A love of farming

Over the past few years I have developed a pattern when it comes to my after work routine. Once I get home I shuffle through my mail; change into some comfortable, non-work clothes; enjoy a meal with my fiancé; and then settle in for an evening of television watching and internet surfing. In the past my evening internet use consisted of a variety of things: checking my Hotmail account, weeding through updates on Facebook, reading any new posts on my college roommate’s blog, glancing at the day’s tweets on Twitter, visiting the Nerdfighters vlog, and playing a few games of online Scrabble. However, sometime this past fall my after work internet use became far more lopsided than it had ever been before—suddenly I found myself spending anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours a day tending and growing my imaginary farm on the Facebook application Farmville.

That’s right, I openly admit it: I am a Farmville addict.

Farmville has become such a part of daily life, for both my fiancé and myself, that we sometimes even plan our day accordingly. While out to diner with friends it is not uncommon for one of us to turn to the other and declare, “We should get going, I have asparagus to harvest.” In fact, our farming skills are so well known that on a Christmas card, one of my fiancé’s cousins took time to handwrite a note at the bottom that stated, “You both are great farmers!” Not to mention that we took this comment to heart, seeing as how she spent much of her life on a North Dakota farm. Plus, when convincing friends to join Facebook, one of my reasons for why they should join is because they could be my Farmville neighbor (the more neighbors one has the more land one may own, plus when one has fifty neighbors a blue ribbon is earned). My addiction has become so extreme that when booking tickets for our ten day honeymoon, I found myself questioning what I would do with my Farmville farm while being away from technology during our trip.

Yet, despite my knowledge that Farmville has indeed become and addiction, I am not willing to give it up. I find farming my imaginary farm to be too therapeutic. A calm washes through me as I harvest crops, plow fields, and plant new vegetables all with the click of a mouse. Stress eases from my shoulders as I collect eggs from my chickens, milk from my cows, wool from my sheep, ice cubes from my penguins, and feathers from my turkeys. There is a feeling of accomplishment that is wrought from building fences, erecting house and horse stables, earning ribbons of all colors, and displaying flowers around my pig-tailed, avatar’s home. Additionally, there is a sense of community that is created by my neighbors who send gifts to one another, fertilize each others crops, help other neighbors build stables, and other’s feed one another’s chickens.

Therefore, I surrender. Farmville has me for life (or at least until I find something better).