Tag: games

1. Monastery or Mayhem?
~Finding Balance in the Game of Life

So, just to be clear, I do not work at a monastery, and I have chosen to generate offspring. So for me, it is crucial to build in time for doing less. It’s crucial to build activities into our schedule that don’t really have any purpose other than leisure, fun, relaxation, or recharging our batteries. Last month, I took some time off from work because my daughter wanted to ride the carousel. So I booked time into my schedule to do that, and we entered the game-layer.

2. Quest for Gas: The Pre-Game Adventure

We were riding the merry-go-round, but let me back up. I picked her up from school, and we were driving to the park that had a historic merry-go-round. I needed to stop and get gas. At the time, I had already started recording for this podcast. I was playing an audio text message game of chess with my friend Sarah. She had expressed anxiety about being on a podcast show, and when I asked her to record a message that says “play chess,” she ended up sending me a three-minute recording about how she was doing that day and slowly phased in the statement I was seeking. Naturally, I just texted her back, thanked her, and then created my own audio message, thus beginning our chess game podcast via text message audio recording.

3. The ICEE Expedition: Fueling Fun

As I was driving to get gas, I got out of the car and recorded a message back to Sarah. Then I went in with my daughter and bought her an ICEE, which is a very special treat in our world. I sent the audio message, not knowing that in two days my new iPhone would automatically delete it. We went to Faust Park, and I purchased three tickets each to ride the carousel repeatedly. I made videos of the carousel, and later my daughter commented on how we weren’t in the videos. I created videos about the firsthand experience because I was in the game layer; I was focused on the process and the environment more than the faces of the people around me.

4. Emotions on Replay: The Carousel Connection

What struck me the most about the experience of riding the carousel with my daughter was obviously the emotion on her face, but that was for my soul. I didn’t want a record of that to be posted on my blog or captured in my podcast. I did take a lot of pictures of her, and there is some video of her riding the carousel, but I’m not going to share that footage here, and that’s intentional.

5. Soundtrack of Play: The Symphony of Joy

The reason this moment struck me to my core is because I was creating time for fun. I was planning play into my schedule. What struck me the most about the experience was mostly the sound.

There was the canned music in the beginning, which was overpowered by the mechanical sounds of the ancient carousel lumbering across its hub. The second round on the carousel also had canned music, but it was a different song—maybe a better song. But the third round was the best. The operator fired up the old Orchestrion, a mechanical instrument slightly bigger than a piano that can synthesize an entire orchestra with reels, xylophone, real drums, real chimes, and even real trumpets.

(Now I wanted to call that a glockenspiel which does seem like a better name, but apparently a glockenspiel is just a xylophone with metal bars.)

This is the experience that I had come for—not spinning around on an old, ancient wooden horse—although I did enjoy that significantly. It was the machine—the small machine that didn’t dish out a synthesized audio recording from a hard drive. It played; it had analog motors with sticks that struck objects. It was a physical representation of the GAMELAYER.

6. Rainy Day Revelations: A Walk Back to Base

After we got off the merry-go-round, my daughter and I were outside walking back to the van in the rain. I noticed a different energy about her. She was commenting nonchalantly about the pavement and the grass. And she turned around and looked at the building that contained the massive artifact of play. She said something that, to a six-year-old, is a comedic masterpiece: something about those people getting to live in there—that must be so fun! I agreed with her even though I knew I wasn’t understanding that statement on the level she was.

7. Heart-to-Heart Co-op: Building Bonds Through Play

My daughter turned and told me that she loved me, and I told her I loved her too, because I do. She asked me to carry her, which is basically her way of asking for a hug. So I carried her through the rain back to the van, and we spoke openly and freely, and our hearts connected through our words. And in the tone of her voice, I could tell that I had made a difference. I had put her needs ahead of my needs; in that way, we became better friends—we became closer. I built trust with her; I made time for her, I created empty space so that she could play.

8. The Missing AudioQuest:
~ Will Sarah Save Our Game?

Oh, and the audio recordings that my phone deleted? I think Sarah has those—or at least she said she does! We’ll see if she makes the choice to share them back with me so that I can add them into our audio-chat-message cat phone tag game of chess radio show episode of GAMELAYER.