I started playing Minecraft recently, after a friend got really excited about the Nether update and effortlessly indoctrinated me, even persuading me to set up a server for us. I'm a whole new level of noob; I don't normally play games with a persisting story and total visual immersion... I play 3 minute math puzzles, match-3s, block clearings, geometric tilings. So Minecraft really took me on one heck of a safari. Not to mention vine leaping, deep sea diving, coal mining, and designing basement mansions with built-in forests... thanks also to the unsolicited and delightfully arbitrary help of two pesky endermen.
At first, I felt like I was doing it wrong. It seemed like I was supposed to try to stay alive, get shelter, armor, food, and keep levelling up. I didn't bother with any of that besides shelter. Whenever I mined too long, fell too hard, or got creeped out of most of my HP, I'd just dump my shit in a chest and go on a few sunrise suicide missions for string and bones, before finally prevailing on some dumb burning zombie with most of my newly-spawned HP intact so I could round up my earlier death drops, and return to my happy basement decorations. As well as filling in creeper holes, reforesting with exotic trees, reshaping the riverbed to please the eye, and resculpting the mountainside to facilitate footsteps. :)
Fortunately, my friend as well as the internet at large were quite reassuring that there are infinite ways to play... my way is just that: my way, and I have as much right to it as the next guy who paid for the game. So while my friend loves going diamond-mining and fights mobs for exotic drops, I like collecting pretty rocks, organizing them, and then... putting them back "prettier". He's a seeker; I'm a terraformer. I do my share of mining as part of it, but I actively dislike adventure-mining. I don't much chase diamonds down in the lava layers, nor prey on endermen for their pearls, politely looking away instead.
This mirrors how I do Life. I'm a terraformer IRL. I like to see, appreciate, gather, create, and reform. I like pretty things, and I like to take things that aren't pretty, make prettier things out of them, and then put them back! This may sound like mere esthetics, or art, but it actually encompasses absolutely everything. Mathematically elegant solutions, sharp tools, efficient processes: all these count as "pretty" to me. Just as I might craft jewellery or write a song, I also carefully discover my context, and iteratively refine it for effectiveness, efficiency, constructiveness, kindness, fairness... the list of "pretty" qualities is innumerable. I might not succeed all the time, but this is my approach.
If I see something that isn't "pretty", by that broad definition, I try to change it: dig it up, craft it into something prettier, and put it back. I challenge things that are not pretty, and although I try to be kind about it, I am also quite direct. Sometimes people don't like this, and get very angry. And then I find my IRL armorless self fighting an angered mob. This is the IRL equivalent of me getting randomly creeped, or shot by Skeleton. When this does happen, I take heavy damage. I crash and burn IRL, because I am not equipped for these fights. But this is a price like any other. To prevent such high costs, I'd have to pay a price elsewhere, sacrificing other things I have and prefer to have. So I accept my price, just as others may accept the price and effort of forging themselves better protection.
I remain true to myself about who I am, what I want, and I am pretty straight-forward with others about it. I like to be real... even in the virtual world. And that's... my way of doing Life, Minecraft, and Everything.
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