Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Arrrrg. Started writing a journal entry yesterday, and my computer froze before I saved it.

My eyes have continued to frustrate me. I still hold the record for slowest-healing eyes in the universe, and that’s impacted darn near everything in my life. I can’t work, or read, or write for more than half an hour at a time now, as my eyes get tired quickly.

And it’s pushed me into a blue period for the past couple of days. I’m not depressed, really. My brain is processing a lot, so I’ve been emotionally okay, just distracted and only partially engaged in whatever I’m doing.

But these periods are best met by recognizing them and responding to them, finding new ways to deal with changes, and using them as whetstones to sharpen ourselves on. So, I’m working and reading and such in smaller chunks now. Seems to be working.

He blew out a big sigh and looked around, squinting at the empty azure sky. “Not quite. Hack-and-slashes are games. This is more of a shared environment. But it’s not just any shared environment; it’s the oldest and most respected one out there.”

“So what?” she asked, looking back at him with real curiosity.

He turned his back to her. She could not see him grin as he explained, “Only the best play here.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Not just in terms of experience,” he added quickly. “To play here, you have to be smart, and you have to have been around awhile.” He paused. “Just my kind of people.”

“Do you have to walk everywhere in this world?” Doodlehopper asked, scuffing her feet as they strode over the gently rolling emerald hills towards one particularly high mountain.

Thomas grinned. “Actually, yes.”

She scolwed and glanced behind them for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I don’t like it.”

Thomas looked up at the cloudless sky again, then down at the small clusters of daisies that grew in patches in the grass. “I kind of like it,” he said.

She threw him a questioning glance, and he explained, “They want you to experience this world. Everything here is so carefully crafted. Hey, look up.”

He pointed at the blue sky above them, where they could just make out the dot of a bird leisurely wheeling hundreds of feet in the air. “Most games,” he said, “will put birds in the sky. Some games will create birds that circle realistically. But here…if you stayed here and just watched that bird, you’d be able to follow it back to its nest. It would have a nest. It might have a mate, and it might be raising young. That’s the kind of detail they put into this place. This isn’t just the background for a random monster fight; this entire world is a home.”

She had nothing to say to that, and they continued in comfortable silence for a minute or so, until out of nowhere a sonorous, bell-like voice called out, “One of you is recognized. The other is not. Explain yourselves.”

(In other news…tanjit, two new blogs to add to the daily roster: Patricia Nielsen-Hayden‘s “Making Light” and John Scalzi’s “Whatever”. “Whatever” includes a brilliant article, Even More Long-Winded (But Practical) Writing Advice.)

Leave a Reply

I work for Amazon. The content on this site is my own and doesn’t necessarily represent Amazon’s position.