PUBG Mobile - Who Wants Chicken Dinner

You know what, I haven’t written something fun in a while. The self-improvement stuff is all well and good, but let’s not take life too seriously, huh? Because life is serious enough as it is without us helping it along. Take that, life. In your face.

Today let’s talk about video games!

So I’m purely a mobile gamer now. The PS4 has languished, untouched for months. Poor baby. I’ll get back to it eventually; I’m looking at you, Kingdom Hearts III. But for all of this year, I’ve been portable.

Mobile games are often disparaged as ‘casual’, mindless brain candy beside the more in-depth entries on console and PC. Yet the mobile gaming market has grown exponentially over the last few years, with more and more quality titles standing out from the digital unwashed masses. And now a juggernaut has arisen, taking on smartphone gaming with frying pans and bolt-action sniper rifles.

Today I’m talking about PUBG Mobile. 

The original PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds exploded onto computers last year, and was so popular it spawned an entirely new genre: the battle royale. The premise is simple. A hundred players parachute onto a sprawling map where you must run, hide, and kill each other off. Jungle, desert and European landscapes are realistically rendered, eerily silent except for footsteps, gunshots and moving vehicles. Playing with headphones is recommended. You’ll want to hear them coming. An encircling electrical storm forces you into increasingly small plots of land. If the other players don’t kill you, the storm will. The last one standing wins the coveted Chicken Dinner.

Think the Hunger Games with military-grade weapons, where you have to worry about different ammo types, bullet drop and people sniping you from 100 meters away.

It’s awesome.

A breath of fresh air.

PUBG’s addictiveness comes from two factors. First, you’ll be playing with friends and fighting real enemies. You can play solo, in pairs, or in a squad of four. Voice chat is built in, and communication and teamwork are essential. It’s entirely possible to carry on a conversation while roaming around looking for people to kill. The convenience and social aspects cannot be overstated. Once a group of friends had to go a cybercafé to get this kind of action. Now they just pull out their phones – even if they’re a thousand miles away. 

Bonding time.

Second is the emergent gameplay. Bounded by design and technical constraints, most video games funnel you from one level to the next. There is nothing wrong with this. In recent years, however, wide-open sandboxes have become the norm, in which you have the freedom to play however you want. The gameplay emerges from your actions, and those of others. In one match, you might drop into Pochinki for some frantic house-to-house gun battles. In the next, you might wander the hillsides and only meet five people. You’re constantly writing your own story. Every choice you make matters; any mistake could get you killed. That’s pretty intense, and makes victory all the more thrilling. 

The night is dark and full of snipers.

And it is entirely, one-hundred percent free.

Oh, there’s plenty of monetization. Cosmetic upgrades like new outfits and weapon skins are always purchasable. The controversial loot crates are here in plenty, in which you buy the chance to get a cool new serial killer mask or hot pink submachine gun. There’s a season pass system called the Royale Pass, in which you pay to unlock a higher tier of achievable rewards for the current three-month season. The game also doles out crates and costumes for improving your rank or hitting various achievements. Just a taste to keep you coming back for more. 

Aren't we stylish.

But none of this has any effect on the gameplay. The guy in the stylized helmet is still screwed if he can’t aim, or doesn’t use cover effectively. The game is free to play, and you win by playing well. It’s that simple.

This is the future of gaming, right now. If you’d told me this kind of massive, precision-based experience was possible on a phone, I’m not sure I would have believed you. But through well-thought-out design, it does work. It works incredibly well.

PUBG is unflinchingly difficult. You will get shot in the head by some dude hiding in the grass across the river. You will get into firefights and lose; you’ll be winning, only to get taken out by a well-thrown grenade. And you will also survive, thrive and fight your way to victory.

So what are you waiting for? 

See you on the battlegrounds.

What We Leave Behind

No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.

                                                                            - Terry Pratchett

The other day, someone from work committed suicide.

I didn’t know her well. We were from different departments, moved in different circles. The gaps between meetings stretched to weeks, if not months. A lot of the time, we only passed each other in the hall with a smile and a simple hello. Yet the workplace is also a community, a lattice of human beings tied to this place and time, these efforts and environment. You expect people to leave. It’s only natural. Colleagues resign, older folk retire, friends move on to greener pastures.

