Personal Responsibility Online

I, like most people, have struggled in my life to create lasting change.  Realizing that most, if not all, circumstances in my life resulted from a series of choices, I ultimately learned to take responsibility, and thereby acquired a measure of control.  I was in my early thirties before I woke up.  Prior to that, I was a victim, blaming my family, friends, and employers for my lack of fulfillment.

I had great fortune to have a 30-year veteran of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in my corner.  He showered me with numerous AA aphorisms, but today, as I ponder this issue, one sticks out:  If you don’t have the life you want, start making changes because it’s not going to fall in your lap.

I thought about this line for weeks.  For reasons that are still not clear, it rattled around in me and would not go away.  Perhaps, after wasting a decade of my life in front of a computer screen, I was just ripe for change.  Those words peeled back layers of denial and self-deception and somehow shook me into awareness that I was the one who needed to change.  Blaming others for my unhappiness was getting me nowhere.  I realized for the first time that I was in charge of my own destiny.

As I scanned online today, I found an article that reminded me of the culture of blame we inhabit, in which shunting responsibility onto others has risen to the level of a high art form.  A Hawaii man filed a lawsuit, alleging that a video game publisher bears responsibility for the 20,000 hours he put in over four years on a game called Lineage II.  The man claims that the game should have come with a warning about its addictive potential.  While I will not weigh in on this man’s legal claims, I, too, could blame Sid Meier, Westwood Studios, and Microsoft for thousands of hours of computer-game bingeing.  Perhaps this man is correct:  these companies should put warning labels on their more addictive games.  I find it much more useful, however, to take responsibility for my own choices, and to get support when the urge to game hits me.  That’s the only way I have ever changed anything.

• Please join me at Border’s Ann Arbor on September 8, 2010 at 7pm for a book talk and signing for Cyber Junkie:  Escape the Gaming and Internet Trap.