Heres A Question Ive Been Wrestling With For The Past Few Weeks:

Here’s a question I’ve been wrestling with for the past few weeks:

I do a lot of daydreaming. At any given point in time, I’m deep in my thoughts playing out some scenario or another. Most of the time, they’re not ridiculous or anything - it’s just me organizing my music, making levels, going out and being social, or playing video games. Remember this post? It’s still an issue.

Why, then, can’t I turn those thoughts into reality?

I wouldn’t say any of this is unreasonable. I mean, what’s any of that take out of me? Thirty minutes of my time at worst? That’s nothing in the grand scheme of things, I can just go right back to whatever I was doing afterward. And then I have the satisfaction of getting the thing done to go with it.

The real problem is that in the meantime, I’m doing nothing. Sitting around listening to music, or watching a video on Youtube, or reading my dashboard here on Tumblr, not even taking time out of my day to get dressed sometimes. I know this is the life for some people. No, really, I get that. First-world problems and all. I get it. But that is not me. I don’t like to sit around and twiddle my thumbs - I like to get stuff done. I enjoy being creative and funny and productive; moving and breathing and doing.

So I don’t understand where this whole “sit around and be a blob of consumption” thing came from. Especially since, the whole time, I’m imagining how awesome it would be to get up and get dressed, when it takes no more energy to flail my arms and legs to put socks on my head and pants on my feet. Great, now I’m imagining me being all happy and doing stuff - why can’t I just do this in reality?

I am a freaking potato and I don’t know what to do about it.

Something that’s helped me IMMENSELY in my new “adulting” life is learning not to sweat the details.

I grew up an academic. Math has always been one of my best subjects. In math, either you get the whole question right, or you get nothing (at best, some measly partial credit). That means it’s essential to do each step perfectly along the way; no single piece is less important than another. This has imprinted on my brain as “everything has to be perfect all the time, forever.”

Except, as I’ve recently learned, that’s simply not how it works in real life.

Nothing is an exact science - in life, everything has an acceptable range of close-ness. It’s usually not a strict range, either; as long as you fall within it, you’re doing great. If the recipe calls for a pinch of salt, and you second-guess yourself on whether you accidentally added two pinches, it’s probably fine. No one’s gonna notice. Adding the whole bottle of salt is too much, yes, but a little extra doesn’t hurt. Same goes for that picture on your wall that’s 0.5° tilted, or the hole in your jeans, or even that one time you said something awkward.

Unfortunately, there are people who notice this stuff. If they joke about it, that’s fine; they’re not serious. Some people are very serious about it, however. Their range is shortened to perfection, and they force it on others. Good news: I can confirm they’re toxic. Don’t bother working or dealing with them unless you absolutely must.

Because if you’re two minutes late to class, you haven’t missed anything; it doesn’t really matter.

Mazes, pt. 3

(continued from pt. 2)

Sometime in late 2010/early 2011, just before I went to gifted school, I found a larger graph paper journal similar to the one I just covered. However, this one had a number of advantages:

While I could no longer carry it in my pocket, it’s still fairly compact and suited for travel in a backpack or satchel.

The grid is quite small, allowing for larger mazes. Even my large notebooks at 5 squares per inch aren’t this spacious.

It’s really thick. Like, college textbook thick. I’ve had it for five years and filled half of it.

Luckily, by this time I had already filled the other notebook cover-to-cover and needed a new one, so I convinced my mother to get it for me.

Thick like a one-pound burger. The used half is kind of visible.

Suddenly I found myself somewhere at the intersection of larger mazes, more patience, and actual technical skill. As a result, this book (especially the second half) has what I easily consider my finest works.

Some of the more technical designs. If they look a little strange, it’s because the full grid isn’t entirely erased.

And then... I just stopped. One day I realized I hadn’t touched it in months.

I guess I just took a hiatus. Mari0 was scratching my design itch, and that was taking up what little free time I had in between bucketloads of schoolwork. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I probably needed the break anyway. Besides, during this time, I was learning about image and vector editors. This means that while I only produced one maze in my second year of gifted school, I was also able to digitize it immediately.

I’ve been told this one hurts people’s eyes.

It’s important that I stop here and take a moment to go back in time again, back to The Big Big Book of Mazes. All of those design elements that I learned from that book so long ago are still at play here - the only thing that was really different was the fact that mine were all still hand-drawn (and maybe smaller). Now that I can make them on a computer, I have finished my ascension. I’ve reached their level, the level of the masters.

