FA+
Shop
This is somewhat a companion piece to the piece here: (Clickie!)
Sandboxes are time sinks. I avoid them. Most of them, most of the time.
In that piece that I linked, I expressed some of my displeasure for things.
About the game's difficulty or slog, but also mostly the interpersonal troubles that come with... coordinating & cooperating. Especially as a bonding or team building exercise.
I avoid such things because, every time I am given the tools & the means to create something to live in, be them sandbox bird houses or servers or, a room to decorate...
I always take it... so very seriously.
I always get infested by such vivid dreams of a mind never truly at rest.
"Oh I bet they'd love that! 🧡 & we can put... oh!! That there, & they expressed they enjoy that! So I can get something for here! I can make it brilliant in form ►&◄ function!"
Tis a bit silly. Yet I know it happens. It always does. I remember so vividly playing games such as that with old friends in 2010. In 2012. In 2019. I didn't actually have the means to play video games for about 7 years there, seeing as I was homeless. The lack of stability made me move around a lot. Made me pay attention to the ways cities were built. Edifices & interiors of buildings are quite diverse even just in my own country. From rural to urban & back again, I've seen so many ways to live life- enough to know I need take none of it for granted!
To share a dream together, a point of imagination, something we coordinate together- is a beautiful privilege.
It's not that I'm looking for gratitude. No. Not quite. Though I wonder how much of that under girds my perspective. It's hard not to be grateful to be alive off other's charity.
It is that... It seems impossible to get anyone else to match the amount I care. To want to live in something. To build something. Strangely, those with more stability than I ever had seem to treat every experience more transient than I did. As if there's no use in caring about what's immediately around them, or getting to know it better- or why! Or how it can be improved! How it can respect the tastes & interests of those who you share it with! To be neighbors, considerate, communal- it is ever true that it's simply a collection of individual bubbles that float alongside one another with no interest in creating patterns together or intentionally merge. Only ever assimilation. "I am normal, you are abnormal, now join me & behave as I do!"
I know that even in my own words there is a glimmer of truth to that, myself. How much I wish I could give to others the kind of perspective & care in knowing these experiences we share are likely to be the first & last of their kind. So many people I've met. Some I haven't seen in over 12 years, yet I remember them. I remember their names. The smell of their wrist as it was extended to me in a handshake. Not knowing in that moment it would be the last I ever saw them. Even when we shared words that we'd meet again.
It matters, what you do. Our days are numbered. Our energy is never wasted. Yet every time I take the effort to immerse into these sandboxes, I find myself more attached to the space & time within it, that I wake away, flush & vibrant with dreams, asleep or awake, of how we can share more of it- what comes next. How we can slip into this world as a proxy for our own- I mean! So many of those beings I go to play with often are those who lament their lacking agency in the real world. The material world has rejected them, they say. So when we sink into dreams like this together, why is it I find, over & over again that these beings reject the dream world, too? Is it that simple? Is it that when you feel you've no agency, you simply cannot connect to anything?
That is a bit off the path, so I'll digress.
The dreams I have, & the environments I see in my dreams when I engage in sandboxes & feel the promise & potential of new beginnings is so great. Not only for the game experience, but the knowledge "this thing I engage with, this game- this barrel, within the game is something that will be experienced by me & others-- so I would like to inject as much care into the decisions surrounding it as possible! Where to put it in, what it's for, how it looks." A conscientiousness I am hard pressed to find mirrored in anything but my own imagination. Best I get are those platitudes from others who simply say "oh I'll let you do all the building, Leon! :)" which... Is so entirely not the point.
It's not that I need control of my environment, it's that... If no one else is going to step in, be conscientious of, say... the trash on the tables... or the dishes in the sink... or the smudges on the mirror... I do not have much time or space I can give before I must interfere. I must clean. I must engage. I must build. I must rearrange!! How can it be that others can be part of a world that is so beautiful & easy to maintain if they simply Do what needs to be done, instead of cast their gaze away, "I do not see it",
Even in matters of their own life?
It's strange to me, & it hurts me. It aches. It grates on me like friction behind my ribs. Like a pinch behind my neck. That I feel alone in admiring & perceiving the world around me, because whenever I turn to look to those I admire, no matter how long I wait for them, it is only their backs I see. Compulsive, tinkering, workaholic, overloaded, constantly in motion, because if they stop swimming? They die!
Meanwhile I feel like a pretty chill nurse shark whose just happy to be here, & thinks that my reef is pretty, isn't it?
Bah.
The vivid dreams came to an end not long after I made this piece. Those I still feel the incomplete tasks I wished to do, the considerations I wished to share, the moats, the house, the bakery that looks so fresh with rich birch walls made especially to make it feel brighter, the support beams & shelves to make for a cozy & secure pantry-- all of it fizzled. In a way that seems harder to let go of than other things. It is my hope that expressing it here will make it that much easier to move on. Because I spent my time toiling & weathering great changes in my real status quo through this sandbox. I'm quite content not to touch it, not even to "try again." Not for a while.
... What a waste to feel such care & potential for those who care nothing for the experience or who they share that time with.
... What an annoyance that my dreams only become so vivid when they seek to impress upon others a wonderland that I feel so little affect for in satisfying my own wishes.
... "In an isolated system entropy can only increase."
Well, we'll just see about that. 🔥
Sandboxes are time sinks. I avoid them. Most of them, most of the time.
