I want to know again by my senses who someone is, before I open them.

The quiet era approaches. Let such a dream of focus settle upon my shoulders. Eyes closed. Who is touching the back of my hand? Whose hand am I holding?

I want to be reborn.

"face your fears" is the old phrase, i guess, but it's too old

and besides it is lacking this vital everyday quality. and, too, this breaking-things-up piece.

but maybe a new thing is that the goal ultimately is to love facing these scary things... i wish there was a great phrase that came to mind for me, something really STICKY

https://bsky.app/profile/droqen.bsky.social/post/3lng5frltxk25

> . . . it's not "break up big tasks into smaller tasks", it's "break scary tasks up into less scary bits"

how to focus my intentions each day and not put things off?

FACE THE SCARY THING THAT IS BLOCKING YOU.

that's not what it was actually called? but whatever??

update: i switched to the floor desk life some months ago and ive never had a sore back since. my knee kinda hurts because i keep crouching instead of sitting properly - that's a different issue that i'm trying to resolve habitually. but my back? strongest its ever been. hell yeah.

not good. more to come, but let's think about this in the artistic sense rather than the games sense.

I like the innocent aesthetic quality in things I consume, too. consume me was effective that way, and i liked the innocent-childhood-memory vibe of The Earliest Dreams

I am not too interested in "retro" or nostalgia but when I consider my art style, why this limited art style, there is a kind of foundational cuteness, inoffensiveness, ineffectuality that appeals to me about it.

Terry proposed that the aesthetic function was one of setting low expectations, being surprised. I thought about this, too, and I think it is also a component or facet of this whole idea of allowing me to let my guard down.

In a sense, believing that my art style is simple and has no capacity for depth allows me to better face those frightening depths. It's a deeply scary act and choosing to limit myself from fully expressing them has the effect of unburdening me somewhat from the fear that if I get too good at this then someone will really see and understand what is going on...

I can throw myself completely at the attempt to convey an idea and fail not due to cowardice or a lack of introspection but because the beauty of the form itself has gotten in my way.

I showed The End of Gameplay to Eric & Milong and while Eric and I spoke in depth especially about the emotional resonance of the work, Milong (who had only played an earlier version) noted that the art style made her feel as though the negative emotions were not as accessible to her as the positive ones. This was more of a hypothesis than something she had tested, but I have been thinking about it.

This is how I feel about gameplay! It has such a tangible feeling, the way that it unfolds for the devoted player, that fantasy of... well, it is a power fantasy, isn't it?

Richard Terrell wrote in A Defense of Gameplay back in 2012 about learning, and I think that this is all helping something take form, my conception of what it is that gameplay is:

Learning something bred to be beautiful to learn, rather than useful, or meaningful, or (this term I keep returning to) life-giving, or anything. That's all redundant. You get to make one choice: what is the thing?

If you choose 'beautiful to learn' then all else shall fall by the wayside. It must, if you are to do your best work.

It is an insult, then, when I say that something has been designed to be beautiful to learn. Beautiful to discover.

It is a flaw.