The tamagotchi method or: how to stop being as sad and care for something

It's 7:45 in the morning when I turn on my English patched Tamagotchi Smart. I have to contend with baby hour, but somehow, I'm excited to be back to the routine of a Tamagotchi.
I sit on my girlfriends' bed as baby hour begins and they joke that these are just the noises that I normally make. If it sounds like this isn't my (and their) first rodeo, it's because it isn't. I've been a long time Tamagotchi fan and collector, jumping in and out of the fan base as I see fit. My favourite Tamagotchis are the Smart and the Uni, followed shortly by the Paradise. Though I realise these words will mean nothing to you if you aren't a seasoned Tamagotchi enjoyer.

Why care for a tamagotchi?
I've found that caring for a tamagotchi gives me a sense of routine, they wake up and go to bed at the same time each day. Their needs are very basic, similar to a houseplant you can take with you- if a houseplant beeped 20 times a day.
I've seen people use them as reminders to drink water by attaching them to a water bottle, a really novel idea I think.

However, when it gets down to it, the reason I think you should care for a Tamagotchi is because it gives you something to care for. In this terrifying world, having something to cling onto that is uniquely yours is important, I think.
Depending on how attached you get, it can really help. I get lonely a lot, one of my partners I live with works a 9-5 job and I am disabled. Things are significantly less lonely if I have something to do, e.g. take care of a Tamagotchi.

I've been known to take care of 4 Tamagotchis at once occasionally, when I really need something to occupy my time. They're low spoons enough that it doesn't take too much energy to take care of them but the reward (cute little pet) is just good enough to keep me engaged.

Baby hour
The first hour after you boot up a Tamagotchi is special. This is the hour in which, as could be expected for something that grows up, your tamagotchi is a baby. It serves as somewhat of a tutorial in how to care for it, along with being more needy in order to really drill in that you really need to care for this thing.

Your Tamagotchi will need feeding, pretty constantly. It will poop often. If the poop isn't cleaned up quickly enough during baby hour it will get sick. (Mind, this happens in regular gameplay too, but the timer is decreased dramatically here.) All in all, it's enough to welcome you into the world of Tamagotchi or drive you mad trying.

"Welcome," the baby says "and clean up my poop while you're here".

Baby hour is infamous on some devices for being just plain awful, but I don't mind it too much on the Smart.

Once more unto the beeps
My Tamagotchi beeps at me as we watch Futurama, my girlfriends laugh about it again. I am reminded just how much care I am required to put into these things, not that I'd forgotten.

I then take a nap, courtesy of the Tamagotchi sitter. My Tamagotchi is happy and cared for until 6pm. I'm one for daytime naps due to chronic illness, so I find myself taking advantage of this feature a lot.
I already find myself sliding back into the familiar routine of taking care of this tiny electronic creature. I then decide to take my Tamagotchi back early from the sitter as I miss him and his antics. His mood is low so I take advantage of one of my favourite implementations of the touch screen- petting. I find it so incredibly satisfying to be able to physically "pet" my Tamagotchi.

It is at this point I decide to choose a specific pet to aim for, by looking at the characters on the wiki and their care requirements. I decide on a perfect care pet, Mametchi, which I'm doubtful I will get. I'm more likely to get Weeptchi.

By 7pm my Tamagotchi calls upon me to be petted to go to sleep. It's very sweet and it makes me smile.

The next day, I wake up somewhat early to give my Tamagotchi to the sitter and then immediately fall back asleep. No care mistakes here, if I can help it. After I'm fully awake, I get my Tamagotchi back from the sitter. He evolves as I'm walking down the stairs and saying good morning to my girlfriend. She says good morning to my Tamagotchi as well, as he's being loud about it.

I put him in the sitter again, much to do today and it's raining so I don't want to take him with me in case I damage the device.
I then forget to pick him up at 6 and he gets upset with me. So it goes. A few hours later I pet him to sleep again.

The next day he evolves into Mametchi! No care mistakes made, somehow. I take a commemorative photo.

I'm very proud of myself for getting a perfect care pet, even though it's a fairly easy venture in theory. It's very rare that I manage this feat.

The community et al
Surprisingly, or perhaps not so, there is a large and dedicated community around these devices and other virtual pets - shortened to vpets - online.

There are dedicated subreddits, discord servers and the like. People often run Instagram accounts just for their Tamagotchis, to log what evolutions they get and show off the rare ones. I am guilty of this as well. The Tamagotchi community has been around for a long time and has it's own slang and memes. The specific tamagotchi server that I'm in consistently hosts group hatches, an opportunity to hatch a device and log it with many people.
I am not taking part in this month's hatch- this is purely between me and my Tamagotchi.

There is also the idea of Tama logging, which is the act of running an account (usually Instagram nowadays) to show off and log what pet your Tamagotchi has evolved into. I run a fairly inactive Tama log on Instagram, but love to see others'.

Unfortunately a lot of the early community is lost to time, as fan sites get deleted and AOL went down. The AOL forum had over 100k members, apparently. I can only imagine trying to figure out the care mistakes for the original Tamagotchis - it must have been hell. Here I am, saluting the people that put the real work in figuring out what characters lead to what, so that I can just haphazardly choose a Tamagotchi to aim for instead of doing advanced maths.
Every time there's a new Tamagotchi, there's a mad scramble to understand its programming, what results in what and so forth. I've been involved in this before, as I managed to get my hands on a Tamagotchi Uni a full week or so early. Thank you confusing toy release dates!

The community is split on the device I'm currently running, with a lot of people not liking its divided touch screen and lack of buttons. However, it is incredibly easily modded - hence the English patch I am running (The original is only in Japanese.).
It is, however, my favourite Tamagotchi generation. This may be because it was my first colour Tamagotchi - after much deliberation on my part.

There are others colour Tamagotchis that people prefer, like the Uni and the Paradise. There are also rereleases of old, non colour Tamagotchis - dubbed the RV3 (Rerelease version 3) and the P1/2 (Programming/page 1/2). Where the name for the P1/2 comes from is actually unknown, due to aforementioned digital obscurity.

In conclusion
I've found that being forced into a gentle routine by a virtual pet can really help me. I struggle with a decent sleep/wake routine so often run a Tamagotchi to encourage myself to wake up at a "normal" time, even if it's just to put my Tamagotchi with the sitter. I also use my Tamagotchi as a distraction to cope with anxiety and OCD. The mini games can be a great distraction from a compulsion. There's also something strangely calming about taking care of a small creature.

Whenever I'm struggling with motivation to walk, I use my Tamagotchi Uni as it has "Tama walks" that you can go on, physically, with your pet. You get crafting materials from this, which you can use to craft stuff for your pet.

Something about Tamagotchis just increase my mood in a general sense. I'm a big fan of little guys and Tamagotchis fit the little guy quota pretty much perfectly. With the recent release of the Tamagotchi Paradise, I think it's a great time to get into Tamagotchi.