If there isn’t anything too pressing going on that I need to get up for and if it is still early enough, I enjoy playing a few word games before getting out of bed in the morning. These are mostly from the New York Times line up. I don’t feel compelled to do them every day and I don’t keep any running scores or tallies or engage in any kind of competition. It’s just a sometimes relaxing thing, which I will do until I become bored with them, eventually moving onto something else. These games and puzzles are also useful to indulge in while waiting for an appointment. I’m not really sure if any of them are keeping my brain sharp or not, but I figure at this stage of life, any brain-sharpening couldn’t hurt.

The veterinary office where I take my dog sits in a weird little valley which does not have decent cell service and they don’t share their Wi-Fi connection. It was during an interminably long spell in their waiting room where I could not pull up any of my word games (or anything to read besides pamphlets for tartar control and kidney diets), so I opened up some of the installed games that did not require Wi-Fi access or cell connection. That is when I came across The Dots.

The name of the game is not actually “The Dots” – I’m not really even sure what it’s called, I would have to look on my phone. But it’s a series of mixed up dots on a grid and you try to connect them by making a maze-like pathway from one to the other. They are as simple as 5×5 dots and as complex as 15×15. In general I’ve not been interested in any of these types of graphic games, but I was stuck there, and it was free, so I turned off the sound settings (I hate sound settings on games) and did a few.

Aside from the gratification of being able to complete the more challenging ones, what I found most pleasing about them is that there are haptics involved, creating a satisfying, tactile “click” when you complete each connection of colored dots. I think that is what kept me going back to it – if not for the haptics I probably would not have continued to play. I looked up what it is about the touch sensation that was so appealing and got this AI synopsis:

Haptics are pleasing to the brain because they create a sense of immersion and control by leveraging our brain’s natural reliance on touch, which is a primal sense. This feedback enhances experiences by providing immediate confirmation for actions, simulating the feeling of interacting with a physical world, and activating regions of the brain associated with emotion, memory, and attention. Haptic technology tricks the brain into believing it’s touching something tangible and can even trigger positive physiological responses like the release of endorphins, leading to greater engagement and satisfaction.

Being all in favor of the release of endorphins, I added The Dots game to my regular word game lineup. They offer many options but I just focused on the daily game, which – depending on the size – often only takes seconds to a couple of minutes and is rather calming.

When babysitting my young grandchild overnight, she crawled into my bed the next morning while I was completing the daily dots and asked “Can I play The Dot Game on your phone?” She very much enjoyed it, finding it challenging enough that she requested more difficult levels. I’m guessing the haptics were probably tweaking her endorphins too.

Unaware of the regularity in which I was playing, it came as a Big Surprise when one morning upon completion, the little screen which popped up at the end said “Streak Extended!” It told you how many days in a row you had been playing. Disinterested in tallies, I had never really noticed. My “streak” was 302 days – almost a year – which I supposed could be considered A Habit.

While not horrified by this revelation, it still was bothersome on a few levels. First, I didn’t like the idea of having A Habit. It’s not as if I don’t have enough habits already; good, bad or otherwise. It amazed me that I was doing the same thing daily for close to a year without realizing it, apparently as natural and unthinking as brushing your teeth in the morning. But what was disturbing about discovering this “streak” was now that I had unknowingly devoted all this time to actually having a streak, I felt loathe to possibly breaking that streak. And so what had become a mindless little game suddenly became something in the back of my mind to have to remember to do. These days it’s already hard enough recalling almost anything that needs to be done.

If I break this unintentional streak that I am now feeling somewhat committed to, it might be slightly disappointing (“awwww!”) but it will not be the end of the world. Thankfully, I don’t have any other streaks going concerning any other games. It has occurred to me that had I devoted as much thought into maintaining other types of daily streaks (studying a new subject, getting rid of the excess of “stuff” I have accumulated, writing, exercising) it might be a bit more productive.

Time has been spinning out and streaking by. This morning before getting out of bed and completing the daily dot puzzle, I checked the little “Streak Extended!” pop up, which let me know that next week it will be two years straight of playing this game.

Habit? Addiction? Mindless Time Waster? Tool for Relaxation? Will I care when this streak is inevitably broken?

~*~