How LineUp Saved My Sanity
I got an iPhone a few weeks back, and have downloaded a few games onto it, though only the free ones. I've been known in the past to obsess over the free games that come on computers, namely Solitaire (which just irritates me now cuz I suck at it), Minesweeper, and Tetris. I got to actually be quite good at Minesweeper during the two months early in my marriage when my husband and I lived with his parents while he did a med school rotation at the Cleveland Clinic. With my English degree, I was evidently overqualified for any short-term gigs (at least, that's the best explanation I can come up with for why the temp agency I contacted could find nothing for me to do to while my time away, despite my pestering them again and again that as I was only in town for a couple of months, I really would be okay answering phones or playing secretary). My in-laws were at work, my brother-in-law at school, and my husband was at the hospital. My mother-in-law would come home at 3, and I would help her make rotli (Indian flatbread) while biting my tongue about the fact that I had to suffer through her insistence on watching Montel Williams. But during the day, all alone, with no work coming my way (damn, I wish I had a time machine to put some sense into past me! what a freakin' luxury! oh, what I could have done! I could have exercised, written a novel, established better habits for myself so I wouldn't get sucked into wasting hours watching television, surfing the web, and playing silly computer games now!), I would play Minesweeper.
The neat thing about becoming good at Minesweeper is that you notice patterns, and from further away. 2332, 131: these things mean something, and always the same thing. It's an important skill to have, in many scenarios - although it's careful not to apply these patterns to human beings - and it can really serve you well. Of course, the only one that comes to mind - a very important one at that - is Poopsweeper, which is when you go to the dog area to clean up after it's been snowing a bunch. This is when noticing patterns - the subtle changes in the color and consistency of the snow, knowing where the dog likes to do his business - becomes incredibly important. I'm sure there are other areas in life where the Minesweeper Metaphor becomes important, but that's a story for another day (and if I recall properly, for a previous post).
Jumping forward fifteen years, when I can sit in the pickup line at school with a few minutes to spare, and now, instead of pulling one of my journals out of the glove compartment, I play a quick game of LineUp.
This game is rather simple, much like Tetris. The rules are simple: "Click on blocks of 3 or more of the same color, before they overflow the board. Be careful! You only have 100 taps for each speed cycle." Just look for three blocks of the same color and click. And while it's starting off, it's going slowly, and you just tap away and keep the board clear. Only, if you're not careful, you end up with more of a checkerboard pattern, because you needed to first clear the row of pink up top before the section of green below. Otherwise, the pink ones are no longer lined up and you're stuck. And then it speeds up, and they're all coming down, and you get focused on that one column that's getting close to the top of the screen (curses! why is the screen so small, and my fingers so fat! Hey! I tapped there. Disappear already! Argh!). But then there's the diamond. The blessed diamond, and when it comes on screen, if you click it, it clears the entire column and row that it's in. Which is awesome when it shows up in the lone tall column. And I'm always clicking it, even though I'm sure that I screw up my chances at clearing out a lot more squares sometimes. But that would require much more obsessing. And I'm trying hard to avoid that.
But here's the thing. This time of year, I get a little stressed. I may be a little more sensitive to comments that at other times I would find funny. Normally, I can make fun of myself. Hell, I named the autobiography I had to write in tenth grade "Duh! The Story Of My Life". Trust me, I can take it. I don't take things so personally (even things that maybe, sometimes, I should). But I've been a little stressed. My husband was out of town for a week (in Hawaii, for a conference, without me because I couldn't get babysitting although in retrospect I could have but that's why I hate hindsight; it gets you nowhere now); I had to get my Christmas cards mailed (finally, after personally licking 140 envelopes, they are in the mailbox at the corner); I had to create and order the photo calendars that serve as both my families' Christmas presents, and order it while I could still get standard shipping (only to see the Snapfish special a couple days later of 'buy one calendar get one free' which would have been nice when buying 7 calendars!); after all that was done, I could start the baking of cookies for the teacher gifts, indoor soccer carnival day, the neighborhood cookie exchange, and of course General Consumption (salute). Plus, there were the ongoing challenges of trying to get kids to act suitably sorry for not doing anything wrong other than being happy when I'm in a bad mood; feeling like I'm neglecting my responsibilities to the school's Parent Association, even though there were no actual tasks needing done; calling customer service numbers at three or four different places to get things done at work yesterday; and, other issues at work which I will respectfully not air publicly.
So yeah, I've been stressed. I know other people have it much harder than me, and that I have a lot to be thankful for, and being busy is really no reason to complain. Especially as each of these things is done voluntarily by me (in all senses of the word!). So to destress, I would play a little LineUp. As I was starting off, the blocks would quickly get too high for me once the speed got too fast, and I would lose. So I would try again. Sometimes I would run out of taps. But usually, it would be the blocks reaching the top that would do me in. I would find myself tensing up, my eyes rapidly scanning the screen, looking for that one block, the one I missed that could drop higher blocks into place, into blocks of three, or more, and I could click that. There. There. Got it. And sure enough, as I stopped panicking over just how high the block pile was, as long as I focused on the blocks, and kept looking, and kept tapping, the level would drop, and drop, lower and lower, a little at a time - sometimes three or four and often times many more. And as the pounding in my heart softened to its anaerobic normal level, as my shoulders stopped crowding the space around my ears, as I stopped hunching forward and relaxed my neck, I could enjoy the blackness of most of the screen and the gentle sprinkling of color at the bottom of the gameboard, much like a bud vase with a couple of different-colored daylilies - simple, elegant and understated.
