Rediscovering Minecraft with my wife
It’s been a while since I last wrote something on a blog. My last attempt failed pretty quickly around 2020. The posts there were of little value, so I didn’t even bother migrating them to the new blog.
I’m sure other people in the AuDHD spectrum can relate to the experience of struggling to be consistent, even when the project they’re working on is exciting to them.
This time around, I will try to set clearer goals for myself.
I remember the days when I first got into Minecraft. I was in high school, and a bunch of people would get together to have LAN parties. It was honestly a very fun time. Around then, I remember I was going to join the welcome party at the airport for a couple of my friends who were returning from an academic experience in Europe. We were supposed to meet there at around 5 AM, so pretty early in the morning. The day before, it was around 8 PM when I decided I could just play for a few minutes before going to bed. When I next checked the time, it was closer to midnight. For a second, I felt panic. I pondered for a whole 5 seconds and decided it was too late—absolutely too late for me. I would not have enough sleep even if I were to turn off the computer right there and then, so I just kept playing until it was time to meet up with my friends at the airport. Minecraft was a game that would take over my life if I let it, and sometimes, like that night, I would indeed let it take over.
I don’t really remember how I stopped playing Minecraft; I don’t even remember if I was still in high school when I stopped. Even after I stopped, I still followed some Let’s Play series, which makes it even harder to pinpoint the exact year when I stopped logging into my worlds, for which I have no backups. After a while, I even stopped following my favorite server, Hermitcraft, and forgot about it.
Before Minecraft, I had never had an experience like that, where I would obsess over a game and consume so much content about it even when I wasn’t playing it. It was probably a hyperfixation now that I think about it, but it was super fun. And just like I hadn’t experienced this feeling before Minecraft, I wouldn’t experience it after either. Sure, I had a few flings with some mobile games, but at some point growing up, I just stopped having any games on my devices at all.
But then I met my wife. She would play a lot of super cute kawaii games on her phone like Animal Restaurant and Hello Kitty Island Adventure. I would get super excited watching her play on her phone—I think it must have triggered something in my brain from back when I would watch Minecraft Let’s Plays. I just really enjoyed seeing her excitement around the games, the missions, the quests, and the grinding. I even downloaded some of the games she played so we could play together, which was a level up for our usual sessions of parallel play. I was suddenly excited about gaming again! Eventually, I stopped playing, but I would still enjoy watching her play quite a bit.
One day, while she was playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure, we randomly decided to buy Minecraft for our Nintendo Switch, which had sat collecting dust since we had moved to our current house more than a year ago. The package came, and we opened the game, but for some reason, it sat on the shelf for a few weeks until one day we decided it was time to finally give it a go. We got snacks, we set the pillows, and unboxed the controllers—we were ready!
It was super hard to play Minecraft on the Switch; I’m not going to lie, I was never a console person. I had always preferred the comfort of a mouse and keyboard, so getting used to these new peripherals was quite the challenge. Even so, we had tons of fun! We even purchased a realm so we could have a world we could access from anywhere. We both spent a whole weekend doing missions like capturing certain mobs, getting pretty flowers, and even decorating our base. We were so happy playing together, but we were both struggling with the controls, especially my wife. So the week after she discovered Minecraft, I started looking into other options for us to play together. We bought an extra account, cancelled our realms subscription, and launched our private server where we would be able to continue our Minecraft adventure together. Playing on our MacBooks was very refreshing—it was way easier for both of us to move around and sort our inventory.
I was experiencing my Minecraft renaissance, and this time I had (the best) company.
My wife and I have wanted to share a hobby for quite some time. Pottery classes was our first thought, but we’ve been on a waiting list for months! So Minecraft fills this gap perfectly, and we have a great time playing together.
Looking back now, it’s beautiful how life comes full circle. What started as a solitary obsession in my teenage years has transformed into a shared adventure with my life partner. Every new cute pet we capture and every structure we build together fills us with joy and excitement. I’m really happy to see my YouTube suggestions filled with Minecraft content again and to chit-chat with my wife in between work hours about what we’ll do when we log back into our server.
If you haven’t played Minecraft yet (or haven’t played in a while), I encourage you to give it a try—maybe even invite someone special to join you on a new adventure.