Confessions of a Spider Solitaire Addict

Back when Windows XP was new to the scene (read: quite a while ago), the government had to pull solitaire off the machines to keep their workers from playing all day. It was such an amusing bit of news that it even made the script for a movie (I think it was Sleepless in Seattle, but I’m not 100% sure, and Google is failing me at the moment.) Sometimes, I think it might be a good idea to take it off my machine as well.

See, Solitaire (and Spider Solitaire in particular for me) has a seductive, siren call. It promises just a quick break, no real interruption. After all, it’s one little hand, how long can it take? As a quick look at an answer to that question, let’s consider the fact that I sat down with the purpose of writing something here when I had about two hours of free time stretching ahead of me and I’m only now in the second paragraph after the passing of those two hours plus another two for good measure. Inevitably, I’ll deal a hand of cards, make my way through it, lose, and feel obligated to try once more just to see if I can win one. (Usually I do better on the 2nd hand, but if I don’t, it’s pretty easy to talk myself into “just one more”.) By the time I’ve finished that 2nd (or 3rd) game, something else has erupted around the house (usually a small boy, today it was the baby.) So after taking him upstairs to deal with the diaper blow out (never as fast as you wish it could be), it was time to fix supper for my husband and older son who would be home from Awana shortly. And then the baby wants to eat again, and it’s time for our dinner, and so on and so forth until bedtime for the boys has come and gone and I’m finally back at my computer, four hours later. And even then, knowing what it’s cost me, I have to steel myself against the siren call of “just one quick game” before I get to whatever it is I should be writing.

I think sometimes my Christian walk is like that too – easily distracted from what I should be doing by the seemingly innocent quick detour. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those solitaire games in our lives, until we let them take our time and focus away from what we know we’re meant to be doing. At that point, we need to figure out how to take those things off our hard drives so we can focus on the work we’ve been given.