survival horror

I'm still playing this silly little game. In fact, I've retreated into it to spend all my time fending off zombies, building barricades, and scavenging for food and weapons. Checking traps and farming, for sustainability when my stockpile of canned food runs out. It's a game about trying to survive a zombie apocalypse that opens with the premise that you absolutely will not:

THESE ARE THE END-TIMES.

THERE WAS NO HOPE FOR SURVIVAL.

THIS IS HOW YOU DIED.

Unlike in real life though, you can survive indefinitely if you're careful, sufficiently fortifying your home base and planning for the months ahead, like the coming winter when crops no longer grow outside. If you spend enough time learning the game, your imaginary character gets to live forever in an imaginary world. Real life is so much more horrific.

I don't know why I'm suddenly a gamer again. I don't think it's healthy, I can't seem to moderate it well, and it seems to make me feel worse overall. It's rewards aren't real and as such, are never quite rewarding. I just keep desperately focusing on its attainable goals and the fight to survive. The game doesn't have any other point. There's no story, and there's no way to win. I find it interesting that the game I find so addictive is all about the struggle for survival and nothing more.

I play as a someone who has no leisure time. It's just constant struggle that I get to escape into, from my life of nothing but leisure time. I'm just passing the time, until it runs out. I've spent hours building a wall around my home to hide from the zombie hordes, only venturing out for supplies. In some ways, it feels an awful lot like my life.

In life though, I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm (not) doing any of it. I have no idea how to deal with the zombie hordes. There is no fight to survive, but that's a good thing, right? There's nothing much motivating me at all. I have to play a game for that. It's not a healthy dynamic, but I find it strange that the goal is to bury ourselves in some kind of work, to mitigate existential angst. That's no a solution, just a better distraction. 

There are no solutions. Life is a sick joke, and the punchline is that we all die. The fight for survival feels like the most indisputable motivation we have, and we will all fail.