Eighty-two minutes in the headset.

Beat Saber isn’t a game when you do it like this. It’s not points and leaderboards and party tricks. It’s a room with no windows where every song is a fight you asked for, and the only way out is through. Eighty-two minutes of swinging until the blocks stop being blocks and start being the thing you needed to hit.

885 calories. That’s not a walk. That’s not stretching. That’s standing in one spot and choosing violence against cubes until your shirt is soaked and you forgot what you were carrying when you put the headset on.

Sometimes the body needs to move before the brain will follow. The treadmill asks you to think — pace, distance, time remaining. Beat Saber asks you to react. There’s no room for the other stuff when there’s a wall of red coming at your face. That’s the trick. That’s why it works.

Friday afternoon. VR on. World off. Eighty-two minutes of not being anywhere but right here.