More Awesome Than You!

I started my first 'proper' job this Monday. :'( I'm 22, graduated from Uni in July. Up until yesterday I'd play the Sims for at least 5 hours a day (and I mean at least!), seeing as I'm now working 8am-5.30pm I can't imagine I'll be able to play in the week anymore. Which I'm very traumatised about.
I'm just curious how other simmers manage to play the sims whilst having a job? What's your typical day like? 

I work 7-5:30 M-R and play a littel bit each night maybe an hour on average...Fridays I am gone and the weekends I am usually busy so don't get much in, but once in while, I'll get to play for 5 or 6 hours on a sunday or something. I just don't get through the generations as quickly anymore. Oh and FYI I only watch tv on tuesday nights for an hour usually, once in a while I'll watch something else. And I have to start working out soon, the sims is not going to get much time anymore...oh well thats life, at least until I get to the weight I want to be at, got 15 more lbs to go.

I can relate to the losing weight, I decided I needed to lose some weight a couple of years ago, lost about 40lbs and felt a lot more comfortable within myself, then in my final year I put on about 15lbs. Which I'm still struggling to lose (admittedly, it's hard to lose weight whilst still eating KFC's and chocolate!). Hoping that now I'm working I'll be better! We'll see.

Congratulations on your graduation and new position :)

I work from 7:30-between4:00&6:00 depending on what's up. Generally I get to play an hour or 2 (or a bit more) a night (depending on how late I'm willing to stay up, and what other obligations I have) and several on weekends. I can come here and read a bit or post a bit during lunch for a kind of fix.

I don't watch tv much, but I do occasionally do a few other things, usually when I'm a bit less addicted than I am right now (it comes and goes). I don't get as much done in the game as I'd like to, but then I wouldn't if I played 24/7 either ;)

I work weekdays from around 10am - 7pm.  I usually get up around 6:30 and have all my morning stuff taken care of and the sims loading by 7:30.  I don't need to leave for work until 9:20, so I get to play about an hour and a half taking a break around 8:30 to blow dry my hair and actually get ready for work.

As mentioned in another thread, my husband seems to feel he will implode if I'm on the computer and he's awake and at home (he is REALLY not good at entertaining himself).  Therefore, when he's home I rarely get a chance to play.  I used to loathe the fact that he sleeps in on the weekends, but now I just play while he's sleeping and all is well!  I get maybe an hour and a half in each weekend morning as well.  If I'm lucky, he'll go out with his friends or take a nap so I can play some more.

Welcome to the wonderful world of adulthood.  ;D

I pretty much can only play for three or four hours once or twice a week. I attend an immersive language class from 9 am-3 pm on weekdays, and spend the hours afterwards doing assorted chores, writing, homework for the class, teasing the cat, cooking, and spending what time I can with my husband when our schedules allow (about two hours a day before bed. Wah!). I'd love to play more games but I'm not even getting enough sleep as it is and I have to spend time on exercising or my joints do really nasty things to me, and I'm not even 30 yet.

I'm married, work 32 - 40 hours a week and have a child who is 8 years old, so most of my playing is at night. My husband is a baker, gets up before the dawn and is in bed before dark. The kid's bedtime is sometime around 9, which leaves me until 1 in the morning to play my little heart out.

At which point I have to go to bed if I'm to function at all at work the next day.

Sometimes I get lucky and can play during the day too. If everyone else is busy doing something that makes them happy I sneak off to the computer ... I've got competition from my kid, though, because she's a simsaholic herself, plus she likes to get on the Internet and play at Kim Possible.com.

Good luck, IridescentKerry!  Never bet on more than 1 hour a day.  If it's longer, enjoy!  If it's shorter, join the club. There's always the weekend.  And vacation days, holidays . . . and sick days.  Hey, at least you're making money so you can afford upgrades and expansion packs.

sagana and I are apparently living parallel lives  ;).  I work 8-5, 40 hours a week and all the various duties that being a mother of 2 includes. I get to play around an hour or two at night after everyone is taken care of for the day and depending upon how tired I am (or how annoyed my husband appears to be at seeing me on the computer "again" :-\). Sometimes I get 4-5 hours on the weekends, usually staying up til the wee hours to get my play time. And I have to admit that it's really hard to pull the plug during the weeknights when I'm in the midst of a storyline.....like staying up til 1 a.m. last night because it seemed imperative to get Meadow Thayer to break off her engagement with Joe Carr so that she could be with George McCarthy, after all, she IS pregnant with his baby! ;D

He sounds like my husband! 