But this was different. This time, someone died.

It’s said that change and death are the only constants. But sometimes it may seem that one can only be achieved with the other. Over the last few days, I’ve heard tales of depression, stress, what must have felt like inescapable problems. For what else is suicide but a desperate attempt to escape? The tragedy is when someone succeeds.

I do understand. I considered killing myself too once upon a time, when I was much too young to be thinking about such things. I felt like life would never get better. But I decided, no. As long as I was alive, there was a chance for things to improve. Once I was dead, it would all be over. So I made the choice to hold on.

And looking back, a lot of the choices I’ve made since then, the bad habits I picked up and the addictions I still struggle with, were exactly that. I was finding ways to hold on. To avoid my problems, and escape my demons.

But I’ve spent enough years running. Holding on isn’t enough anymore. This year, I’m looking my demons in the eye.

Nowadays, I’m busier than ever. I’m doing more at work than I once did. I’m learning Japanese, colouring intricate patterns, making a concerted effort to finally write my fantasy story. I’m reading good books and dropping those that aren’t so good, because let’s face it, ain’t nobody got time for that. I’m playing video games, drawn to the experiences they offer, plucking up new ones like a magpie and then lamenting that I have too many games, the ultimate first-world problem.

All these disparate activities. But they all have one goal, in the end. The same goal we all have: to defeat death.

That is to say, to do things that matter. To have meaningful experiences. To do meaningful things. To somehow know that my life has purpose, that these years were not wasted. To leave behind something that will live on. Is this not one of the core drivers of human history? Dynasties have been built, riches amassed, kingdoms founded and conquered. Empires rise and fall and for what, if not the desperate desire to matter? To know that the world has been changed, even a little bit, by our presence.

Are they worth it, these things I’m doing? The way I’m living now? I wish I knew. I don’t think anyone does. We’re all just doing the best we can.

I didn’t know her well. I didn’t know her hopes and dreams, or the darkness she must have gone through. But I did meet the couple in the ICU who talked about how her life had crossed paths with theirs. Who looked over and said quietly, she was a good person. I’ve read the tributes, the remembrances. I’ve seen a tiny piece of what she left behind.

Maybe this is how we defeat death; in the hearts and minds of those we touched along the way. Maybe, despite the tragedy of how she chose to go, she’s no longer bound by pain. Maybe some part of her is free. I hope that’s true. I really do.

Because now the book closes, with so many pages still unwritten. The rest will forever be blank, cut off before their time.

Now her story has come to an end.

  

Five Ways to Know You’re Growing Up

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

- Leo Tolstoy

If you could travel back ten years into the past and meet your younger self, what would you tell them?

Time has a funny way of speeding up as we get older. When we’re young the years crawl like the infants we are, in terms of experience. They start picking up speed as we enter adolescence; time learns to walk. By our twenties, the years are taking long, manly (or womanly) strides into adulthood. We look back in vain at childhoods tinted with nostalgia; we see children shooting up like bean sprouts. They grow up so fast! We exclaim. And to our eyes, they do. It didn’t feel that way when we were young, though.

Time has a way of changing things.

There are some lessons you can only learn with perspective. Success comes from failure, wisdom from ignorance. You have to do the wrong thing – sometimes for years – before you can understand what’s right. Last year was all about epiphanies. I learned and grew a lot.

So far, this year seems to be about putting those lessons into practice. To quote Bruce Lee, knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. We all start out as children in life, innocent and unschooled, tripping up and making mistakes that will later define us. We’re all young and stupid sometimes – until we learn.

Today I’m talking about five ways to know you’re growing up.

1. Becoming self-aware.

I suppose the simplest way to define this is being aware of your own bullshit.

All right, all right. The less pithy definition is knowing who you are as a person. Not just your likes and dislikes, but your knee-jerk reactions and emotional tendencies. Self-awareness is the capacity to look at yourself from the outside, flaws and all. To examine yourself from all angles. Invoking David Foster Wallace, to recognize the currents and eddies and blackest depths in our minds and know that this is water.1

Easier said than done. Our upbringing, our environment, our egos; all of these contribute to the way we see ourselves. All of these blur the face in the mirror, forming a mask that doesn’t always match reality. There’s a reason so many coming-of-age stories talk about ‘finding ourselves’. It’s because figuring this stuff out doesn’t just happen. It takes experience and effort. Often to discover who we are, we must first figure out who we’re not.

