Minecraft

Following on my theme of video games from yesterday, I want to talk to you about one game in particular. It's a game I've attempted from time to time, but one which Himself loves and can play for hours at a time (and has, when his insomnia is bad). That game is Minecraft.

I'm sure at least some of you have heard of this game. Here is the main website where you can get a brief rundown of what the game entails. Essentially you're hunting resources and building things. The more you build the better your game becomes.

The base game, or “vanilla” Minecraft, is very simplistic. It isn't simple. I've played vanilla and died so many times I can't count them. The monsters – called mobs – are dangerous after dark. But it's still a fun game where I get to harvest and build. They also have what they call “creative mode” where you have access to everything in the game and can experiment and design without the threat of mobs or having to go hunt for it all.

Then you have the mod packs. This can be anything from adding technology packs (redstone and circuits) to Thaumcraft (magic). They have mods where you're on the ground and ones where you're on a sky island and have to buid that up with limited resources to start with. Himself loves challenges like the skyblocks and learning the magic system.

One of the most beautiful things I've seen him build on any server was when he was doing one of his skyblocks. He spent days on his island. When he was finished, he had a huge stained glass pyramid full of water, flowers, and trees. It was very impressive. The whole island was impressive since he went from a very small space to one as large as the server would let him grow. But the beauty of the stained glass pyramid was amazing.

Once he finished it he got bored with that server and moved on to something else. While he hasn't built anything in stained glass (though he's used some for decoration), he's built some equally as impressive things.

As a video game, Minecraft can be tedious. But it teaches people resource management, spatial relations, and lets them expand their world to the limit of the game engine and their own imagination. If you're into building things, I recommend getting Minecraft. You can look up all sorts of videos on YouTube about it, including tutorials on how to build things.

Escaping from stress

I love to cook. I'm especially good at baking. I've only recently begun to experiment with different recipes and methods of cooking. I made my first successful rue last month, for instance. That was something I'd never thought I could do.

Baking is a comfort for me, both the action and the baked goodies I get after I'm finished. Good day or bad, my mom loved to cook. She's the one who taught me to bake and for all the things she did to me, I can honestly say she never went so far as to deliberately burn me, cut me, or any of the other myriad things that could happen in a kitchen. When I was old enough to manage on my own, she let me start baking without supervision. Since this was a way to keep her off my back, I jumped on the chance.

As I've gotten older, I've found it to be a release from a stressful day. I don't have much room to work with for baking here, but I've managed a few times to get something in the oven. What I've baked has come out good and I've shared it with everyone in the house.

Himself derives comfort in his music. He listens to some rather twisted stuff, at a volume I prefer not to deal with. In my case, I put on my earbuds and can drown him out most of the time. He also finds comfort in his video games, especially Minecraft. He can lose himself for hours building and creating in that game. Most of the time he does both at the same time. He'll put his earphones in when I go to bed, or when he really wants to focus.

Himself has always found an escape in video games. He's played Everquest, World of Warcraft, Eve Online. He plays multi-player games with our nephew and his friends, mostly stealth shooter games. Himself plays Minecraft and spends time on an online verbal chat program talking to people playing in the same server he is. He loves it.

As he's gotten older, his taste in games has changed. At first it was running around using magic to kill everything (EQ and WoW). Then it was having a spaceship and doing the same thing. He even became a pirate and attacked other ships with a corporation (EO). Now, for the most part, it's building and creating things.

Everyone uses a different way to escape from stress. For some, it's listening to music. For others, it's going for a walk or jogging. Books, TV shows, movies, all of these are good ways to escape stress as well. It's a way to let our mind process what we're dealing with and come to an understanding of and a possible solution to deal with it.

What do you do to relax and take some of the stress off? Do you have a set ritual to help you focus on something else, to let your mind work its way through what's causing you problems?