I work from 8-4:30 p.m., which puts me home about 5 p.m.  I try to get at least 1/2 hour workout in before I start on supper.  By the time supper is cooked, eaten, and cleaned up after, it's usually after 7 p.m.  I sit with the hubby for about an hour (give or take), then off to sims I go 'til at least 11 p.m. 

I guess Im lucky. I work at home for a computer salvage company on the west coast ,I live in Arkansas. so I can set my own work hours which allows me to play the sims as little or as long as I like. and since most of my work id\s done over the phone. I have two lines one for the desk top and one for the phone

My live-in boyfriend likes to play video games so it works well for both of us, he plays halo or whatever on the xbox and i play the sims with my bird, everyone is happy.

I work full time and study part time, so my sims playing is pretty much restricted to weekends too.  Sometimes an hour or so in the evenings if I don't have any homework to catch up on.

I'm lucky - no kids, and two computers in the same room, so I can play the sims on one while my partner plays quake or halflife or something on the other, and we can actually have conversations with each other at the same time (although sometimes they do get a bit weird: "Yayy, they finally fell in love!" - "Die, scum!" :D)

Really enjoyed reading all your replies. Now I know I'm not the only one who grabs a hour of sim playing between working!

I am in the same boat on the same river with y'all. JM has disparaged me over how "needy" my hubby seems to be.  My hubby HATES when I am on the computer.  He wants me to watch tv with him.  Yeah, that's togetherness, baby!   :D  I need to get him addicted to a game so he'll leave me alone to sim in peace.  But he thinks they are a "waste of time"

C

Congrats on the graduation and new job.  Have to be at my office from 8:30 a.m. until about 5:30 p.m., then home to do chores, cook dinner, etc., etc.  I will admit that I've put off doing quite a few projects since I got the game.  After all, it is much more fun to play TS2 than strip wallpaper, paint, and clean! 

As I grow older I get my priorities in better order, so I do manage to get in two to three hours of play in the evening. 

Enjoy your job and your expanding world!

I'm a substitiute teacher for the local school district.  I go when called.  Some weeks I work more than others.  My husband is pretty understanding, since he comes home and takes a nap while I play on.  (He's a car mechanic and works hard.  So he needs his sleep after work for about an hour and then he's fine.)  When I'm working, I work until 4:00 at the latest.  Then I can come home and Sim!  No children and the housework fits around the game.  Weekends he's at work Saturday and we go to Church and visit family on Sunday.  So Saturday I play the most.

Just about anything is more fun than stripping wallpaper! While I'm destined to forever be more of a lurker here, I haven't even been able to do that he past month as we're in the midst of extensive renovations to a new house purchase. And yup - People that paint over wallpaper should be shot, I reckon. Ick! Nasty job to remove. Thankfully, we've now passed that phase and are finally far enough to start texturing the walls. Since we wouldn't want to have two different textures - Oh no we wouldn't - my boyfriend is doing all of that chore, leaving me oodles of time to sim at the moment. How freaking cool is he?!

your'e lucky thats for sure My hubby would stick me with the job of stripping wall paper

I work from 9 to 5, no children (but I have 3 cats lol).  Since my boyfriend loves to play games too it is not a problem (we each have our own computer), normally around 9pm I start to play until I go to bed around 12pm (that is weekdays).  On weekend I play less since we take this time to do a lot of things around the house and we will buy a new house next year (which will be built exactly the way we like) so there is a lot of plannings to do and things to think about but I love it.

One of my cat is really sick right now and we need to go to see the vet a few times this week, she have a lot of problem with her kidneys which works at only 20% so we have to take really good care of her, I don't know if she will survive she does not eat a lot  :'(.  She is 12 years old so I expected something like that would happen.  1 of my other cat is 16 years old and the youngest is almost 3 years old.

I work as a computer tutor at Polytechnic from 11am to 7pm Tues through Fri, then Saturday 10am to 4pm. I have private clients I support with IT, I often see them in the mornings before I start work or on my 'day off' on a Monday. I also study part time, currently Java programming. My son is nearly 22 and lives with his girlfriend now, so I don't have a dependant, apart from my cat.