2. Learning the patterns of the past.

The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again, but expecting different results. I guess we’re all crazy, then.

One of the most crucial forms of self-awareness is examining the patterns in our lives. What have we been doing over and over, forever disappointed with the results, yet still expecting different outcomes? What are we constantly making excuses for? What do we secretly desire, but never seriously attempt?

What are we afraid to change?

A couple months ago, I got off Instagram. It was getting too addictive. But then I started spending too much time in internet forums on Reddit. I cut down on that, only to spend hours reading articles on Quora. A couple weeks ago, a personal problem was bothering me. I had some time off work, so I read a 500-page novel in two days. Because I could.

Do you see the pattern yet?

Books, television, video games, the internet.2 I’ve always been someone who’s found solace in his own mind, in ideas and stories and fantasies. But this can be taken to extremes. Far too often, I dive into other worlds to escape my own. One of the great truths of life is that avoiding your problems is easier than facing them. In today’s world of likes, virtual playgrounds and constant connectivity, where avoidance is as easy as pulling out your phone, this is more important to recognize than ever.

Because while we’re caught up in the same patterns, it is frighteningly easy for life to pass us by. Without even realizing it, we cage ourselves in comfort. You don’t want to look back one day and see that the door was always open.

We just need to have the courage to step outside. The courage to tell yourself, no more.

3. Gaining self-discipline.

The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is a famous study on self-control. Back in the 60s, researchers gave children a choice between eating a marshmallow now, or getting two after a certain period of time. They then observed as their subjects grew into adults. The findings were clear: children who could resist temptation got better grades, ate better, behaved better, and were generally more successful.3

This makes sense. Quitting an addiction; studying longer; working on that personal project you keep putting off. These require persistence and consistency. They require discipline.

Mine is lopsided, you might say. I do well at upholding external obligations. For the sake of others, I have discipline. But when it comes to myself, I fall short. And that’s a problem. Because I’ve slowly come to see the value of self-control.

Like Steve Jobs said, we can only do a few things in our lives. (Yeah, I’ve got quotes for everything.) We only have so much time. And the difference between wasting that time on pleasant distractions and working towards your goals isn’t inspiration, because you won’t always be inspired. It’s not motivation, because you definitely won’t always be motivated.

It’s discipline. Making the effort, over and over, even when you don’t feel like it. This stuff isn’t cool or sexy or what have you. It takes courage. It takes dedication. And most of all, it takes the ability to manage yourself effectively. That, more than anything else, is the difference between success and failure.

The idea here isn’t just to break unhealthy patterns, but to build better ones.

4. Acquiring healthier habits.

How hard is it for you to brush your teeth?

Do you need to talk yourself into it every night? Lecture yourself about the benefits of dental hygiene, along with horror stories about gum infections and rotted teeth?

Of course not. Who does that? If you’re anything like me, you brush your teeth and barely even think about it. You don’t need to think about it. It’s a habit.

Good habits are the patterns in our lives done right. (And vice versa.) Although we perceive everything we do as consciously controlled, the reality is that our brains conserve processing power for important decisions. Everything else runs on autopilot. And that’s important. We think new behaviours will require major effort. And they will, until they become normal. Then you’ll barely even think about them. Acquiring better habits will literally change your life. 

But they’ll do it one step at a time. 

A common flaw in our efforts is thinking that change must be all or nothing. If we fail once, or twice, even a dozen times, we’re doomed. This is absolutely false. Personal growth is a process. We take a step every day. Maybe we sometimes take one or two back. But we learn from our mistakes, and keep moving forwards. And one day, we’ll look back and be amazed at how far we’ve come.

We just have to want to change in the first place.

5. Understanding that change comes from within.

The last great truth I’ve realized is that you can’t force someone to change. People have different levels of perception, different forms of life experience. We can argue and advise all we want, but you can’t batter someone into believing. It doesn’t work like that. True growth comes from within.

