Lately I have been very distractable, had difficulty sleeping, and focusing has been difficult. I have found myself thinking of a particular thing all the time, unable to let it go, rest eluding me as my mind continues to worry away at it. It brings me such joy though, and I don't want it to stop. I speak, of course, of my new addiction to Diablo 3. The expansion pack is amazing fun and you should all buy it so you can come and play with me.
What has been amusing me this morning though is the degree to which my fascination with this game is the same as falling in love. The cliches are all the same - can't sleep, can't think straight, sitting around fantasizing about the object of one's desires all the time. These two feelings aren't exactly the same for me of course. "Mmmm, boooobs." and "Mmmmmm, 100% more critical hit damage." do have some key differences but they really end up operating along similar lines.
Only one of them causes me to start building spreadsheets though.
I would be very curious to stick myself in an MRI machine and try to figure out if the two states are similar from a medical perspective. It would be a challenging experiment to construct, of course, because controlling being in love or being addicted to a new game in any sort of precise way would be ... problematic, at best. It isn't as if I can try to make this happen and have that work, though I am pretty sure I can decide not to have this happen and have it crash down upon me regardless of my decision.
Come up with a way of cycling between being obsessed and not being obsessed with something on a timescale of about 1 minute...and we can manage fMRI.
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