Richelle Hofer

When I was 24, I got bitten by a brown recluse spider.

I didn’t see it happen. Just noticed a weird red spot on my leg—burning, with a tiny brown dot in the middle. I figured it was nothing, but my family pushed me to get it checked out.

So I went to the doctor, feeling a little silly.

She took a scraping from the inside of the bite and left the room. When she came back, I joked, “Am I going to lose my leg?”

She looked at me with complete seriousness and said, “We’re going to do everything we can.”

😳

I left that appointment with antibiotics, steroids, and strict instructions not to move (except to use the bathroom) for two weeks. Two. Weeks. Of bed rest.

What in the world was an active 24-year-old going to do in bed for two straight weeks?

Play The Sims, of course.

A Village of Everyone I Knew

Not casually, either. I built an entire village where every person I knew in real life was represented. I spent hours crafting their personalities using the little sliders and traits the game gave you. My town was massive.

There was only one catch: you could only play one Sim at a time. While you were focused on one character, everyone else went on living their virtual lives—getting jobs, having conversations, building skills, throwing parties… or, in some cases, unraveling in spectacular fashion.

One character (loosely based on someone I knew) had a habit of jumping into the hot tub with random neighbors when I wasn’t watching. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t initiate it. It just… kept happening. 😬

Another Sim got stuck in a loop of nonstop gnome whittling. I left the game running for a bit and came back to find her exhausted, but still carving away. The entire house was filled with gnomes. Every room. The yard. She had started placing them in neat little rows on the lawn like a tiny wooden army. It was ridiculous—and, in hindsight, eerily accurate.

Turns out I did a pretty good job designing those Sims. Years later, life unfolded in some strangely similar ways.

If Only Life Had Meters

One of the best things about The Sims was the dashboard. Each character had little meters that told you what they needed:

A red “energy” bar? Put them to bed. Low “fun” score? Turn on the stereo. Dirty house? Clean up and watch the “environment” bar rise.

It was simple. Just do what the blinking meter tells you.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

In real life, we don’t get meters. But we do get signs. Exhaustion. Irritability. Mental fog. Avoidance. Over-functioning. And sometimes… gnome-level clutter.

We may not get to click a button and watch our “environment score” bounce back, but we can still check in. We can still course-correct.

And for what it’s worth—I made a little printable Real-Life Sims Dashboard just for fun. Think of it as a grown-up version of those meters, minus the whittling.

👉 Download it here.

P.S.

I didn’t lose my leg.

(But I did lose about 200 hours to The Sims and earned a lot of in-game currency from selling all those gnomes!)