You see, the key to change lies in the concept of identity. We subconsciously cling to whatever we feel is a part of ourselves. A part of who we are. This is why guilt- and punishment-based approaches are so ineffective. By driving home that we are guilty of something, we actually reinforce it, and ensure that whatever it is remains as part of our psyche. The key is to forgive ourselves, and move on.

If you want to quit smoking, you can’t think of yourself as struggling against the urge to smoke. You have to tell yourself that you don’t do that anymore. You have to tell yourself, I am not a smoker.

Because the work of becoming better is just that: work. It takes a thousand tiny choices, day after day, to let go of what holds you back. Sometimes we choose not to. We’re only human. We lie, we cheat, we take the easy way out. We think we can get away with it – until we learn otherwise.

So the best advice I can give is don’t change. Be like Peter Pan; stay young forever. Keep doing the same things, day in, day out, until they make you sick. Until you think, there must be a better way. Until you hit rock bottom. That’s where the true, innermost desire to change is born.

That’s when you start growing up.

***

If I could say one thing to my younger self, it would be to trust the journey. Appreciate where you are in life. You’ll screw up, make mistakes, go through all kinds of angst and pain and anxiety. There’ll be good times too, shining moments that will make it all worthwhile.

And someday you’ll be a little older, a little wiser. You’ll look back and know all of this brought you closer to the man, or woman, that you were always meant to be. 

You just have to take it one day at a time.



1 I dedicated another post to this article alone. It’s an outstanding examination of self-awareness from an author who died too soon. If you haven’t already, go read it.

2 This is all on one device, remember. So convenient.

3 Interestingly, researchers at the University of Rochester later repeated the experiment, but with a twist. The researcher who gave out marshmallows acted either trustworthy or unreliable. The number of children who held out for the second marshmallow rose and fell accordingly. This suggests that it’s not a matter of nature, but of nurture. The reliability of a child’s experiences will help determine whether they have faith in future outcomes, or choose to seize what they can while they have the chance.

Crucially, it also means that self-discipline can be taught.

Why I Stopped Using Instagram (And Feel Better Than Ever)

I am a creature of habit. 

We all are. Our habits define us. This person wakes up at dawn. That one swims laps every week. This guy blogs in his spare time. There’s a reason The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the most famous self-improvement books ever. More and more, I’m realizing how small, consistent behaviours build up, until they become a part of us.

That isn’t always a good thing.

This person never speaks up. That one is always negative. This man avoids responsibility. That woman drinks too much, this guy burns all his money on useless junk, that kid is jerking off to porn.

I’ve talked about addictions before. I won’t bother going over the same ground here, but in essence, an addiction is a bad habit that spiralled out of control. Instead of facing our problems, we run from them, trying to escape into fast food and fantasies and anything that can light us up with another hit of dopamine – if only for the moment.

And the next moment, and the next moment, and the next. We become like dogs trying to catch their own tails, always chasing the high. Stuck in place instead of moving forwards.

Screw that. Life is short and we’re all going to die. This year, I want to become a better person. To achieve my goals and improve myself – not waste my time on things I thought I needed.

This year I’m quitting my addictions.

Today I’m talking about getting off my damn phone. 

Image credit: Engadget

One of my favorite writers, Mark Manson, recently talked about how smartphones have become the new cigarettes. They’re ubiquitous, firmly entrenched in today’s culture – you don’t have a phone? – and as is becoming increasingly clear, are bad for us in excess. It’s not our lungs being corroded, but our attention.

Technologically, we are more connected today than ever before. The internet is literally in the palm of your hand. We have endless information and entertainments available at the tap of a screen. Google, iFlix, YouTube, social media. Likes, comments, cat videos. Novelty and instant gratification. It’s a steady stream of randomized rewards that keeps us coming back for more.

The price of this is that we are permanently distracted. We can’t sit through a movie, a workout, a traffic light without pulling out our phones. I know I couldn’t. Some of that screen time was spent reading genuinely good content, but way too much of it was on social media. I never got into Facebook (probably a good thing). But for the last year or two, I’ve spent a fair part of each day posting pictures, statuses, and browsing quotes and memes on Instagram. A week ago, I got fed up and finally deleted it.

