One of the dangers of video games (for me at least) is a sense of false productivity. In my own life the house gets clean so slowly, the dogs get trained so slowly, the writing goes so slowly sometimes, but in Minecraft I can build a house in an afternoon. A really nice house with gardens and a brick terrace and water features and all.
In real life, my garden takes months of anticipation, planning, patience. Right now I'm having to have patience and not start any seeds. Its still only January. Starting seeds before February in Minnesota is ludicrous. Any tomato I planted now would be overgrown and desperate before I could conceivably plant it outside. Okay, I could plant some perennials, some bib lettuces, some onions, some of those things that take forever to grow. But I've rearranged the growing area, and only recently rehung the lights. I still need to wash & sanitize the growing trays before I start anything. Plus there's general cleaning in the basement that would be good to finish before I start adding trays of seedlings down there.
In Minecraft you can start seeds any old time, just hoe and go. The plants will grow. There are no frost dates to calculate, no first or last expected frost dates, and pumpkins take merely days to appear. They never wilt from lack of water, or mildew from too much, never get vine borers, they just keep happily popping up right where you put them. But things this easy easily pale. The first pumpkin is very exciting, but at this point I hardly ever look at my Minecraft pumpkin patch.
I'm still all excited about the seed catalogs, though. Going through my catalogs making plans for what varieties of seeds to order. The basement is taking shape. I've got the walls behind the stainless steel shelving lined with mylar, and the grow lights on pulleys so they can be raised and lowered even further this year. Going to make side and front panels to trap in the light and bounce it back on the little plants. Have to wash and sanitize the heat mats and test the thermostats, look up what the germination temps are on the seeds I plan to start. I feel like a racer in the starting blocks, and this is just the seed starting season. Wait until the soil thaws and we can plant Peas!