I Hate Candy Crush

  This past July, I noticed that half of my friend's list on Facebook, they were playing Candy Crush.  Then I noticed my mom was also playing and she was at what seemed to be a high level-in the 100s when I was seeing all of my friends in the lower 30-40 levels.   I don't know why this is, but if it is a game against her, I want to win.  I think she started it with the old school Gameboy and Tetris.  I can remember playing while we were on airplanes just trying to beat each others scores.   The rule was when you died you would have to pass it back to the other person, but I would always die and quietly start another game.  Eventually we had to add in another rule the person playing had to play with the sound on so we could tell when the other person died.   The day I beat Tetris was a momentous mark in my history.  I have no idea why, but for someone who really isn't into video games, I'm freakishly good at them. In 9th grade, my boyfriend at the time was so excited about the new Zelda game and I wanted to impress him so I had my mom rent the game for me at Blockbuster and I spent the entire weekend working towards the moment I could call him and tell him I had already beat it.  Silly 14 year old me thought he would think it was cool-instead he was pissed that his girlfriend had already surpassed his video game prowess.     I don't remember the exact day I started Candy Crush, but I can tell you it has been probably my biggest regret of the Summer.  At first it was innocent, I would pick up my phone when I had a few moments but very quickly (as in-48 hours after the download completed) every free moment you could find me with my phone battery at 10% begging it to last so I could just get rid of "one more jelly!"   Then came the days I  am really mortified about.  Candy Crush consumed my free time, I couldn't go to bed until I had depleted all my lives.  I would get into bed at 10:00 feeling proud and then look at the clock after a "few" games of CC (my term of affection for the game) and it was 11:30 and I had lost a substantial amount of beauty sleep.     For those of you who play CC-you are probably wondering, "How did you play for an hour and a half straight?!" I took my level of addiction up a notch on the embarrassment scale-I scoured the internet to figure out how to get free lives and found a glitch that if you move your phone's clock ahead three hours, it filled your lives up.     Obviously the picture I posted above implies that Candy Crush hurt my relationship, and boy did it.  My addiction to the game was so severe that I was constantly ignoring Boyfriend to play.  Our evening discussions before we drifted off to sleep were filled with him just turning me over, lighting the bedroom with that bright orange start screen.   I'm not sure where my turning point was.  Some point in the last month or so, I have started to calm down on the CC.  Maybe it was the day I realized I had played for an hour at work, thinking I had only taken a 15 minute break-not an additional lunch hour.  Maybe it was the day I screwed up my phone so badly I couldn't receive or send texts because I had messed with the time so much.  Perhaps it was the day I had to justify why I spent nearly $10 just to pass a level (Level 65).   Either way, about a month ago, I jumped off the speeding train and onto a leisurely carriage ride.  I still play, but not every day, and I never add more lives that I didn't earn-I don't need my phone to die on me now.  The creators of this game are absolutely brilliant and think they deserve every dollar they have earned by sucking our hard earned money, creating levels that are seemingly impossible-but you know they aren't because you have friends ahead of you!   All in all, I probably spent $20 on the game, and that is all I'm going to spend.  I honestly have gotten to the point where if I can't beat a level I would be ok with just uninstalling it.  The only thing that stops me is I still haven't passed my mom, but I am only 10 levels behind.