. So far I’ve just run a simple quilting test, but it was a lot of fun to see how much faster I could quilt when my home machine moved instead of the quilt on the table.
I also have my first print out of the Ms. Bunny doll cut and sew panel. I still need to tweek some dots and dart lines because they came out too light and could be missed. Then I’ll stitch this one out (I think this will be Bunny #10!) and make sure everything is lining up properly.
Making this pattern into a fabric panel was a lot of work, but it’s almost done!
Yes, this has taken a long time to put together, but that is the process! I wish I could say she’s done and ready to buy on Spoonflower, but we’re just not quite there yet.
I finished three flower hats for Easter and I really love how they came out. I’m planning to make two more for my nieces and use up ALL the leftover flowers on those. They’re going to be crazy!
Click Here to join the Quilt Friends Club and help support the podcast. This month I’m going to share my quilting design process for my latest Goddess Quilt Eye of Calm with the group in addition to my monthly How Do I Quilt This? video!
That’s it for this week! I hope to have more updates next week on Ms. Bunny, my rabbit hutch, and new experiments with fabric painting too.
Beating Gaming Addiction
Luann Fischer is a quilter and blogger and new quilting friend! Click Here to find her blog, Let’s Create Today. She emailed me a few months ago after listening to my Word of the Year episode in January.
In that podcast, I explained how much gaming had started to bug me. I spent hundreds of hours in 2018 playing in a virtual reality, beating dungeons, gaining experience points, and buying armor for my character in Zelda. But none of that was REAL!
Luann really appreciated hearing my perspective and decided to stop playing video games completely in 2019. She had never quit anything cold turkey before, but she quit gaming and has stuck with it!
As a result, she has been massively more efficient in her quilting craft. She’s put more stitches on her longarm in 3 months than she did in all of 2018. She’s finished more quilts, and been able to organize her guild’s block of the month program.
But more than being super efficient and getting lots of things done, Luann has also had more time to really relax and enjoy herself. She’s spending more time reading and relaxing. We both agreed that just taking time to sit still and be bored for a few minutes is good thing!
Watch Out for Tablet and Phone Games
I grew up with video games and had a Game Boy and eventually a few different Nintendo consoles. When Josh and I started dating, one of our favorite things to do together was play Zelda and Starcraft.
It’s important to understand that the console and Game Boy games of the 1980s and 1990s are NOT the games of today. Tablet and cell phone games are a very lucrative business and companies are using data learning and information taken from casinos to make games more addictive. I am not exaggerating when I say this. is. dangerous.
Modern video games are engineered to make you want to play. From MMO games like World of Warcraft to phone games like Candy Crush, the developers of these games are making millions of dollars by charging you either a subscription fee or $1 – $2 at a time. It adds up significantly over time, but it all depends on you continuing to play.
The game I was addicted to for two years had a daily check-in. This made me feel a reward every time I opened the game, and punished every time I forgot about it. The perceived loss of extra energy, upgrades, and special events kept me checking in every day religiously.
Then when I forgot to check in one day, I felt terrible! The pull on my emotions was way out of proportion to what I was feeling bad about. That reaction was finally enough to make me realize how attached I’d become to the game and how silly it was. What did it matter if my characters got bigger and stronger?! They weren’t REAL!
But You’re Just Relaxing!
For a long time I made excuses about playing video games, and it sounded like Luann also fell into this trap. Most people don’t see the danger in spending a few hours playing a game.
“Give yourself a break! You’re just relaxing and having some fun. You don’t have to work all the time!”
That is what I frequently heard, but it never set well with me. The new, modern games aren’t relaxing. Most of the time I’d shut down that tablet game I played and feel tired, frustrated, and distracted. I couldn’t stop thinking about the level I wanted to beat or the event I’d missed out on.
Companies have engineered these games to make you want to keep playing and no matter when you turn it off, it never feels quite “done.” Because you can never beat the game, where is the finish line? There isn’t one.
What is a Good Addiction?
A FAR better addiction to cultivate is crafting, learning new skills, reading, or relaxing! Sure, these things are harder. It takes more effort to learn a new skill and sometimes that doesn’t feel fun when things don’t work out. Luann created this beautiful star quilt and mentioned really struggling with the construction, but she made it through to the end!
