Experimenting with Leisure

Hello from NC! How's quarantine treating you, bloggerfolk? 

As for me, I have not left the house for over a week now (not counting walks/runs). A fact that I only realized today. After 9 days. And while I'm still sorting through what this means about my general lifestyle, I figured now was as good a time as any to describe and vivid and thrilling detail everything I've been doing while I've been sitting on my butt at home. 

Before I had given my days entirely over to Instagram and Animal Crossing (more on that later) I was fortunate to come across Joshua Gibbs' series of coronavirus writings which have proved a helpful guide to figure out what to do with all this time. As an enthusiastic planner as well as a social media glutton, I tend to alternate between two lifestyles while on break - full busy-ness or total slothfulness. Gibbs suggests something different for these differing times: "to experiment with leisure." By this he refers to leisure in the classical sense, i.e. anything that doesn't directly relate to our human survival. It's a wide category, including some things we may think of as work: challenging reading, making pastries, understanding classical music. Not all leisure activities are created equal - it's easy to see how some activities waste time while others are genuinely profitable without actually being "work." Usually I (and I would assume many others) are too tired from long workdays to care about the profitability of leisure time. But now with such an excess, we have space to experiment, and to find some sort of sound investment while we're banned from monetary work. 

I for sure haven't been doing this perfectly - I've spent more time more time on Twitter than I care to relate (mostly due to Animal Crossing, more on that later). But I have been making good headway into The Two Towers and even dabbling in a bit of coding in addition to personal art pieces. Being house-bound makes me even more excited to go walk or run, or sit in the sunny front lawn. And unlike times of pure business or abject slothfulness, the days pass by slowly. I think this has been the longest week I have experienced in a long while, and I mean that in a good way. 

And then there's been Animal Crossing. After seeing what a phenomena it's become amongst nearly all my friendgroups, circles, and the nerd/animation world in general, I had to join in. A perceptive Twitter user has pointed out that it's basically the reverse of the Pokemon Go trend from a few years ago: instead of everyone going out to play together, now everyone's staying in to play "together." I've never played an Animal Crossing game before, but I feel like New Horizons has been a great place to start. And the game could not have come out at a better time. The game has a huge multiplayer element and visiting friends is easy and well integrated into the game. Meanwhile, visiting friends in real life is practically illegal. Even though going to visit a friend's AC island pales in comparison to the experience of visiting a friend's physical house, it feels somehow similar. There's even an element of hospitality, at least to me. I'm excited to prepare my island to be a fun and welcoming space for visitors, and even fell a bit embarrassed when visitors come before I've tidied up.

blathers, the adorable, yet bug despising animal crossing villager

It's been a nice opportunity to practice hospitality in a time when I don't own a house (not to mention the state of the world). I also love how the game is like a tiny little garden that I can tend and grow, all in its own little space. My main hesitancy with giving this game too much praise is that it is not nearly as worthwhile, or difficult, as real gardening or hospitality, but I do enjoy being able to do both in a low-cost and simplified setting. So could it be a way to be faithful in little, faithful in much? Or did I just take that scripture way out of context by applying it to a Nintendo game? I'll leave that for you to decide ;) 

Before I go, I wanted to take the opportunity to post a few pictures of my trip to Black Mountain from way back when I still thought I would be returning to campus after break ... ah, those sweet, ignorant times... I was wanting to make a full post out of it but I'm not sure I'd have enough to say. It was a good trip with great people, staying in a beautiful place and hiking everyday. But as the purpose was primarily restful and leisurely, I don't think I have much in the way of epiphany to report here. But I do have these photos, so you are going to see these photos, and you are going to like these photos, cause this is the ROOST and you didn't come hear to learn about the stock market, you came here to see these photos!

 from left-ish to bottom-ish: aedan peterson, sam abner, joel guthrie

 tried not to feel too much like smeagol as i scampered behind this waterfall

lookout vista views

I think that's about it for now - I should have a new post coming soon with this month's Character Design Challenge, but I need to obsessively check it a few more times to make sure it's perfect. Hope you all are weathering this time with grace and kindness and courage. 

Thanks for reading :)

-dh