I am, therefore, I game. Okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but gaming does factor into my sanity plan in a very real way.

First, I get to see some of my best friends every week or so for a few hours. As a stay at home mom, I don’t get a lot of adult time outside of improv and gaming. Gaming keeps me from going full hermit and wasting away on the couch, watching Designing Woman and eating a second bag of popcorn. Not that this is terrible way to spend your time, but it shouldn’t happen every night.

Gaming not only lets me work on my people skills, it lets me stretch my imagination and go bonkers! In our last campaign, we had an intervention, used marbles to Home Alone a witch, and gained inspiration by honoring the last wishes of the murder house children. You have to get creative to complete a campaign, and that kind of thinking helps keep my brain sharp now that I’m out of the formal working world.

Finally, gaming offers the unique opportunity to be creative for its own sake. My RPG sessions spark the creation of entire universes that will only ever be seen by the people in the room. The performance is for each other and for ourselves. There is something freeing about creating with friends without an outside eye on you. You can get weird and vulnerable, and that is so refreshing when everything about daily life is so scrutinized.

Without gaming I’d be a sweatpants wearing loner, writing werewolf/mob boss romance in a dimly lit, living room. With gaming I’m a sweatpants wearing social butterfly who is the werewolf/mob boss in a dimly lit dining room. See the difference?