I have some guilty pleasures that I know I'm not ready to let go of anytime soon. For me, the guilt mostly comes from the fact that I spend a lot of time doing these things.
One of my guilty pleasures is gaming. I love playing games a lot. It's so bad that I have spent a whole day gaming before. I play different kinds of games, but I mostly play football. Yeah, you guessed right, I'm a huge football fan. Sometimes I tell people that I started following football while I was still in my mother's womb. But that's a story for another day.
I usually get so engrossed while gaming, that I lose track of time. Once I start a football game, I get this adrenaline rush and excitement, especially when I'm playing with someone. Most times while playing the game, or even after, I start getting the feeling of guilt.
- "I should be doing something else with this time I'm wasting"* I usually say to myself.
But that doesn't make me stop, as I go on enjoying my game. Gaming has put me in trouble severally. One time, while I was little, I got in trouble in school because of gaming. My parents had to be invited and I got a harsh scolding.
Even while in the university, gaming taught me a lesson. I had an exam the next day, but I kept on gaming, while postponing studying for the exam. To cut the long story short, I saw terrible things in that exam. The first thing I muttered as soon as I saw the question paper was "what have I done to myself?". This experience taught me to always avoid games when exam period starts approaching, because once I fall for that temptation, there's usually no going back for me. Despite all that, I still love playing games and I don't think that love will fade anytime soon.
Another guilty pleasure of mine is binge-watching movies. I'm naturally a movie lover, but I can get in that mood to binge-watch an entire series or consecutive movies. This usually happens when a series is so interesting and filled with a lot of suspense. In such a situation, I must get to the end of that series that day.
Most people can't binge-watch because they'll get tired and lose interest. But for me, that's not the case. There's usually no going back or stopping for me. The suspense and plot twists would make me glued to that movie until the very end. Of course, I would always be hit with that bitter feeling of guilt.
"If I could channel this time and attention to something more productive, I would be better off"
That's the thought that accompanies the guilty feeling. Then a war usually erupts in my mind about continuing with my pleasure or stopping at that moment. Pleasure usually wins. Only on rare occasions do I give into the guilt and actually stop.