To say that 2025 got off to a rough start for me would be an understatement, but one of the few high points was the original Sims turning 25 and EA rereleasing the first game for modern PCs. As I worked tirelessly to tend to the rapidly decaying motives of my digital dolls and keep their moods up, I found myself remembering a social media post about how humans are just more biologically complex Sims, suggesting we should cater to our own motives the same way to try to fix red bars when they happen.
With my mental health seldom in the green lately, I was looking forward to a couple days off to power down for a second, unplug and unwind. With the post on my mind and the determination to stop feeling so blue (or red, I guess, for the sake of the simile), I decided to spend the three days I took of Vacation treating myself like my Sims to see if it helped.
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I promise I’ll spare you any tales of tending to my Bladder need along the way.
Day One: Energy, Hygiene, Fun
Between a rough breakup, helping my parents through poor health, and trying to stay afloat in other areas of my life, I had never been more exhausted than I was when I logged out and began my time as my own Sim. The weight on my mind had had me sleeping terribly for weeks, and the physical fatigue only added to the mental.
So, I started my time off by focusing on my Energy need: I took a sleeping pill the night before my first day off and slept soundly through the night. I enjoyed some coffee in the morning, and took an afternoon nap on the couch – not things that replenish too much Energy in The Sims, but things that sure feel good for a red mood bar.
Before the nap, though, I tended to my Hygiene motive. Sure, I was taking regular showers and brushing my teeth, but it had been a moment since Hygiene had been the focus. I treated myself to a warm shower in which I used all my favorite products, dried off with my biggest and softest towel, and did a full skincare routine afterwards – which sent my Hygiene meter back to the top.
The final motive I was determined to work on that day was Fun. Despite being off from work, it was the day that I had my interview with Adam McArthur about Jujutsu Kaisen. It’s my favorite anime and I’ve been going through the manga in my free time to sate my craving between seasons. Having read an entire volume prior to the interview, I followed it with the aforementioned nap, then spent the rest of the night playing Genshin Impact, running aimlessly through Teyvat in the name of adventure (and Fun).
Day Two: Room And Comfort
Now that some of my more pressing needs had been tended to, it was time to tackle the backlog of secondary motives that can (and often do) fall to the wayside in the thick of a depressive episode. After sleeping in again and a hot cup of coffee for more Energy, I took to tackling all the things that would tank a Sim’s Room need back in the day.
My house never got to ‘need to call a one-time maid’ levels of gross, nor was my walk across a room ever blocked by a wayward dinner plate, but I am guilty of ignoring some clutter. The second day of my time off, I spent time tidying up my space: I finally sorted out my overstuffed hamper and did my laundry, did dishes, vacuumed, and dusted.
Next, I sought to ease my Comfort motive a bit by doing some tedious things that’d been pressing on my mind, deadlines that loomed ever closer. After my cleaning spree, I made several appointments that I’d put off making, filed my taxes, and sorted out a bunch of boring paperwork for my health insurance. My to-do list had been weighing on my ability to be Comfortable for a while there, but in a refreshingly refreshed room with a cleared task list was a great way to end the second day.
Day Three: Fun (Again), Hunger, And Social
The last day was the one that I was most excited about, and it began with riding downtown with my best friend and her husband to meet up with other friends to catch a planetarium laser light show set to music by one of my longtime favorite bands. They don’t tour anymore, so this was the most Fun I’ll get to have to their music for the foreseeable future and I caught myself smiling almost the whole way through.
After the show, the six of us went to a restaurant I’d been dying to try. It’s a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant run by two women my mom’s age who spoke to one another in Spanish as they cooked together, and the meal filled my Hunger need as completely as I hoped it would (despite that I’d definitely have had the Uncomfortable moodlet after how much I ate, if moodlets had been a thing in the original Sims).
We rounded things out with a Social night back at my friend’s house, listening to music, opening packs of Pokemon cards, playing dominoes, and gushing about her new hairless kitten Bernie. I even whipped up some fresh cookies between rounds of games when we’d pause for smoke breaks and drink top-ups.
I’d put my Cooking skill at a seven or eight if I had to assign it a number, so no risk of setting the kitchen ablaze here.
The Results
As someone who’s been on a journey with major depression since she was a Teen (an age group that didn’t exist in the original Sims, but like hell I want to be a Peter Pan-esque forever Child), I’ve experienced a few stretches of red mood bars in my life. While it’s not always possible to pause your whole life for a few days to work on your motives – you get fired on your second day off in TS1, after all – gamifying long-overdue self-care by treating myself like a Sim did me a world of good.
Both my body and my house are clean again, and having a refreshed to-do list without a backlog behind it is a weight off my shoulders. The same group of friends has agreed to try several local Mexican places in pursuit of the best one, an adventure we’ve already planned to space out across plenty of weekends this coming summer. My sleep schedule is back to normal for the most part now, and making cookies even got me off on a little baking kick.
I’ve spent so much time languishing and doom-scrolling the last few months that I forgot skill-building in your free time instead can be pretty Fun, too.
The original Sims was weirdly hard, but so is real life sometimes – I might not be tormented by burglars on a routine basis or a lonely bear rummaging through my trash, and I know how to climb out of a pool without using a ladder, but distilling my motives down into base categories and tackling them one at a time was a game-changer for me when I was feeling overwhelmed by so much to fix. Maintaining a green mood bar is always easier than achieving one, but now that I’m back out of the red again, I’m determined to do my best to stay here as long as I can.
Now, if anyone knows of a working real life Rosebud cheat and wants to really boost this Sim’s mood, my email address is in my bio.
The Sims
- Released
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February 4, 2000
- ESRB
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t
- Developer(s)
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Maxis
- Engine
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SmartSim