Two things happened. Number one, I panicked. It felt like I was giving up something precious, critically important. Something I needed. This is, sadly, one of the hallmarks of addiction.

For the first few days, I caught myself picking up my phone, staring at the empty space where the app used to be, and then putting it down. How often do we do this during the day without even thinking about it? Every free minute turns into a reward-seeking behaviour. It’s a sobering reminder of our animal instincts. Humans can be trained too.

And number two, I began to feel free.

Suddenly, I was more focused at work. I had more time to read, to ponder things, more time to play games. More time to write. I found myself becoming more aware of my surroundings. I was less caught up in taking perfect pictures. A drain on my attention had been removed – and my own attention-seeking behaviour reduced accordingly.

I still feel a pang at cutting myself off this way. But at the same time, I realize that I don’t need to be vicariously involved in other people’s lives. And vice versa. There are better ways to spend my time. Who else has told themselves they were only going to scroll for five minutes, and then lost half an hour or more? Do you need that kind of time-sink in your life? 

Because we don't. We want it; the likes, the upvotes, the notifications. We want the external validation, fame and the approval of others. But want and need are two different things.

Of course, it’s not just social media.

The internet has connected us like never before. But it’s also opened a Pandora’s Box of entertaining distractions, to say nothing of the effects on outrage and extremism. Humanity is still learning how to cope. I know I am. 

I also know that we only get one life, and one world that matters. The real world. Not one seen through a screen. So how about looking up from yours?

I’m about to do just that.

What I Learned From Getting New Glasses

My eyesight sucks.

No really, it’s bad. Holding-stuff-in-front-of-your-face-to-read-it bad. I have severe myopia (nearsightedness), a fact I cheerfully ignore. Because for most of my life, I’ve worn glasses.

While genetics do play a role, myopia cases have skyrocketed over the last century as a result of modern lifestyles. Your eyes are malleable, and meant to focus both near and far. With an excess of strain on the eyes – e.g., focusing too much on near objects – your eyes become stuck, losing their ability to focus at a distance. Too much reading or screen time, not enough sleep, working in poor light: all of these are detrimental to visual health.

You know the cliché about smart kids wearing glasses? Yeah. There’s a reason for that: they’re always reading. The idea has become ingrained in popular culture. Glasses are considered a sign of intelligence.

But glasses do not fix your poor eyesight. They ameliorate it. The lens is a filter applied to help your eyes do what they should be able to do naturally. Hence the term ‘corrective lenses’. They correct the problem. They don’t cure it.

Many people maintain that myopia can be cured. Through a regimen of eye exercises, vitamin supplements and reducing near-point stress, your nearsightedness can be reversed. The eye can be restored to its natural state. There are a number of success stories on the internet – with the caveat that you should wear your glasses as little as possible. It makes sense. You’d never heal an atrophied leg by relying on a crutch.

It’s just not always practical.

I dabbled in the exercises as a teen. Heck, I should still do them today. But the evidence for better vision is anecdotal. Although I’m always reading and staring at screens, for me, at least in part, it probably is genetic. Both my parents wear glasses. My mother’s eyesight is as bad as mine. And, well, I can’t be walking around bumping into walls. I need to see.

It’s not progressing, either. Myopia usually stabilizes around one’s teens or early twenties, which is what happened for me. It’s been the better part of a decade since I needed stronger lenses. While they can be inconvenient at times, I don’t have a problem wearing glasses.

Maybe someday I’ll try contacts.

Anyway. Today I’ve got a story to tell, about how we see the world.

I just bought a new pair of glasses. They cost an arm and a leg, but my last pair was from 2015. One hinge had snapped recently, and rust was starting to form. They’d served me well. It was time for a change. In particular, the old lenses were scratched and yellowed. Not that big a deal, I thought. The view was a little blurry, perhaps. I was more worried about the frame falling apart.

When I first put on my new pair, though, I was stunned. Everything was so clear. Colors were brighter, sharper. It was a whole new window on the world.

The old pair was scratched and faded, but I wore them every day. My mind had adjusted itself to the blurriness. It seemed normal. Now if I wear them, it’s like looking through a yellow fog.

