There's An App For That.

                          Who gets an AHA! Moment playing a video game? This girl. 

                                                 Apparently there is an app for that. 

                                                                                          ~J.V.Manning

Back in February I jumped on the bandwagon and bought an IPhone.  I love the Apps that I have found that are useful to me. Weather apps, News apps, Email and Maps.  I have one app that has a library of inspirational quotes and one that takes a picture and converts it to a a document for emailing. All very useful to me, great for work and keeping things straight. A list app, a reminder app, a calendar and appointment app. Useful tools to help manage a busy life. But none of these apps brought me to an AHA! moment like a silly game did. Seriously.  

I do not play video games. Never have and probably never will. I have always found different ways to pass the time. Reading, writing, the never ending cleaning and laundry. When I got my new phone my husband and kid were telling me about all the games I could download. Angry Birds. Words with Friends. Draw Something. The list goes on and on. At first I did not download any games. The phone was a tool. But as time went on I wanted to know what everyone was talking about. Also, being a tech geek really didn't help. So I download a few. Deleted most just as fast. But I have kept a few. There is one I like to play called "Bejeweled Blitz". A quick synopsis- Basically your screen is filled with different colored jewels. The object is to get 3 or more of the same color lined up to clear them off your screen. It beeps, buzzes and points rack up as you clear more jewels. If you clear more  than 3 jewels at a time one will light up and explode if you clear it on a different move.  You only have a minute.

One of the reasons I find that I like this one; it is mindless. I don't have to think or plot. I just match up colors and get the highest score in under a minute.  If I am stuck on something I am writing or just home from a crazy day at work, I play "Blitz" to give my mind a break. It is mindless, solves nothing and doesn't get any writing done. But it gives my subconscious sometime to brew unfettered.  But I can apparently only do mindless for so long because this morning as I was moving those little jewels around, I had an AHA! Moment. A life lesson in this game? Really? 

As I was moving jewels around causing chain reactions and explosions, I realized something. One little shift can cause a chain reaction that clears a whole bunch of jewels at the same time and changes the entire look of the screen. One little move. It was here that I found my lesson. 

One little shift can change our entire outlook. One little move on our part can change the landscape of our thoughts, our outlook and our problems. When I sat there looking for jewels to move, I suddenly felt stuck. I was looking at the entire screen, trying to find the biggest move. Time was running out and I felt the pressure. I had to find a move, a  big move. But I couldn't. What I found were small moves that didn't bring me as many points. Until the one that did.  I moved one jewel and set off the biggest chain reaction and scored a ton of points.

 AHA! Cue light bulb over my head. 

Same thing goes for life.  Sometimes life is overwhelming. Sometimes you feel the weight of it on your shoulders and the pressure gets to be so much you feel like you will be crushed. You don't know where to start. You don't know where to turn. Instead of making any moves- you freeze.  

The lesson I learned playing a damn game on my cell phone. Make smaller moves. 

You do not have to solves all of your problems in one fell swoop. You do not have to confront everything in your past that is holding you back in one day. You don't have to do it all at once. But you have to do some of it. Make smaller moves. One then another. Keeping working at it. Keeping making strides. Then one day, you will make that one small move that cascades into another and another and you will get to where you need to be.  

Life Lesson in a damn game.. Yeah, there is an app for that.