I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy [get sucked into] playing on Pogo.com. I don’t love every game, but the ones I enjoy I can spend so much time playing that the tendon in my right arm will start to burn.

In a way, what I love is the blend of mindlessness and mindfulness. Click-click-click- clickety- click — ding ding ding ding! Sound effects depend on the game.

The games I rarely or do not play at all are usually ones where I would have to go one on one with another player out there on the net. [Right now, smack dab in the middle of the Super Bowl, there are only 312,989 players on the Pogo site, but there are always people there from all over the country at all hours of the day and night.]

Weekly there are ‘challenges’ on a couple of featured games, and if you take up the gauntlet, you can get sucked into popping 5,000 balloons on Poppit or going to 18 cities on World Class Solitaire or clearing all three peaks 87 times in Tri-Peaks Solitaire or…

I’ve found myself playing games I don’t have a lot of interest in just to win a challenge because you get a “badge” — nothing you get in the mail and sew on your blue jeans jacket, but a little emblem you collect in your “stuff” on Pogo, and then you can elect which mini-version appears by your name in the game room.

I’ve won a few <blushing> and some were a heck of a lot harder than others to get the ta-da trumpet call on. I’ve won 175 badges since I started playing (and noticed that there were badges to win).

My current “favorite” badge is one from last week: Pogo Tiles Badge from Mahjong Gardens.   I had fun with this one because I genuinely like the Mahjong games and rolling through the various animal years. I’m a pretty fair player (on the easy level) unless I’m up entirely too late and my brain shuts down so I can not spot pairs any more.

But the games that mean that I have to actually play with/against someone in a competitive situation (like, to name a very few of the many, backgammon, pinochle, super-dominoes) make me so dang uncomfortable that I don’t play. I have come to Pogo.com for the FUN and relaxation (mindless mindfulness) and I don’t want to get in a face-off or compete.

That may be part of the INFP personality at work. I really do not want to fight or battle just to win my little badge.

My profile reminds me that I’ve been a member since July 8, 2001.  2001 is a year that draws a bright dividing line in my mind, probably does with a lot of people. I see something — a show, a movie, whatever — with a 2001 or earlier date and I think that the people we were just didn’t know how wrong and inside out the world was going to turn. On July 8, 2001, I certainly had no idea.

I had undoubtedly been playing Pogo well before that date because you can play Pogo without being a member (small fee to be a member, but not necessary to play games). I  have won “lifetime tokens” of 2,323,031, but that’s not the current total I’m carrying as I have ’spent’ a few mostly on jazzing up my Pogo-Mini.

The Pogo-mini is your homogenized representation of yourself, and people can (and do) spend their tokens wildly on outfits and backgrounds and hair styles and accessories, some that even blink and move. It’s amusingly interesting.

My Pogo-mini isn’t that exciting, and I’m bummed that I can’t plump her figure out to look more accurate. She does have white hair in a well-combed version of mine and she is wearing worn jeans and a gray tee shirt. BUT she is standing along 17-Mile Drive on the Monterey Peninsula with a little bonsai tree and some wind chimes. That’s where I’d put my real self if only I could. I tried to copy the avatar to share but it isn’t allowing copying.

I’m pleased with my token numbers because I know how I’ve pecked away at accumulating them. But that number is NOTHING like the really hard core players who have racked up 12, 14, 17 MILLION tokens and who roll through the challenges and badges like high-rollers in Vegas. They chit and chat with each other in the chat block of the games, and it is sometimes interesting to read their intimate conversations.

I learn how the weather is treating people all over the country in “real time”, and how new babies or old boyfriends or work or church dinners are doing from North to South to East to West. Each game has its gameplay spread out into “rooms”, and if you go into the same room regularly you start to notice the same people over time and notice what they are talking about.

There are families who live distances from each other who meet up all the time and play their games and chat about what’s been going on that day. It’s a nice little community. Sometimes I’ll even ’smile’/ ‘wave’/ give a “wtg!” when someone reports proudly that they’ve hit a big score.

The closest to competitive I have ever gotten is probably playing one of the Bingo games, but since that takes more luck and paying attention than any real skill or brain cells, it doesn’t seem that much of a combat.

My very favorite games, the ones I just GO TO and play over and over when I need to pacification and soothing of just mechanically “thoughtfully” playing, are World Class solitaire, Poppit, Phlinx, Aces Up, and Rainy Day Spider Solitaire. All set on Easy.

It’s a game. It relaxes. And if I don’t watch out, I’ll stay up into the wee small  hours and play!