Now that we have all had a chance to develop a weird obsession we never thought possible even just a few weeks ago, Barrelhouse is going to chronicle some of them.
Civilization III, by Hannah Grieco
The world attempts to work, homeschool their kids, and day-drink responsibly – and yet they still have time for hobbies, it seems. From watching entire seasons of The Wire all over again to writing a novel, from learning to play the harmonica to practicing, alongside their clever and only mildly-depressed children, how to bake the perfect loaf of bread.
It’s charming and inspiring, and I am here for it.
However, I have no attention span and my children consume every briefly-illuminated spark in my soul right now. I am not writing a novel. I am not even writing a grocery list. (I dictate it to my 7-year-old.)
What I AM doing is playing Civilization III while pretending to write a novel. This 2001 strategy game has limited graphics, which made it a favorite of my son’s when he was younger. He and I played it for years when he was overwhelmed by life. But now he’s moved on to “Breath of the Wild” and “Pokémon Sword” and, to my horror, “Destiny 2” with his *cool* uncle who promises it’s fine because they’re brutally murdering aliens instead of humans.
But instead of deleting Civilization III from my computer, I have begun to play it on my own. At 4AM when I can’t sleep. At 10AM when two of my three kids are melting down about math being hard. At 1PM when the internet is too slow to brutally murder aliens and going outside to play is “itchy” or “so stupid.”
At 9:30PM when my husband wants to interact with me because his workday was tedious and repetitive and he actually likes me.
But I don’t want to talk to my family or solve their complicated problems. Civilization III is basic and straight-forward. I build cities and keep my citizens happy. All problems have a prescribed solution. When there’s disease – it’s easy to solve it with a little terraforming of that swamp. When the people riot, I add soldiers to my cities and build everyone something religious to trick them into chilling out. When other nations attack me, I brutally murder their people and burn their cities to the ground. But it’s not like “Destiny 2.” There are no aliens or even realistic blood.
I can play for 5 minutes or 5 hours, and during that time I can yell things like, “I’M WORKING!” and “I THINK YOUR FATHER IS OFF HIS CALL NOW!” and “GO EAT SOMETHING IF YOU’RE SO HUNGRY!”
It’s my self-care, my quarantine obsession. A newly-developed talent I’m proud to hide from my family.
Hannah Grieco is a writer, in theory, in the DC area. She can be found online at www.hgrieco.com, on Twitter at @writesloud, at Porcupine Literary as the fiction editor, and at Barrelhouse Magazine as an assistant fiction editor.
Links for further research, if you would like to try this obsession yourself:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3910/Sid_Meiers_Civilization_III_Complete/