is it an addiction? or just a vice . . .

so today . . . i realized i am addicted to farm town on facebook.

i'm sure i have mentioned this before, and if you are not on facebook, you will not completely understand this blog. but i can't help it--it's time to confess . . .

farm town is an app where you create your own farm. you plow up the ground, choose crops and plant them, harvest them, and then go to market to sell the products of all that work! and then you start over again . . .

i love it! i love every part of it!!

i started really playing a couple of weeks ago. i was going to do it with joshua and jonathan at school in the afternoon. i thought it would be something different that they would enjoy and also would go along with our science curriculum. so they helped me. for a week. and then i went up to portland . . .

my plan was to just earn as much money as i could while i was gone, so that when i got back, the boys could run the farm, and i wouldn't have to worry about running out of money. this was a good plan, except for one thing--while i was gone, i became addicted.

seriously addicted. i now check my farm first thing in the morning, and then several times during the day and evening. i run around to my friends' farms--watering, raking, and weeding to make a little extra cash. i do the math on all the crops--how much does it cost to plow and plant, and how long does it take to mature--so i know which are the most profitable seeds to plant. i plow up more land and buy more seeds. i have planted and harvested so many potatoes that i am sick of looking at them. and yet, my brain says, "plant potatoes," because it is the most profitable crop available to me right now, and it matures in just one day. which is great, because it means that i get to plow and plant and harvest and sell EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! and i've found that i do not have the patience right now to wait for crops if they take more than one day to grow. i followed the lead of one of my farmer friends yesterday, and planted sunflowers--which i'm sure will be beautiful, but they take 3 days to mature! i can't stand it!!! i keep watching them, but they are so slow . . .

it is funny how i thought that when i had earned 10,000 coins (the "legal tender" used in farm town,) i could relax and plant crops that were a little more "fun." but then i reached 10,000 and actually went to about 14,000. ok, i thought, maybe i should get to 25,000 before i branched out. i passed that mark, and now i am thinking i should get to at least 50,000 coins before i get too creative. (i did splurge and spend 200 coins for a scarecrow . . . ) but now that i am becoming somewhat successful, i am thinking of enlarging my farm, and that is expensive. i have a feeling that i am going to find that 50,000 coins isn't nearly as much as i thought . . .

today my addiction reached a new level. i started hanging out in the marketplace, waiting for some farmer to come hire me to harvest on their farm. there are dozens of avatars hanging around, waiting to be hired. some beg for work, some move around a lot to draw attention to themselves, but my strategy is to just stand in a clear spot as close to the middle as i can, and wait. usually this is just a waste of time, but a few times it has worked for me.

i've had two funny experiences. the first happened yesterday. i got hired to go work on a really big farm! it had corrals for it's animals and even a house! it was planted with the dreaded potatoes, but also some strawberries. so i went running around harvesting, watching my bank account swell. when i got done, i thanked the farmer for letting me help harvest, and he said, "np, want to harvest the fruit trees?" well, i didn't know who np was! i knew it wasn't me, and i couldn't find any trees. so after trying to find np on the farm, and failing, i went on home . . . feeling kind of rejected that i hadn't been chosen to harvest the fruit . . .

i later realized that np was short for "no problem," and that i had unchecked the "show trees" box on my computer, so all the trees were hidden! i felt so dumb! especially because this was a big farm, and i had been hoping i would be asked back. now i am thinking my chances of that are pretty slim . . .

and then today i was hanging out in the marketplace--i admit i lurk--and was invited to a farm to harvest. when i got there, again, it was totally planted with potatoes (they really are a good money making crop!) but the crops were only 99% ready! well, you can't harvest until they are 100%. so i waited and waited. i figured it was better than going back to the marketplace--at least this was a job. finally the crops were ready. i started racing about harvesting, when i realized i was not alone! there were two other people harvesting at the same time as i was!! well, this kind of changed things--it became a race. and not just a race, but also a competition to try to outsmart the others so they couldn't get in front of me. it was just a tiny bit stressful . . .

i asked one of my friends today, "do you think we will get tired of playing this game?" he said, "probably eventually. but for now, i just keep thinking about levelling up and enlarging my farm!" another farmer friend said she woke up this morning thinking about how she wanted to arrange her farm. sometimes i find myself on my farm just waiting for something to happen--even though i know nothing is going to happen for a few more hours . . . i am just drawn to it.

so yes, i admit it. my name is julie, and i am a facebook farm townaholic . . .