Tale Foundry

Daily Update: Colorful Plastic & Painted Bars

Added 2018-05-30 03:47:56 +0000 UTC

Sometimes I forget my own age. Very frequently, actually. I have a poor self-concept. I think, internally, I expect myself to be like... 45. When people ask me how old I am, I often have to stop and do math.

Stress'll age you. If not on the outside, on the inside. Having chronic anxiety disorder also doesn't help much, but that's neither here nor there.

If you're lucky, however, and if you're willing, you'll get to experience these rare, precious moment that help you find center. You'll have a conversation with an old friend. You'll get a legitimately good night's sleep, no punches thrown. You'll pay taxes successfully for the first time. Or if you're me and Chloe, instead of taking your break on the park bench, you'll take on the playground.

It wasn't long. I chased Chloe around the park for maybe ten minutes before we decided to head back to the library and continue our work. But there's a magic in climbing on colorful plastic and swinging from painted bars. It's like looking into a pensieve at your younger self.

For a little while, instead of something vaguely in the ball-park of 45, I managed to feel like I might actually be 25 and in good health.

It is good medicine, and I recommend it.

But that was all in our break. The rest of the day was a steady stream of productivity. I completed the new video intro with the new logo, created some assets for our forthcoming Reddit page (which is actually in contention right now because reddit decided it would be fun to redesign their website and take away the capability to customize one's subreddit with CSS), spent lots of time putting down the sources for the assets we found for this video, and incredibly, Chloe managed to go from about the 28% mark to the 85% mark with her audio de-breathing and spacing today (turns out this video is longer than 15 minutes, phew).

All in all, a productive day. Good work, good feels.

Do any of you get this strange sense of temporal dysphoria? If you do, what helps you find center?

—Benji