Sweathead Day 1
Strategist's Log - 1.29.21
Location: Flittle (1 of 5 Planets in the Sumadurey System, and Our Starting Planet)
Weather: Crisp
Atmospherics: -85.3 °F | 0.2 Rad | 1.9 Tox
Greetings and hello from the cold-as-all-hell planet of Flittle. And our first day of Sweathead Summercamp.
After managing to find a quiet, freezing location where toxic green plants weren't exploding and threatening my life, I've settled under the wretchedly cold shadow of an immense green, tongue rock...thing. to work through the first day of Mark Polland's SummerCamp series.
At the start, No Man's Sky drops you onto a random planet on the outer shred of its entire mega-huge universe and then...nothing, initially. Some feedback loops are slowly introduced, yes. And if you don't get your buns in gear you'll die (though even death in the normal game is quite forgiving).
But so far I've really appreciated that, despite being instantly and completely surrounded by a total (and quite alien) mess, you the Explorer are left to figure out, well, what the hell you're going to do with yourself.
From Mess Comes What's Next
It's here, under the giant green creepy space tongue and quite early in the SummerCamping that Mark (making the assumption here he prefers to be called Mark, as opposed to Polland, or, I don't know, M-Dawg) touches on his background being framed up by persistent feelings of melancholy, but also of a drive to do things. That is, to get some things in life done.
That, and how his mantra of From Mess Comes What's Next was both born in the internal tension of these two strong feelings, and helps to calm the tension itself.
Point being, he goes on to note, strategy is about pulling things apart. And things get messy when you pull things apart.
So , don't freak out. Right?
Right, randomly-passing-by alien Dino baby dog lizard?
Right.
What's Next Will Be Messed
So Mark asks, what's the definition of freaking out to me? Besides my burgeoning astrophobia?
After some scribbling. And then some re-scribbling, I produce the following:
The feeling of being trapped and/or boxed in
Sensing things in the world have little or no meaning overall (on Earth, not Flittle)
And how it feels when something I value a great deal isn't by others
After staring at these for a while, I feel nervous. Which, in my experience, means my personal definition of freaking out here is close enough to true to be useful. It may also be why, even at this early phase, I'm finding No Man's Sky so calming.
In-game, the chances of encountering my freaking out bullets seem nil. Except the meaning thing. Who knows where the story will lead. I'm just following around Dino baby dog lizards at the moment.
But those bullets do have me freaking out in the real world. And with my career. And my want to think for a living. And want to help others in doing so.
So, from said mess what comes next?
We shall have to see.
