I feel like I’m regressing. This past weekend I spent playing Dance Dance Revolution for Wii. Last year’s kick was Guitar Hero. I spend unforgivable hours on social networking sites fake interacting, creating a micro-spec on a microcosm that is something much bigger than I will probably ever understand. But I’m there. Playing with the others. Sometimes I think I’d list the same hobbies du jour as a teenage boy.

But reality is we all need to play; we need an excuse to tap our inner child. Stare at arrows flying up a TV screen as you dance around a plastic mat; strum a plastic guitar to heavy metal; or spend too many clicks on texts, chats, twitters, top 25 about you, top 3 pet peeves, create your random rock album, what city are you meant to live in, what sex and the city character are you, what is your name and what does it all mean for how to get a new job?

We’re social beings and we want noting more than to chat with our friends and play. We want to revert to an easier time; when fun was an expectation, not a privilege. We’re bringing back the play module into our lives.

Gaming systems are no longer geared solely for the gaming niche (you know who you are); it’s targeted towards hip adults. Like me – and you. All of us want to be young. Younger is cooler, hipper, sexier, more alive. It’s playing right into our biological drives.

The economy and all the other stuff associated with it sucks and everyone is in a bad mood. There is sadness in the air. The streets are emptier, faces are grayer, the energy is different in New York; it’s like someone turned the volume down.

New York has always been a city about dreams, passions, pursuits, about the drive for more. Now it seems attitudes are more acquiescing; we went from aggressive to passive.

It seems people take less for granted but are just as resentful. Those that don’t have jobs are resentful of the ones that have them and those that have them have to suck it up no matter how bad the jobs are because they’re lucky just to have a job.

But tomorrow is another day and it will get better – or it won’t. But eventually it will – because it always does. In the meantime, game on!