In that piece that I linked, I expressed some of my displeasure for things.
About the game's difficulty or slog, but also mostly the interpersonal troubles that come with... coordinating & cooperating. Especially as a bonding or team building exercise.
I avoid such things because, every time I am given the tools & the means to create something to live in, be them sandbox bird houses or servers or, a room to decorate...
I always take it... so very seriously.
I always get infested by such vivid dreams of a mind never truly at rest.
"Oh I bet they'd love that! 🧡 & we can put... oh!! That there, & they expressed they enjoy that! So I can get something for here! I can make it brilliant in form ►&◄ function!"
Tis a bit silly. Yet I know it happens. It always does. I remember so vividly playing games such as that with old friends in 2010. In 2012. In 2019. I didn't actually have the means to play video games for about 7 years there, seeing as I was homeless. The lack of stability made me move around a lot. Made me pay attention to the ways cities were built. Edifices & interiors of buildings are quite diverse even just in my own country. From rural to urban & back again, I've seen so many ways to live life- enough to know I need take none of it for granted!
To share a dream together, a point of imagination, something we coordinate together- is a beautiful privilege.
It's not that I'm looking for gratitude. No. Not quite. Though I wonder how much of that under girds my perspective. It's hard not to be grateful to be alive off other's charity.
It is that... It seems impossible to get anyone else to match the amount I care. To want to live in something. To build something. Strangely, those with more stability than I ever had seem to treat every experience more transient than I did. As if there's no use in caring about what's immediately around them, or getting to know it better- or why! Or how it can be improved! How it can respect the tastes & interests of those who you share it with! To be neighbors, considerate, communal- it is ever true that it's simply a collection of individual bubbles that float alongside one another with no interest in creating patterns together or intentionally merge. Only ever assimilation. "I am normal, you are abnormal, now join me & behave as I do!"
I know that even in my own words there is a glimmer of truth to that, myself. How much I wish I could give to others the kind of perspective & care in knowing these experiences we share are likely to be the first & last of their kind. So many people I've met. Some I haven't seen in over 12 years, yet I remember them. I remember their names. The smell of their wrist as it was extended to me in a handshake. Not knowing in that moment it would be the last I ever saw them. Even when we shared words that we'd meet again.
It matters, what you do. Our days are numbered. Our energy is never wasted. Yet every time I take the effort to immerse into these sandboxes, I find myself more attached to the space & time within it, that I wake away, flush & vibrant with dreams, asleep or awake, of how we can share more of it- what comes next. How we can slip into this world as a proxy for our own- I mean! So many of those beings I go to play with often are those who lament their lacking agency in the real world. The material world has rejected them, they say. So when we sink into dreams like this together, why is it I find, over & over again that these beings reject the dream world, too? Is it that simple? Is it that when you feel you've no agency, you simply cannot connect to anything?
That is a bit off the path, so I'll digress.
The dreams I have, & the environments I see in my dreams when I engage in sandboxes & feel the promise & potential of new beginnings is so great. Not only for the game experience, but the knowledge "this thing I engage with, this game- this barrel, within the game is something that will be experienced by me & others-- so I would like to inject as much care into the decisions surrounding it as possible! Where to put it in, what it's for, how it looks." A conscientiousness I am hard pressed to find mirrored in anything but my own imagination. Best I get are those platitudes from others who simply say "oh I'll let you do all the building, Leon! :)" which... Is so entirely not the point.
It's not that I need control of my environment, it's that... If no one else is going to step in, be conscientious of, say... the trash on the tables... or the dishes in the sink... or the smudges on the mirror... I do not have much time or space I can give before I must interfere. I must clean. I must engage. I must build. I must rearrange!! How can it be that others can be part of a world that is so beautiful & easy to maintain if they simply Do what needs to be done, instead of cast their gaze away, "I do not see it",
Even in matters of their own life?
It's strange to me, & it hurts me. It aches. It grates on me like friction behind my ribs. Like a pinch behind my neck. That I feel alone in admiring & perceiving the world around me, because whenever I turn to look to those I admire, no matter how long I wait for them, it is only their backs I see. Compulsive, tinkering, workaholic, overloaded, constantly in motion, because if they stop swimming? They die!
Meanwhile I feel like a pretty chill nurse shark whose just happy to be here, & thinks that my reef is pretty, isn't it?
Bah.
The vivid dreams came to an end not long after I made this piece. Those I still feel the incomplete tasks I wished to do, the considerations I wished to share, the moats, the house, the bakery that looks so fresh with rich birch walls made especially to make it feel brighter, the support beams & shelves to make for a cozy & secure pantry-- all of it fizzled. In a way that seems harder to let go of than other things. It is my hope that expressing it here will make it that much easier to move on. Because I spent my time toiling & weathering great changes in my real status quo through this sandbox. I'm quite content not to touch it, not even to "try again." Not for a while.
... What a waste to feel such care & potential for those who care nothing for the experience or who they share that time with.
... What an annoyance that my dreams only become so vivid when they seek to impress upon others a wonderland that I feel so little affect for in satisfying my own wishes.
... "In an isolated system entropy can only increase."
Well, we'll just see about that. 🔥
Category Artwork (Digital) / General Furry Art
Species Fox (Other)
Size 2146 x 1717px
File Size 3.83 MB
Comments