Winter Reflections

 I've been thinking a lot about my life, Creatures and everything.

No the answer isn't 42, fish or anything obvious.

My life really came to a head when I knackered my ankle again. It forced me to take time off work. This freed up time to deal with the bird flu season, which again wasn't resting it.

Being forced to be at home drove me a cabin sick, butting heads against my fiance. Realising that the man who is (and has been) doing so much for me wasn't the problem. I realised I was still grieving for my cat, my animal brother, who died so recently. I let myself cry for the first time in too long, pulling out the cork from this rancid bottle of emotions.

After that I delved deeper, and saw other emotional scars that had not healed properly, some for decades.

So I kept swimming, throwing myself back into work, but more carefully. Opening up to friends and family. Sometimes oversharing, sometimes being prickly and stubborn...but learning.

Seeking the balance again.

I'm being more careful, sharing where I can, revealing what I thought was inner ugliness, but being shocked by acceptance and love.

This growth has been painful, tearful, but fruitful. It is reflected in my approach to many things.

Creatures has often been a refuge to me, a microcosm of life, humanity and everything, a fruitless attempt to control. I believe what brings me back is that one *cannot* control.

One can only experience, learn and move on.

Sometimes the best apology is becoming a better person.

Sometimes one must weep before you can smile again.

The past is but a memory, the future is merely hope, it is only in the now that we truly live. 

Pains and trials

 I had an amazing visit by an old friend Gnomey, what with lockdown, health and both of our schedules, it's the first time in over 6 years she had been to my house. It was also the first time she met my fiance!

Personal stuff aside it has been great to *have* to put my foot up so I managed to catch up with my website and throw together some stuff for the CCSF.

For those interested, I'm currently downloading and racing to learn screen capture software so that I can put up my first video wolfling/feral run!

No promises as to the schedule, but I will release a video as soon as a can.

The Creatures Community Spirit

So it's 2021, I was kindly put forward to be voted a co-coordinator with Freya, and I was honoured to accept.

After agreeing to it, I realised quickly how much work goes into such things, and my own life became bogged down with money concerns, new jobs, health concerns, healing, COVID, wedding plans, Bird Flu season, etc.

I'm not going into all that because I want to say how amazing it has been to a part of a friendly, nurturing and accepting community. I have maintained my website, initially for my own interest, to express my love for the series.

As time went on I found myself spending more and more time posting my own creations and discoveries, and reposting more and more amazing things made long ago by other community members.

When Geocities went down, many of the older websites stopped existing and my self-appointed task became to preserve and distribute as many of the things from them as possible.

Luckily initiatives such as Oocities and especially Wayback Machine starting bringing back content from long defunct webpages, so I began to rebuild the treasure trove of information and downloads from the earliest days of the internet through to the current day.

Over the years I seemed to have become one of the longest lasting websites around dedicated purely to the original simulation, and I felt that my website had become a kind of digital museum: free of entry, free of membership fees and adverts, open to all to come and see and share.

I kept this up, realising that to stop now would be churlish, so I continue to play, I continue to update, and I preserve anything I find for future players.

I regret none of my time on Creatures, I avoided the odd scraps of toxic content, and regard the whole as a project I'm glad I've spend twenty years on, I've learned so much about life, people, programming and artificial biological systems.

Supermarket Sweep

 More like supermarket restocking!

It's the run up to Xmas and me and my partner have Xmas temp jobs. 

When I'm not there, I'm at the allotment, when I'm not there I'm doing housework, organising a wedding or resting my poor ankle!

When I have time I'm on my favourite life simulator Creatures, editing genomes, playtesting cobs or fixing my world Zeruko.

It's the CCSF nowish, but it's also COVID-19 and Bird Flu season, so I'm super busy! Wish me luck :)