Seduced by Minecraft
If you're wondering where I have been for the last several days – while not working, travelling, working some more, travelling some more, picking things up, filling the washing machine, or chasing my tail in the endless fashion I seem to from day-to-day, wonder no more.
I've been down an imaginary hole, chipping imaginary bits of stone out of rock faces with imaginary pickaxes, growing imaginary wheat, making imaginary bread, and feeding imaginary chickens. I've also been chased through dark forests by zombies, had arrows fired at me by who-knows-what, and had creepers creep up on me and explode in my face.
In short, I've been playing Minecraft.
The last time I played Minecraft was about four years ago – the children were young, and it was all the rage. They grew up and stopped playing it, and I forgot all about it – until this week. While noodling around with something earlier in the week our eldest daughter wandered in, and asked how to install Minecraft on her computer. A few minutes after that I installed it on my own computer. I'm not really sure why.
It was sort of a happy accident.
It turns out Minecraft is a perfect distraction from the endless stress of daily life. You can escape into the pretend world inside your computer and noodle around with things that don't really matter – and the magic of it all is that while you're busy noodling, you're not really thinking about anything else – and given the stress I have been under for the last 18 months, it's been an almost perfect escape.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some corn to go and harvest, some bread to bake, and some searching online to figure out how to make shields, helmets, and armour – I'm going to war with the night-time zombies.