“today I smoked out of a glass pipe I made. I can’t smoke out of my level 80 night elf druid.
Nor can I combine my level 80 night elf druid with my Diamond IV rank in Halo to get a compounded return. Those two games and skills are isolated. But I can combine what I read in John Dalton’s A New System of Chemical Philosophy with glass blowing to make interesting things that bring me joy (I.e. replicating experiments of John’s at home with purpose built glassware)
It’s not just production for productions sake, or production for the sake of society. It’s increasing my capacity to produce for myself. I feel like I’ve grown in a way that I can build on tomorrow after a session of practicing this class of hobby.
Maybe the distinction truly is arbitrary – but something about this path feels significantly more fulfilling the further down it I go vs. the literal years I spent in virtual worlds. In the virtual worlds the potential felt roughly constant while these hobbies feel like they have an ever expanding horizon of potential.”
Well said (sorry, I often only copy the comment but those are mostly from HN).
I keep thinking of a friend who told me “well, my brother and his son have been playing Call of Duty for a decade, and there’s nothing else in their lives”.
Oof.
As great as virtual worlds are, they never compound. But everything in life does. Balance that I learned on my skateboard, is balance I use when standing on a thin beam, fixing a roof. Spices that I enjoy with a take-out meal, can be retrieved and bought at the grocery store. You get the idea.
The compounding effect is what makes life so interesting, growing, spinning. Otherwise, everything just feels flat and boring quite quickly.
Which leads me to talk about general VS special.