That’s a good analogy for our beliefs and prejudices, don’t you think? We live in certain conditions and think it’s normal. Only with hindsight and perspective can we look back and realize that the way we saw things was in fact skewed, shaped by the environment we were living in at the time.

Life is a succession of changes. Births, deaths, love and loss, new careers, different countries. Our environment is constantly growing, evolving. Sometimes the old ways of thinking no longer apply.

And sometimes we choose to change, by actively seeking out new experiences. Taking responsibility for yourself is frightening, but also liberating. We can’t help how we see the world, but we can choose what to do with what we’re seeing.

We can choose a different view. One that embodies who we are today, not who we used to be. 

And hopefully, the world will become just a little bit clearer. 

The Magic of Making Things – Three Stories of Successful Creativity

It’s the start of a new year, that wonderful time when people set well-meaning resolutions and then drop them like rocks, narrowly missing their toes.

Looking back, most of my goals from last year remain the same. They’ve simply morphed into new forms. Ninety days is too small, a comma in life. This year I’m setting a period. I’m not just aiming to save money now, but to better manage my finances. I’m giving myself a daily budget, not to be exceeded without good reason. And I have to figure out how to be more disciplined with my time, because I’m still one of those people who are five minutes late for everything. 

Last year wasn’t wasted. Far from it. I learned some important lessons, and I realize that now I’m looking at not just goals, but processes. I’m trying to change myself. This year I want to take more interest in my surroundings. To practice mindfulness and meditation. And to nurture my creative side, which is what this post is all about.

Last year I started coloring again. I wanted to get back to my roots, so to speak. I also had the vague idea that I would learn something about discipline and seeing projects through to the end. And I did. I learned I was missing the point.

Discipline is key, don’t get me wrong. But creative pursuits are so much more than a series of tasks. Creativity is about finding the spark that lights your soul on fire. To quote Bohemian Rhapsody: open your eyes, look up to the sky, and see. The world isn’t all black and white and shades of grey.

Life is meant to be filled with colour.

Today I’m talking about the magic of making things. 

 Because it’s about time I sat down and wrote my damn story.

It’s been more than two years now since I first conceived of Wraithblade. Ever since, I’ve worked on it in fits and starts, never getting very far. Recently I’ve been thinking about the creators of the books and games and series I love. What are they doing? What am I not doing? How can I take last year’s lessons and apply them to my writing?

I came to three conclusions.

1. I need to work harder.

To make anything of quality, one thing is clear: you have to put in an astonishing amount of work.

The manga artist behind Full Metal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa, grew up in a farming community. At an early age, she learned the value of hard work, balancing farm chores, drawing and art classes for years before finally moving to Tokyo to pursue her dreams of a career as a mangaka.

Although I never read the manga, Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood was the best anime I’d ever seen. Two brothers, one with a mechanical arm and leg, the other a soul bound to a suit of armor, embark on a journey to regain their former selves. It’s a tale of war, loss, conspiracy and mortality amid a steampunk world inspired by Europe in the early 20th century, where guns, trains, robotic limbs and alchemical powers exist side by side.

Image credit: Inverse

It was the story that inspired Wraithblade. 

That idea of a duo scarred by the supernatural stuck with me. I imagined a boy with ghostlike powers, and a floating, skeletal spectre who was once a girl. Because I always wondered. What if the Elric brothers really had brought their mother back from the dead?

This is the beauty of creative work: it inspires others. But creativity is nothing without commitment. The flat truth is that I’m just not writing enough. Arakawa-san’s work ethic is inspiring – apparently she was once back at work a few days after giving birth. Intimidating, but inspiring. She drew up a brilliant story. I need to work harder on my own.

2. I need to focus.

I’ve been playing a mobile game called Crashlands.

You play as Flux Dabes, an intergalactic courier whose ship is shot down over an unexplored planet. Together with her robot sidekick, you must forage for materials, battle alien wildlife, build new equipment and help out the locals in order to survive, thrive and get those shipments back on track. It’s a sprawling adventure with hilarious dialogue, equal parts crafting and action-RPG. It even won a few Game of the Year awards back in 2016. 

Who, me?

What inspired me about the game, though, was the story behind it.