Their website, megamazes.com, is still up at the time of this writing. While you need an account to view most of the mazes available there, four mazes are available for all to view, and those four still give a very good glimpse at what my inspirations have been all this time.

———

Lately I’ve found myself interested in mazes once again, but for a slightly different reason: all of my old notebooks are falling apart. Luckily, I know how to give them the vector treatment very quickly now, and I’ve been spamming Twitter with the results.

Looks a lot better now, doesn’t it?

I’m really happy with all the positive buzz I’ve gotten from this! At least one person has been solving each one as they come (you know who you are), and a bunch more have been liking/faving/retweeting them. Thank you all so much! I’m still putting them up on Twitter and may occasionally post several at once here. I also update this Imgur album with each new maze. Y’know, just in case you want to follow my progress.

And since you’ve made it all the way through, thanks for reading. Without you, I wouldn’t be writing all this.

I am enjoying making these Stretchmo levels waaaaaaaaay too much. It’s like functional voxel art!

I wanted Sun’s Blaze to be a bit more colorful, but that affected the puzzle. So I stuck with this, and while it looks and plays good as is, I feel like I could have done better. However, I’m really happy about how the flares look.

Twin Falls was directly inspired by Super Mario Galaxy! These floating falls have always captured my imagination. The waterfalls would have been another block thicker, until I remembered it’d be nigh unplayable with 90° camera control. With this, at least you can see which block Mallo is approaching from the other side.

Swirling Light originally started horizontally, but that turned out to be a boring puzzle; I couldn’t do anything to spruce it up. So I turned it on its side, and now it’s a tricky one. I love the side views on the card, it’s all swoosh and swirl.

I made Ringed Planet at 2am the night before an important meeting. When I came up with the idea, I just HAD to make it a reality - and just look how it turned out! It’s possibly my favorite level yet, but it’s also the hardest of this batch.

...what, you don’t think I’ll make more? I’m already working on a project, whatchu talkin’ ‘bout

I have a barber in my hometown who's been cutting my hair for basically all of my life. The first time my parents brought me, I hadn't even learned to speak! When we lived away we would still make trips back home to visit people, and usually there was a haircut snuck in as well.

Sometimes when we couldn't get a trip in, my parents would find other means to make me look less like Bigfoot. For most of these instances, they would cut my hair themselves. However, my hair is a little weird, and they had a hard time getting the top to look right. So we explored other options; one such time, we went to Walmart to get my hair cut at the Smart Styles salon.

This was our first mistake.

We get in and I play something on my DS as I wait. My mom and my brother are with me, and I believe my dad is getting food. Out the corner of my eye, I notice one flamboyantly fashion-forward stylist - he was fairly out of place among the other barbers. He's yapping his head off at his customer, who seems clearly displeased at her predicament. As I turn my head back to my game, I pray with every fiber of my being to /please not let him notice us first/. But I guess he could smell fear, as before long I look up and he's standing in front of me.

This was our second mistake.

The man asks what I want and my mom answers with a description of my haircut. For reference's sake - as I don't know how to describe it otherwise - I'm told I look a lot like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory (I am not proud of this). The stylist glances at my brother and appears to gleam a sudden burst of inspiration.

"Are you sure you won't want a different hairstyle sometime soon?" he asks me.

I'm taken aback. "What? Um, no," I stammer. I mean, I would say if that's not what I want!

"I think you'd look better like your brother here." (He wears his hair spiked up with lots of gel.) "I could leave the option open if you want."

"No, thank you," my mother chimes in. "Just cut it like we asked."

This was our third, and fatal, mistake.

So after making absolutely certain of his motives, he cuts my hair. He actually didn't chat me up all that much, which surprised me. But as he cut, I could feel him doing something different than normal. So I ask if he's not cutting it right. "No, I'm doing it like you said. It just feels different because I'm a different stylist." This placates my anxiety enough to not ask any more questions, but I'm suspicious the whole time.

"All done!" He turns me to the mirror so I can see my hair. Sure enough, it's not right. The result is some unholy mix of my hairstyle and my brother's. "I cut it mostly like you asked, but I left some room if you ever want to mix it up."

He seemed pretty pleased with himself. But I was not, nor my mom - nor even my brother, who thought it looked stupid. It took a manager to comp my haircut.

Needless to say, I'm wary of anyone else cutting my hair. At least I didn't go to public school.

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