Presence

Presence

My roommate (housemate? roomhouse? something???) was absent for much of last month due to family/work related reasons. It was nothing serious as far as I know, but it was long enough for me to notice something strange about my own demeanor in that time.

I don’t really do anything different whether he’s here or not. Most of the time I just sit in my bedroom and poke at the computer. Sometimes I emerge from the depths and poke at the television. He does the same, except in reverse (most of the time he’s in the living room). In other words, it really doesn’t matter if he’s here, I’m doing exactly the same things.

But when he’s not, I get lonely. Somehow.

We don’t interact much - I mean, we talk sometimes, but that’s not really what I miss when he’s gone. It’s the sound coming from another room, the sight of him walking by every so often... the knowledge that he’s there. His presence.

To be clear, this isn’t anything really special with him, this last month is just how I’ve become acutely aware of the fact. This has happened all my life - when my parents left the house, when I was the first one in the classroom, when my friends headed home after a day of hanging out.

Somehow, the presence of others is... Comforting? Energizing? Warm? I’m really not sure. But something’s there that can affect my whole state of being. In fact, presence is so strong to me that a lack of it is cold, lonely, and even disspiriting.

I dragged myself out of the house to go to a rather large Halloween party last year. There were at least a couple hundred people there, to give an idea of the scale. People were dancing and snacking and playing air hockey or ping pong and generally having a good time.

I sat on a couch for most of it. People would walk by and talk to me out of pity I suppose, but I wasn’t bored or anything of the sort. In fact, I was having a good time! The pleasant buzz of people talking, the the flurry of activity, the warmth... the presence. It was invigorating just being there.

I may be an introvert, but I definitely enjoy people - in my own way.

Person: I mean, I'm glad Nintendo made a shooter and all, but Splatoon is still a kiddie game

Me: *Squiddie

So I got Stretchmo :D

Apparently you can make 3D levels for the first time in the series! So I made this thing. It requires a lot of thinking outside the box, so if you’ve got Stretchmo you should try it out!

If I were you, I’d expect more puzzle spam. Remember back when I was obsessed with Pushmo World for a while? Yeah, that’s likely to happen again.

Something that’s helped me IMMENSELY in my new “adulting” life is learning not to sweat the details.

I grew up an academic. Math has always been one of my best subjects. In math, either you get the whole question right, or you get nothing (at best, some measly partial credit). That means it’s essential to do each step perfectly along the way; no single piece is less important than another. This has imprinted on my brain as “everything has to be perfect all the time, forever.”

Except, as I’ve recently learned, that’s simply not how it works in real life.

Nothing is an exact science - in life, everything has an acceptable range of close-ness. It’s usually not a strict range, either; as long as you fall within it, you’re doing great. If the recipe calls for a pinch of salt, and you second-guess yourself on whether you accidentally added two pinches, it’s probably fine. No one’s gonna notice. Adding the whole bottle of salt is too much, yes, but a little extra doesn’t hurt. Same goes for that picture on your wall that’s 0.5° tilted, or the hole in your jeans, or even that one time you said something awkward.

Unfortunately, there are people who notice this stuff. If they joke about it, that’s fine; they’re not serious. Some people are very serious about it, however. Their range is shortened to perfection, and they force it on others. Good news: I can confirm they’re toxic. Don’t bother working or dealing with them unless you absolutely must.

Because if you’re two minutes late to class, you haven’t missed anything; it doesn’t really matter.

Mazes, pt. 3

(continued from pt. 2)

Sometime in late 2010/early 2011, just before I went to gifted school, I found a larger graph paper journal similar to the one I just covered. However, this one had a number of advantages:

While I could no longer carry it in my pocket, it’s still fairly compact and suited for travel in a backpack or satchel.

The grid is quite small, allowing for larger mazes. Even my large notebooks at 5 squares per inch aren’t this spacious.

It’s really thick. Like, college textbook thick. I’ve had it for five years and filled half of it.

Luckily, by this time I had already filled the other notebook cover-to-cover and needed a new one, so I convinced my mother to get it for me.

Thick like a one-pound burger. The used half is kind of visible.

Suddenly I found myself somewhere at the intersection of larger mazes, more patience, and actual technical skill. As a result, this book (especially the second half) has what I easily consider my finest works.

Some of the more technical designs. If they look a little strange, it’s because the full grid isn’t entirely erased.

And then... I just stopped. One day I realized I hadn’t touched it in months.

I guess I just took a hiatus. Mari0 was scratching my design itch, and that was taking up what little free time I had in between bucketloads of schoolwork. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I probably needed the break anyway. Besides, during this time, I was learning about image and vector editors. This means that while I only produced one maze in my second year of gifted school, I was also able to digitize it immediately.

I’ve been told this one hurts people’s eyes.

It’s important that I stop here and take a moment to go back in time again, back to The Big Big Book of Mazes. All of those design elements that I learned from that book so long ago are still at play here - the only thing that was really different was the fact that mine were all still hand-drawn (and maybe smaller). Now that I can make them on a computer, I have finished my ascension. I’ve reached their level, the level of the masters.

Their website, megamazes.com, is still up at the time of this writing. While you need an account to view most of the mazes available there, four mazes are available for all to view, and those four still give a very good glimpse at what my inspirations have been all this time.

———

Lately I’ve found myself interested in mazes once again, but for a slightly different reason: all of my old notebooks are falling apart. Luckily, I know how to give them the vector treatment very quickly now, and I’ve been spamming Twitter with the results.

Looks a lot better now, doesn’t it?

I’m really happy with all the positive buzz I’ve gotten from this! At least one person has been solving each one as they come (you know who you are), and a bunch more have been liking/faving/retweeting them. Thank you all so much! I’m still putting them up on Twitter and may occasionally post several at once here. I also update this Imgur album with each new maze. Y’know, just in case you want to follow my progress.

And since you’ve made it all the way through, thanks for reading. Without you, I wouldn’t be writing all this.

Here’s a question I’ve been wrestling with for the past few weeks:

I do a lot of daydreaming. At any given point in time, I’m deep in my thoughts playing out some scenario or another. Most of the time, they’re not ridiculous or anything - it’s just me organizing my music, making levels, going out and being social, or playing video games. Remember this post? It’s still an issue.

Why, then, can’t I turn those thoughts into reality?

I wouldn’t say any of this is unreasonable. I mean, what’s any of that take out of me? Thirty minutes of my time at worst? That’s nothing in the grand scheme of things, I can just go right back to whatever I was doing afterward. And then I have the satisfaction of getting the thing done to go with it.

The real problem is that in the meantime, I’m doing nothing. Sitting around listening to music, or watching a video on Youtube, or reading my dashboard here on Tumblr, not even taking time out of my day to get dressed sometimes. I know this is the life for some people. No, really, I get that. First-world problems and all. I get it. But that is not me. I don’t like to sit around and twiddle my thumbs - I like to get stuff done. I enjoy being creative and funny and productive; moving and breathing and doing.

So I don’t understand where this whole “sit around and be a blob of consumption” thing came from. Especially since, the whole time, I’m imagining how awesome it would be to get up and get dressed, when it takes no more energy to flail my arms and legs to put socks on my head and pants on my feet. Great, now I’m imagining me being all happy and doing stuff - why can’t I just do this in reality?

I am a freaking potato and I don’t know what to do about it.