Crashlands was the work of three brothers. The Costers were young, independent game developers who made fun-but-forgettable mobile games. They’d just started turning a profit when disaster struck. Sam Coster was diagnosed with cancer, non-Hodkin’s Lymphoma, stage 4b. He was twenty-three.

It changed things. Their latest project was now unfulfilling. After the diagnosis, Sam told his brother, “I don’t want this to be the last game I make before I die.”

In contrast to their earlier titles, Crashlands was a vast undertaking, an entire world inspired by the likes of Pokémon and Diablo. This wasn’t about building a platform or making money. It was about making something that mattered. A triumph of creativity and imagination. And so despite the rigors of chemotherapy, from his hospital bed, Sam would fire up his laptop to write and draw. The game is noticeably upbeat, filled with silly jokes and nonsensical scenarios. This is escapism as it’s meant to be: an escape from a much darker reality.

I’ve already had a taste of how death clarifies things. You see what really matters. The second flat truth is that I’m too distracted. Social media, video games, and even blogging are all activities that have to take a backseat to what I want to accomplish. I have to be focused. Who’s to say how long I’ll have the chance.

Sam Coster made a game while battling cancer. What’s my excuse?

3. I need to believe in magic.

I've just finished Oathbringer, third book in the Stormlight Archive. The saga of the Knights Radiant is excellent, full of unexpected twists, complex characters and subverted fantasy tropes, with plenty of real world issues on display. The world of Roshar is wonderfully alien, full of imaginative flora and fauna.

Shallan in Words of Radiance.

Have you heard of Brandon Sanderson? I’m sure I’ve mentioned him a few dozen times.

This level of skill doesn’t blossom overnight. In his twenties, Sanderson took a job as a night clerk just so he’d have time to write. He spent years churning out mediocre books before finally getting published. It was finishing the Wheel of Time that propelled him to stardom, but since then he’s proven himself a master in his own right. He teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University.

Clearly, he has focus and commitment. And something else, a third, crucial element that all of the best creators share. What drives someone to make that kind of effort in the first place?

They believe in what they’re doing.

A major aspect of Stormlight is the concept of spren. Obviously inspired by faeries, spren embody elements, emotions and ideals. Windspren are tiny silver figures flying on the breeze. Gloryspren are golden orbs that shoot up around a person who has accomplished something. Painspren are disembodied hands crawling around a wound. There are dozens of species, of varied power and intelligence, many as ubiquitous as insects.

Among them are the creationspren: glowing spren which only appear for a skilled act of creation, like drawing or carpentry. The characters take them for granted, but the idea spoke to me. A magical embodiment of creation.

Because you see, I lost the magic.

I remember thinking of drawing as drudgery, hours of effort for a single picture. I realize now that I viewed my story in much the same way – too much work for a limited payoff. It wasn’t being lazy per se. I just didn’t see the point. I admired others’ artwork, got lost in their fantasy worlds. Yet I stopped believing in my own. Somewhere in my daily routines and distractions, the magic slipped away.

If you don’t take joy in what you do, then why are you doing it? If you can’t find pride and purpose in your actions, what’s the point?

Where’s the color in your life?

I realize now that dreams don’t die of failure. They die from a lack of faith. We get tired, distracted, caught up in worldly struggles. And so the magic is lost. We stop believing in dreams. We forget why we ever believed in the first place, resigning ourselves to a mundane reality. So long, the end.

How many of our younger selves would be proud of the people we’ve grown up to be?

I think the most inspiring thing I can tell you is that we can get the magic back. I have. I found it in artwork. Now I hope to find it in my story too.

At the very least, I know the magic is out there. And that’s a start.

***

I’ve always loved magic. Seeing the extraordinary in ordinary things, finding the light in the darkness. I’ve always wanted to share that with others. Imagination and inspiration, the two focal points of my highly eclectic blog.

For now, I’ll be cutting down on the essay-length posts to focus on my goals. There are so many things I want to talk about. Books and games and movies and life lessons. Stories, real and imagined. But I only have so much time. I have to start using it wisely. If you’ve followed me this far, thanks for reading.

Don’t worry, this isn’t goodbye. It’s see you later. I’ll be back now and then.

How else am I going to show you the world in color?