My partner and I live 'apart together', he has his own flat but we usually spend weekends together, sometimes the odd week night. It's worked for us for seven years now. Luckily he is even geekier than I, he can happily spend an evening on groklaw, or pulling apart PCs or programming Pic chips or buiding circuitry. At the moment my lounge floor is covered by bits of computer strung together with wires, sometimes he'll add someting or subtract something but the thing still runs.  :-\

I get maybe an hour or two an evening to play, but not always sims. I've had a break in this last week and played (clocked) Startopia. I'm also really taken with nationstates.net, which someone posted a link to on this board, can't remember who. I started with a Scandinavian Liberal Paradise, within a fortnight I've turned it into an iron-fisted socialist regime. :(

I can quite often do the forums from work whilst baby-sitting the computer room, if a student doesn't need me & I don't have any work, or I want a break from work, I can surf and post.

On Sunday, after the shopping, washing, cooking (big family dinner on Sunday) and so on, I usually get at least 5-6 hours play when I don't have homework. I pay someone to do my gardens and clean the floor and utilities, costs about $50 a fortnight but well worth it in time I gain.

I think I would get bored if I could spend as much time as I wanted on the sims, but because I might only get to play 2-3 times a week, it is still something to look forward to.

I've been really into nationstates lately as well.  I started as a dictatorship, and have taken that to a very good level in the past week or so!  Being dictator kicks ass  :P

I get up at 5 or 6, depending on when I can drag myself out of bed.  I work from 7.00 - 4.30 at a car dealership, and then when I get home, I catch up on stuff and play in a window for a few hours about 3 days a week.

My husband is the same way. I keep waiting for an explaination of how t.v. isn't a "waste of time"...or at least how me "wasting" time on a game is any different then him spending 4 hrs watching some televisied football game. ???

I work as little as possible, which means I go to work to teach my classes and then do the rest from home. Because I can. On the other hand, this weekend I have 90 essays to mark, so very little simming for me, except as a procrastination tool. My husband likes computer games in general, but not sims. He just bought me my own computer so that I wouldn't keep hogging his.

16?! Wow, she's OLD! The other sounds like a cat with chronic renal failure. Not much you can do there I'm afraid. You just adjust the food and give her a better quality of life until the inevitable comes. Then again this is just my call on this, and I might as well be wrong (shouldn't open my mouth without knowing all the facts, duh!).
I'm a vet doing my PhD on pharmacology. I'm at the research facility (sounds flashier than lab, doesn't it?) from 10:00 to 15:00, give or take a couple of hours depending on my workload. After that it's me, the 17in screen and the void! I yank myself away from the monitor to spend some time with the g/f when she comes home from Uni (she's a vet student too) around 20:00-21:00, then I play a couple more hours before finally crashing at 2:00-3:00. At weekends we get up at 14:00, watch some TV, go for coffee, then it's a marathon of gaming that lasts until dawn! I'm surprised the g/f hasn't kicked me out yet! Then again, I had clearly stated to her the fact that I'm a computer games junkie from the very beginning!

Edit: it's official, I've lost my manners! Congrats Kerry, welcome to the real world!  ::)

Speaking of old cats, my cat is 20. She's in perfect health, except she needs to eat all the time. I think she's not getting enough nutrition from her food. She doesn't show any ill effects, though. She's the skinniest little thing you ever saw: I think being skinny has helped her live this long, much like with people ... which doesn't bode well for me LOL.

She's deaf as a post and has apparently lost her sense of smell, but there's nothing wrong with her eyesight. Or her yowl.  :D

I'm a writer, currently bored to death by my job and looking for something new. I write novels but so far am not published. So I guess I'd better hold on to my day job, sigh.

I am lucky in that I can play almost as much as I want. For now. I am a stay at home Mom so my day is mostly free. Unfortunately my 3 year old is as addicted to the computer as I am, so I do have to share some. And when my husband gets home from work I turn over the computer to him (only fair I guess). Things should change soon though. I have a job interview Friday (I have been looking for a long time) and hubby's 15 year old daughter will be coming to live with us in 3 weeks. Hmm. Sneaking my Sims time in may get complicated.