And as I gain that understanding, as I reach nirvana, I understand that all the three-blocks can be found and eliminated, and this same inner peace can be achieved in my own life as long as I can reach that same mental state in life that I reached when the blocks were stacked high in LineUp.
And I can.
The neat thing about becoming good at Minesweeper is that you notice patterns, and from further away. 2332, 131: these things mean something, and always the same thing. It's an important skill to have, in many scenarios - although it's careful not to apply these patterns to human beings - and it can really serve you well. Of course, the only one that comes to mind - a very important one at that - is Poopsweeper, which is when you go to the dog area to clean up after it's been snowing a bunch. This is when noticing patterns - the subtle changes in the color and consistency of the snow, knowing where the dog likes to do his business - becomes incredibly important. I'm sure there are other areas in life where the Minesweeper Metaphor becomes important, but that's a story for another day (and if I recall properly, for a previous post).
Jumping forward fifteen years, when I can sit in the pickup line at school with a few minutes to spare, and now, instead of pulling one of my journals out of the glove compartment, I play a quick game of LineUp.
This game is rather simple, much like Tetris. The rules are simple: "Click on blocks of 3 or more of the same color, before they overflow the board. Be careful! You only have 100 taps for each speed cycle." Just look for three blocks of the same color and click. And while it's starting off, it's going slowly, and you just tap away and keep the board clear. Only, if you're not careful, you end up with more of a checkerboard pattern, because you needed to first clear the row of pink up top before the section of green below. Otherwise, the pink ones are no longer lined up and you're stuck. And then it speeds up, and they're all coming down, and you get focused on that one column that's getting close to the top of the screen (curses! why is the screen so small, and my fingers so fat! Hey! I tapped there. Disappear already! Argh!). But then there's the diamond. The blessed diamond, and when it comes on screen, if you click it, it clears the entire column and row that it's in. Which is awesome when it shows up in the lone tall column. And I'm always clicking it, even though I'm sure that I screw up my chances at clearing out a lot more squares sometimes. But that would require much more obsessing. And I'm trying hard to avoid that.
But here's the thing. This time of year, I get a little stressed. I may be a little more sensitive to comments that at other times I would find funny. Normally, I can make fun of myself. Hell, I named the autobiography I had to write in tenth grade "Duh! The Story Of My Life". Trust me, I can take it. I don't take things so personally (even things that maybe, sometimes, I should). But I've been a little stressed. My husband was out of town for a week (in Hawaii, for a conference, without me because I couldn't get babysitting although in retrospect I could have but that's why I hate hindsight; it gets you nowhere now); I had to get my Christmas cards mailed (finally, after personally licking 140 envelopes, they are in the mailbox at the corner); I had to create and order the photo calendars that serve as both my families' Christmas presents, and order it while I could still get standard shipping (only to see the Snapfish special a couple days later of 'buy one calendar get one free' which would have been nice when buying 7 calendars!); after all that was done, I could start the baking of cookies for the teacher gifts, indoor soccer carnival day, the neighborhood cookie exchange, and of course General Consumption (salute). Plus, there were the ongoing challenges of trying to get kids to act suitably sorry for not doing anything wrong other than being happy when I'm in a bad mood; feeling like I'm neglecting my responsibilities to the school's Parent Association, even though there were no actual tasks needing done; calling customer service numbers at three or four different places to get things done at work yesterday; and, other issues at work which I will respectfully not air publicly.
So yeah, I've been stressed. I know other people have it much harder than me, and that I have a lot to be thankful for, and being busy is really no reason to complain. Especially as each of these things is done voluntarily by me (in all senses of the word!). So to destress, I would play a little LineUp. As I was starting off, the blocks would quickly get too high for me once the speed got too fast, and I would lose. So I would try again. Sometimes I would run out of taps. But usually, it would be the blocks reaching the top that would do me in. I would find myself tensing up, my eyes rapidly scanning the screen, looking for that one block, the one I missed that could drop higher blocks into place, into blocks of three, or more, and I could click that. There. There. Got it. And sure enough, as I stopped panicking over just how high the block pile was, as long as I focused on the blocks, and kept looking, and kept tapping, the level would drop, and drop, lower and lower, a little at a time - sometimes three or four and often times many more. And as the pounding in my heart softened to its anaerobic normal level, as my shoulders stopped crowding the space around my ears, as I stopped hunching forward and relaxed my neck, I could enjoy the blackness of most of the screen and the gentle sprinkling of color at the bottom of the gameboard, much like a bud vase with a couple of different-colored daylilies - simple, elegant and understated.
And as I gain that understanding, as I reach nirvana, I understand that all the three-blocks can be found and eliminated, and this same inner peace can be achieved in my own life as long as I can reach that same mental state in life that I reached when the blocks were stacked high in LineUp.
And I can.
posted by BrainHickey | 8:26 PM
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