I'm not sure when or where the idea came from, but I've been playing with the idea of constantly recording the players in a Minecraft world for a long time. There are theoretically dozens of ways to do this, getting more complicated when I also require no modification on the client.
I want to talk about my own experience with apathy, starting with the current context and why it's something I'm bringing up this week, but before I start I want to note that this isn't a new thing for me.
I've been struggling with the idea of who I am for awhile now and it's been a major block in exploring who I want to be post-coming out. There are too many parts of me that I faked, never explored, or just refused to understand and distinguishing between them is painful to say the least...
I've always struggled with self care. Things as "basic" as showering regularly have been a constant issue for as long as I can remember and it's made nearly every other aspect of my life so much harder. Maintaining any kind of routine, feeling comfortable in my skin or clothes, and adjusting to new things are all way harder when you can't shower, brush your teeth, care for your hair, or keep your skin from breaking out without feeling like you're wrong for wanting to.
I'm (somewhat) sorry about how wordy this is. It's been awhile and I have a lot to say!
I've always struggled with maintaining a daily routine, both in remembering to and in finding a reason to bother. Over the past couple of years, I've come to realize that I've needed some kind of ritual to bring meaning to not just the routine but the passage of time. Both of which are things that I haven't had much luck with.
This is a letter to my younger self. Things that I wish someone I trusted had said to me. But I never opened myself up enough for anyone to know what to say.
I am not unique. The idea of a transfem developer that plays Minecraft coming to their identity relatively late in life is such a common stereotype on the trans forums that I'm on that it's hilarious how much I've boxed myself into it. Add that to the number of ace people that seem to be autistic on similar forums and some days I feel like a walking stereotype. But even if that was my entire story, that those descriptors were all I had to share with people, I believe there'd still be a unique value to my voice and an impact I can have among the thousands of others with the same experiences.
I'm so tired of seeing discussions about how children can't know that they're transgender or whatever before X age while I know for a fact that I did. I don't expect to sway anyone who has a hard-line stance on that idea, but I want to explain how that felt for me and the situation I was in. I have another post that covers why I came out so late despite knowing so far back, but I just want to cover how it felt to have always known.
Time doesn't fly, it falls with everything else, accumulating with the mess we live through. If time were to fly, it would be a fleeting thing, something that we notice on the sidelines or admire on the rare occasions that it stands still. Instead it crashes into us like a waterfall, and builds up below us like sand, weighing us down as we age. Tearing the things we build to pieces and wearing down our bodies with each grain we are hit with.
I've had to consider the concept I discussed in September a lot over the last month as I get ready for my next Neurology appointment, and while discussing it with someone I remembered a word that I never get to use in regular conversation, gestalt. As defined on the Merriam-Webster website a gestalt is,
something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts
broadly : the general quality or character of something