I recently saw the total number of hours I spent playing a particular online video game between the ages of twelve and fifteen. It was a number I’d hoped never to see, and it was somewhere close to 1600.

I made some money playing that video game. I was good at it. I won’t tell you how much it was, but I’ve done the math and it comes out to somewhere around the minimum wage at the time I played, so I can’t feel too bad about the time wasted. A lot of people spend that sort of time working for that kind of money at some point. I was paid to play video games, eat ball park hot dogs and watch comedy central presents before I was even old enough to get a real summer job.

Still, that’s sixty-six days gone, more than a fifth of a year. Assuming I make …more →