If only I could live in a game world… With Skyrim, you get pretty close to that. But I assume you still need to eat in the real world occasionally.

My vacation in Skyrim amounted to about 300 hours, although some of these were pretty passive, my avatar chopping wood or being target practice for bandits while I was doing other things.

In Skyrim I’ve picked flowers and caught butterflies, chopped wood and mined ore, skinned wolves and bears and tanned their hides, made weapons and armor and jewelry,  climbed the 7000 steps to a mountain monastery, and of course slain a fair number of dragons. And much, much more.

I am not anywhere near bored of it, and I am not sure I would ever be. As I said about Daggerfall, I could play it for a thousand years. I actually played that for about five years, I think, probably a little more.

But the thing is, I have other interests as well now. For reasons that I myself don’t quite understand, I start to miss the books of timeless wisdom and piety. I’m not that pious a person really, but I kind of miss it when I spend too much things doing shallow things. And by that standard, Skyrim counts as shallow, although it is certainly one of the “deepest” games around.

It is not like the Light is absent when I play computer games, or whatever else I do. But obviously there are limits to what level of spiritual contemplation  I will find while trying to defend myself and my imaginary companion against a dragon as big as a house and much angrier.

And of course, it is good to be back to work, even though I am still not very useful there. It is better than getting money for nothing, at least!

I’ll still continue to play Skyrim for a while, I guess, but there are other things that also lay claim to my time and my attention. And that’s a good thing, I’d say.