I am obsessive.

I am a perfectionist.

But most of the energy has been sucked into the almost endless time spiral of video game simulations.

I remember years and years lost to the Madden franchise, long nights adjusting my franchise with surgeon’s tools, plowing through games just to see the team’s progression, and finally using a hammer to pound through impossible trades and signings to secure my decade long championship run.

But I fired up the demo for Madden 2012 yesterday and the whole thing fell flat. There might be some rough edges to the new iteration, but I think the change in my attitude actually comes from another game, Eve Online.

That too had eaten up a large chunk of my time…and in expert fashion. The free trade space economy simulator provided such dynamic, dangerous customizable carrots that it put the grind of the Madden franchise mode to shame.

A quirk of a quark in the game released me from its grasps some time ago and its pay to play monthly subscription plan has been enough to keep me free from Eve Online, while the ghost of its gameplay still haunts my mind in such a beneficial way as to ward off other inferior time sucks.

And so…it seems…I am free instead to obsess over and perfect the simulation we call life. Here’s hoping it doesn’t just turn out to be another grind.

I just leveled up.