I want to thank Treefern for having a similar goal. When I wrote this entry about why I sympathized with her wanting to quit Farmville, things became a lot clearer for me.

This morning I woke up early, and instead of tending crops I deleted them. Every plot, every animal, every building, every decoration, everything in inventory… I deleted it all.

Then I noticed I had over three million FV coins, so I bought a lot more stuff, and deleted all THAT, too. Rinse and repeat, until I was fully bankrupt.

Then I went and deleted the app, and blocked all notifications.

THEN I went and unfriended all the people that I’d only ever made friends with so we could be FV neighbors.

Maybe this seems extreme, but overkill is my middle name. I’ve relapsed into this game before, and I don’t want to be tempted again.

The game cannot be won. The game cannot be lost. The only winning move is not to play.

that scene from War Games2 years ago

I don’t know how many hours a day I play Farmville, but I know it’s a lot. I know it’s a distraction from “real life”. I started it because I was bored and had nothing to do. Now I have almost nothing ELSE to do.

I think I’ll document how many hours I play FV this next week, and work to replace FV hours gradually with something more productive, like housecleaning.

If that doesn’t work, I’ll probably just go cold turkey. A video game doesn’t deserve this much of my time. I’d be ashamed to confess to a boss or to a church friend how much time this game has already taken up in my life. At least I can say I haven’t spent any money buying Farmville Bucks. 2 years ago