Some fruits take a long time to bear, but longsightedness is not something that is encouraged, taught or practiced in today’s age. ​ This is a hard lesson for me to learn, and I am still learning it. I am so used to punishing myself, to feel like something is only working if I suffered for it. When it feels easy it is probably not real. I subconsciously apply this mentality to everything in my life, including relationships. I sneer at the easy things and then blame myself when things fail because I keep picking the difficult ones. ​ I think to be able to stoke a fire until it is slowly, steadily burning instead of burning out too fast, is a life skill. To resist the urge to fan the fire faster. To know that it would be better for the fire to last in the long run. Joy is a subtle navigation tool, I think. It is a signal that what we are working for is clicking with us internally, with our internal value system.

To know why a garden looks the way it does today is to understand not only the histories of its individual parts, but also of the relationships between them, both past and present. In a garden, each individual flower becomes a character in an ongoing story, with a personal narrative arc all its own. ​ This, more than anything else, stands out to me as the key difference between exploration and gardening games. In exploration games, to spend time in a place is to deplete it, to make it less and less interesting until there’s no longer any reason to stay. In gardening games, to spend time in a place is to enrich it, to participate in stories and interactions and relationships that make it more interesting by virtue of your understanding of its inhabitants.

on cultivating gardens in our lives

in conclusion, we need a social media platform that lets you sit next to someone on a bench in the park & feed some goddamn birds— Max Kreminski (@maxkreminski) August 18, 2018

calling it now: the next successful social media site will be a MUD with gardening instead of combat mechanicspeople want to be in a place that they personally (alongside their friends) can exert effort to make better, even if only in small ways— Max Kreminski (@maxkreminski) August 18, 2018