Fighting Depression With Farming Simulator

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #181. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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Here’s the Thing is where Rob dumps his random thoughts and strong opinions on all manner of nerdy subjects – from videogames and movies to board games and toys.

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I don’t bother hiding my . . . eclectic taste in videogames, and I’ve previously used up my monthly column real estate talking about how much I enjoy tedious minutiae a lot of the time. Particularly when a game is attempting to simulate semi-realistic interactions with its digital world, regardless of whether or not we’d consider it an actual “sim.” But my somewhat recent fixation with Farming Simulator (specifically Farming Simulator 17 Nintendo Switch Edition) still managed to stump me, because I couldn’t figure out why I’ve been so thoroughly engrossed. Well, here’s the thing: At this point I’m pretty sure it’s less that I’m having the time of my life pretending I’m a farmer (though I am certainly enjoying myself) and more that I’m desperately clinging to something that gives me a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

That sounded really sad in my head as I was typing it and reads back even sadder, but it is what it is. Therapy was helpful, and even though I stopped going towards the end of 2023, I still use a lot of the tools and mental exercises I picked up along the way. Which made it easier to figure out why I can’t resist the siren call of tilling virtual fields every night, at least.

What I’ve been struggling with a lot lately (and I mean a lot) are overwhelming feelings of uselessness, futility and monetary inadequacy. It’s my job to write about stuff and I need to write a fair bit every month in order to make ends meet, but that’s been a tough ask for months now. Not because I’m struggling with the work (though that has sometimes been an issue, too), but because many of the opportunities I used to have just aren’t there anymore.

My primary source of income used to have a multitude of topics I could pick from and the only thing keeping me from producing a half-dozen articles in a day was my own desire to keep going. Now I’m lucky if I can find one thing to cover in a day because of a combination of the powers that be requiring only experts – people willing to do thorough research don’t count, it’s gotta be firsthand expertise – tackle most stories, and 99-percent of everything these days focuses on subjects I am decidedly not an expert in. Way too many cars and solar panels, not enough smartphones and computers.

So, for the past several months, I haven’t been scraping by like before – I’ve been desperately clawing at nothing to try and get my head above water for a second or two in order to suck in some air before inevitably getting dragged back under the surface. The only reason things haven’t crumbled completely is because I have very generous (too generous, I feel) parents. And ignoring how bad asking for money makes me feel in general, it’s simply not sustainable. No amount of attempting to sell off parts of my Transformers collection can make up the month-to-month difference. Something has to change.

I’m doing what I can to work towards that change, but in the meantime, I need life to stop feeling like it’s spiraling out of control. I need to feel like I’m doing something – anything – that has some kind of tangible result. I need to be able to look at a thing I’ve spent time on and say “I did that.” And since I’m not getting it from work, the best I can do right now is farm.

There’s no way I’d ever conflate the slow, methodical expansion of a videogame farm with finally being able to pay for all of our bills without outside assistance. I know it’s all just a game, and ultimately that the marks I make on this fake world are meaningless. But while I’m pretending to sit behind the wheel of an intricate 3D model of a real-world tractor, arduously carving up dirt before planting some canola or soybeans, maybe collecting hay left behind after harvesting barley, it doesn’t matter. I’m doing something. Something that I’m in full control of. Something that can and will have beneficial results for my little fake business. Something that, for a few minutes a night, makes me feel satisfied in the “work” I’ve done. Accomplished, even.

It’s not much, but I’ll take it.

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Rob Rich is a guy who’s loved nerdy stuff since the 80s, from videogames to anime to Godzilla to Power Rangers toys to Transformers, and has had the good fortune of being able to write about them all. He’s also editor for the Games section of Exploits! You can still find him on Twitter, Instagram and Mastodon.