i have adventures (sometimes)

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Game Face ON

17:35 Posted by Ali , , , 3 comments
Some of you may know that I'm a little bit competitive. I know, big shock. It's not that I can't stand losing - I really can cope with that (except when it comes to 30 Seconds). I just really really like winning.

Do you want to play? Do you want to play RIGHT NOW?
Which is why joining Discovery Vitality has suddenly made me care about things like my health and fitness. Or rather, the points I can get by acting like I care about those things. You mean I get to level up if I do all sorts of mundane health-related tasks? My game face is ON.

My game face is just one of the reasons people sometimes won't play games with me.
So I've done every possible online assessment, visited a dietitian (I'm fine), gone to a clinic (I'm fine), and booked a fitness assessment (I may not be fine). And doing all these things gets me points! And points let me level up!

I genuinely don't even know what levelling up gets me. But honestly, Gold could have exactly the same privileges and rewards as Blue and I would still want to get there. Because GOLD. I'm not sure what I'm winning, but I'm totally winning it. It's like a quest! A poorly-defined quest which wouldn't make a very good epic because it's mainly me going to the gym and buying vegetables as usual, only now getting points for it!

(But I'm sure Peter Jackson could still drag it out into a trilogy.)

I found it amusing that one of the online stress tests is to check how much of a type A personality you are.* They make out like it's a bad thing, but who else do they think is going to waste time doing every assessment on the website, going for unnecessary check-ups, and compulsively visiting the gym just to get points? People like us, that's who. Given that we're essentially their target audience, they should be patting us on the back rather than suggesting we might die early. Rude.

Anyway, winning at this makes me feel better about the fact that I quite likely failed the qualification test to work as a web search evaluator (fun fact: it turns out I'm quite bad at web search evaluating), which is my best shot at work at the moment. The work itself is tedious, but not the worst, although it is a little depressing that the main thing I bring to the role is being a human.

But but but I have a... Oh, nobody cares? Nobody cares.
It's part-time work, but then I'd only be 50% unemployed, which would be a big step up, and then I'd only need to find another half a job and everything will be fine and I can pay my own rent and buy a duvet and lots of board games forever! Or at least sometimes afford peanut butter.

So it's one-all. I'm winning at Vitality points, but still losing at jobs.

... Anyone for a game of 30 Seconds?

*I know this probably isn't a real thing, but blame Discovery, not me. The dietitian also asked me if I combined my proteins. "Yes" seemed like the easiest answer at the time, although "As much as necessary" would have been more accurate.

3 comments:

  1. Ooooh! Maybe when you level up you should put all your points into Charisma so you can really wow them in interviews and therefore get ALL THE JOBS! (You've clearly put a ton of points into intelligence already and I would've thought that would be enough but clearly earth people suck!)

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  2. Ooh, I hope they let me assign my points to skills! That would be amazing! You may be right about earth people. When do we return to Transylvania, huh?

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  3. I'll go pack my fishnets...

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