This is the beautiful star quilt Luann shared in the podcast. Do I spy some Y seams?
We have to find a way to make our crafting time just as addictive as video games with a payoff that happens every time. Maybe give yourself a big hug every time you get up from your sewing machine. Or have a tiny bite of chocolate. Or turn on your favorite song and give your brain a boost.
No matter what happens, please stick with reality. Sit with it. Be bored. Watch the clouds in the sky and the chickens peck around the yard. I truly believe this is something we’ve lost and must regain quickly or we may very well lose ourselves or our loved ones to these virtual realities.
I hope hearing from Luann and I has been helpful. This is a topic I feel very strongly about because I honestly feel like I lost 2 years of my life to a stupid video game. I don’t want that to happen to anyone else!
Click Here to check out Luann’s blog Let’s Create Today. I can’t think of a better blog title than that!
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
- #100 – Happy Episode 100!
- #99 – Overcome the Fear so You Can Create
- #98 – Permission to Make What You MOST Need to Create
- #97 – Running the National Quilt Museum with Frank Bennett
- #96 – Creative Ways to Beat the Winter Blues
- #95 – From Fire Fighter to Fiber Artist with Brandy Maslowski
- #94 – Cleaning Up to Be Creative
- #93 – Fixing Quilting Mistakes with Beth Collins
- #92 – Rising to Unexpected Challenges
- #91 – Quilt Blogging in 2019 with Vicki Holloway
- #90 – Tracing a New Goddess Quilt
- #89 – My Word of the Year for 2019
There are high paid professionals trained at top universities (eg. Stanford) to manipulate dopamine release and change brain pathways with video games for money. It is always better to participate in life rather than escape it. Congratulations to you and Luann for creative expenditures on such wonderful quilts.
Thank you so much Linda! Yes, you are completely right and it’s downright SCARY! Let’s find better things to do with our brains – like making beautiful things!
Awesome podcast and I love all the wonderful insights by both of you on this podcast!! I love how you both said we need to spend time with ourself and that electronic medias and games are an entity we are investing our time in. I love real world , real people reality checks. 🙂
I have a little Dream Big Panel and I would love to follow along with a potential QAL.
Thank you Vicki! I completely agree and these last few days I’m been trying to do more couch-sitting and sky-staring. It’s much more relaxing than scrolling through an endless feed of distraction. I’m going to think on the QAL. I just checked for more panels and they were out after having hundreds just days ago! Those are seriously popular panels!
I just deleted my game from my phone. I will get stuck and play “just one more” and suddenly an hour has gone by. I could be doing so many other things. I’m having a tough time with my senior and have spent many days pretending I’m far far away. But I can be doing something productive, creative, and beautiful instead. And, starting today, that will be what I do. Practicing my longarm feathers!!
That is wonderful Linda! YES, it’s so easy to use games to escape, but what are we escaping FROM? I hope your longarm feathers turn out great! I’m working on a ruler for those by the way and I can’t wait to share it soon!
Great Leah. I’m in a dilemma and I ,know you have a Juki quilting machine but I cannot remember which one. I’d love to purchase one but I cannot spend a lot of cash also I’m limited in space. I’m just learning to free motion quilt. I would need a stitch regulator or anything that will help me in the quilting. I’m hoping you can give me tips on machines and add ons. Thank you. I’m from Alberta Canada.
I’m using the Junk F600 on my Q-Zone frame and the Grace speed controller has worked really well with this machine so far – https://leahday.com/products/grace-speed-controller-for-home-machines However, this is not a stitch regulator, just a speed controller so it might not do what you’re needing. As for buying a new machine, I’d first work with the machine you have right now. You may find that it works well with free motion quilting and you don’t need to purchase a new machine.
I really liked your comments about video games. About a week or so before I discovered your podcast, my tablet died and I could no longer play my game. I could have loaded the game on to my phone, but I knew that it was not a good idea. I have found that now that I no longer play it, I have a lot more time to do other things that are more important then beating levels. Thanks for the comments.
That’s wonderful Anna! Well, not the part about your tablet completely dying, but great about stopping a habit that can easily pull you away from things you like to do better.