I too have a husband who doesn't understand my Sims obsession (and it is an obsession). He likes games, but thinks the Sims is silly. Oh well, no one is perfect.

In the same boat, It's taken almost a year, but I've finally convinced mine that the computer is my 'tv'.
He is also terrible at entertaining himself, though happy in front of a tv. It doesn't have to be good tv, he'll happily watch bad tv, reruns he's seen 200 times etc.. Realizing he wasn't getting it, I agreed to 'spend time' with him and was apparently so disruptive to his viewing that he actually suggested I go play my 'stupid' game.
It's not that I can't sit quietly in front of a tv, but he watches 5 or 6 shows at the same time and flips through constantly.

How irritating. I take the remote off anyone who doesn't know when to stop pressing buttons. I can't sit still in front of the telly though, there's just not enough going on. I have even been known to read, knit and watch TV at the same time just to occupy my mind, particularly if it is an American sitcom. Family and friends get annoyed when I tell them the plot after the first five minutes, then proceed to critique the movie/show while it's playing. Haven't you got a game you'd rather be playing, they ask? Yup! I say. :)

As for men not needing much stimulation in the way of entertainment, I don't know if this is the norm but - A conversation with the S/O:
[Me] 'What are you thinking?'
[Him] 'Me? Nothing'.
'What do you mean nothing, you must be thinking of something, people train for years to be able to think nothing'.
'Really. Nothing'.
'Since we last spoke five minutes ago I've; admired the leaves on the tree outside, planned dinner and thought about my homework. Maybe you're just not remembering what you thought'?
Quizzical, slightly puzzled look, 'Really, nothing, I wasn't thinking about anything'.


BTW: ontopic for once, I pulled a sickie today and got to play sims all afternoon. I'm pulling another tomorrow.  ;D

 :D  Have you been looking in my windows?  I can't watch TV either without my laptop on or crocheting or reading a book or magazine at the same time.  I usually find the TV so disruptive to my reading that I try to turn it off or I go lay in bed and read instead of sitting on the sofa.

C

This is exactly how I got back to the game, by spoiling all the shows he was watching at once. There is very little on tv that can capture my interest the way any flickering movement captures his. If the room is a mess, there's dusting, cooking, dishes or anything to be done, I can tolerate it or I can crochet or read at the same time, but all in all, I'd prefer to be in front of my computer.

I didn't watch television at all for three years, and I loved it. Others in the house watched but I found other things to do.

Now that my daughter is 8, she has shows she likes and I've gotten sucked in again. I do enjoy Kim Possible, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and Jimmy Neutron, but that's about it. She's obsessed with this stupid made-for-television movie the Disney channel keeps showing called Twitches, starring the stars of Sister, Sister. It's truly dreadful. But then I remember the shows I was obsessed with at her age and cut her some slack. Escape From Witch Mountain, anyone? Or was that Escape To Witch Mountain. It's been awhile.  ;D

I draw the line at reality TV, though. In fact, I don't have any shows I feel I have to see, other than the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the occasional South Park.

Oh, and if the Gilmore Girls is on I always get sucked in. I've never seen it before, so the reruns are new to me.

it was escape to witch mountain I saw that show dozens of times

I feel sad. I loved Escape to witch mountain as a kid. Poor me.

I work 9-5 Monday - Friday but also have part-time uni to contend with so I often don't get to sit down and play till past 9pm, and well I'm a wuss who needs lots of sleep so I physically have to drag myself away from the computer around 11.30 (about an hour and a half later than I always tell myself I'll stop playing!)

Oh, I did too. I'm just saying, it wasn't great cinema. It was aimed specifically at us, and it hit its target.

No shame in it. It just helps me keep from lamenting the state of my daughter's favorite movies. They're no worse, or better than the stuff I liked.

Mary Poppins was mine. I saw it recently and felt very embarrassed.
It was chocka full of mysoginists.  :-[
I like the mean, vain Mary Poppins in the books best.

I'm a stay-home-mom so I get up at 5 a.m. and play until I have to get my kids up for school, which is about 6:30 a.m. and then I play in between helping them get ready for school.  Once they're out the door, I'll play for an hour or so and then get to what I need to do around the house and then I won't usually play again until the evening.  Sometimes I won't play at all at night and will read instead, but I will always play in the morning for a few hours.