Monday Save States

There are some days when you're not quite sure where to start.

There's an aspect of narrative alchemy that I feel is important: Calibrating for yourself where that line may fall, where that gray area path may be, between telling your own truth, acknowledging the truth of others, and telling the story you need to tell.

I'm thinking abstractly today, because it's been a rough few years. I know that's the truth for many people. And as things have piled up and pressure has released, pandemics have come and faded, deaths have occurred and time has passed. It's difficult to make sure that I'm not abstracting too far or avoiding too much. I have recently learned of another death in the family.

Part of it is that I've reached that age and part of it is the peril of having connections.

I've got one of those minds where my default is very much that I want to be alone with my stories, especially if they're interactive stories. I know that my brain, my full existence loves little more than disappearing into a completely different world.

I was asked once: if I could have a button that would change one thing, what would it be?

Some of us have heard questions like that before. If you could have a button that you pressed and this thing about your life changed, this problem went away, this conflict was resolved in your most perfect way, would you press it?

And at what cost?

The question wasn't exactly phrased to me that way, and so my answer was that I wanted to save states. I want the ability to say, gently, "Let me pause here and see what these other three pathways genuinely are. Let me peer into the multiverse and have the wisdom to actually choose the correct path and follow it."

A save state is not merely about being able to prognosticate and determine the exact future, nor is it about going back and changing past mistakes. To me that concept of wishing that we had save states isn't about going for the perfect run. It's not about hundredpercenting the FOMO of life. I think save states are about going back and re-experiencing a perfect moment, especially because a lot of times there's a lot of things wrong with a perfect moment.

I think save states are about going back to a moment of pain and understanding how to live in it more completely instead of being focused on that one point of pain.

Save states are kind of like reading books or watching movies or playing a video game that matches the emotional tone that you're going for in that moment.

It's a pretty well-known thing by now that humans dissociate into games, among other things. We avoid the things that we need to take care of in the moment by watching a quiz show. We delay taking action on things that we really should do to improve our own lives or the lives of others because the world is too much right now... so I'm going to read another chapter.

That's its own challenge to work around. That's its own... coping mechanism to be used appropriately. In the same way that you can take too many ibuprofen and mess up your stomach, you can spend too long reading comfort media or scrolling your favorite algorithm platform. I can spend too long digging ditches and working on gardens and mowing the lawn.

The connection I'm reaching for here is that it's not just about dissociation versus action. Enjoyment versus intellectual stimulation. For some kinds of minds (and for everybody to a degree) we have this drive to be something else. To experience something more.

We were listening to Hamilton as I drove my kid to school this morning and I was thinking of how that drive is related to Westward expansion and the American Experience. As the musical tells us, "See him now as he stands on the bow of a ship heading towards a new land. In New York you can be a new man."

We all have, to some degree or another, that urge to be something more. And urge that we either run from, run towards, or find the strength to grasp and follow appropriately.

It feels appropriate that I'm thinking about save games and everything having to do with the many different ways that people can go through life.

I'd love to know how you feel about... I'm not going to call it nostalgia... about that urge to pause for a moment and in that moment either fully re-experience something that was good or re-contextualize something that hurt. Not so that we can change things or be lost in our past, but so that we can learn to do better as we move on.