Why Animal Crossing New Horizons is Better Than my Real Life

Well for starters, I can say with absolute certainty that no one has COVID-19 on my island so there’s that.

Animal Crossing New Horizons came out at literally the perfect time, and my purchase was worth every single penny. It has been over 70 days since the pandemic started, and there is still no indication as to when the pandemic will end. During the day, I often find myself gravitating closer to my Switch in order to play Animal Crossing for hours on end instead of dealing with the responsibilities of my real life.

With my real life having job demands and chores, and other responsibilities, it’s easy to try and avoid it all and escape to my virtual deserted island. My friends that I haven’t been able to see or hang out with during the pandemic I’ve been able to hang out with them virtually through Animal Crossing on our individual deserted islands.

Animal Crossing is such a cute game that allows players to fully customize their own unique experience. Animal Crossing’s characters all have different personalities and even the “worst” personalities are there to support you. Animal Crossing flourishes on positivity and it is hard to not find something new or interesting to do every day on your own little “deserted” island. Unlike other games, there is nothing “Bad” that can really happen to you, which is probably the biggest appeal of the game. Everything is mean to just kind of work out, it’s a slow-paced game, and allows for the player to have a chance to just experience what is happening around them.

With the pandemic making the future seem more uncertain than ever before and the news always hanging on pessimism, Animal Crossing brings hope to its players. There is a lot of comfort in that the days are usually predictable, and there is always some sort of reward for playing the game whether it is Nook Miles or extra bells or presents that fall from the sky every few minutes.

I am not trying to say that my real life is terrible, in fact I am quite fortunate for how I am doing during the pandemic and the opportunities that I still have. However with only depressing news on media networks and lack of socializing with close friends and family, I am having a hard time not catching myself in dark places or crying of frustration.

I’ve been playing Animal Crossing since I had my gamecube and was playing in the early 2000s. This was when I was also when I was about in elementary school so I barely understood how the game actually worked at the time. Now that I am older and have played other versions of Animal Crossing like Animal Crossing City Folk, the game has been so much more enjoyable and I’ve invested hours and hours into improving my island and actually getting to know my villagers.

Creativity Block

Does anyone else stare at their computer screen for hours wondering what to write? Or even not just writing, but just staring at a blank canvas wondering what to place on it. I find that my creativity has been severely disrupted by not being able to go outside and interact with others and my environment, and I am trying to find new ways to fuel my creativity.

Throughout quarantine, I knew that it was important to keep creativity in my life, especially since everything else has gone into chaos. Recently I saw a Tik Tok trend where people brought mirrors outside and took pictures outside with them. As soon as I saw this trend I fell in love with everyone’s results and wanted to figure out how to recreate my own outdoor mirror pictures. The park beside my apartment is also currently flooding with dandelions, so I found the perfect opportunity to go outside and take advantage of the scenery.

I thought this was such a unique and fun idea and a great way to play with different angles that I wasn’t used to. Dandelion stained jeans, and 200 pictures later, I was excited with the pictures I was getting, even if I wasn’t in love with all of them, it felt so good to play around with light and angles and have a creative purpose in a environment that I am not usually in.

Sometimes it really does take a new perspective in order to spark creativity and want to take on new ventures. While taking pictures I was reminded with how beautiful nature is and how anything can compliment well with it, and the importance of appreciating, preserving, and loving nature.

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sometimes all you need is a different perspective 🌼 pc: @newmoonb_tch #mirrorchallenge #mirroroutside

A post shared by minah webb (@minah.webb) on May 6, 2020 at 10:00am PDT

Here is one of the pictures my friend took of me, and I fell in love with the angles. Feel free to like and follow on my Instagram @ Minah.Webb

The Comfort in Suffering

In life, it can be easy to fall back, get caught up in the little things, and compare your failures to other people’s successes. We often long to find our escape, and make ourselves feel better by living an alternative life online that is the best versions of ourselves. As a result, we have built this idea that a superfluous, extravagant life, is a perfect life. We have forgotten the importance of suffering, and making mistakes and facing challenges that help us grow as people.

Living in a developed country like the United States of America, is a privilege. We have commodities upon commodities to make our lives easier and more comfortable. We have developed gadgets to make mundane, difficult tasks easier with a click of a button. With the world full of luxuries such as convenience and availability, there’s a lot of unrealistic expectations as to what qualifies as a successful and fulfilling life.

We no longer care about being conservative with our possessions and can no longer be satisfied with the latest gadget. There’s always something better. There will always be a better phone, a better car, a better house, a better opportunity. Through this, we have become selfish with our needs and hurting those who may not have as many possessions due to a variety of circumstances.

We seek perfection, we seek beauty, we seek the perfect significant other, we seek the perfect home, the perfect family. Everything must be perfect, because it’s going to be on the internet for everyone to see. We have been uncomfortable with the idea of suffering because it equates to being far off from perfection, from being worthy enough.

We have stopped living for ourselves and have instead developed an audience to constantly broadcast our lives. We live lives that we think other people will like, and we no longer live the lives that we actually enjoy. We are all fooling ourselves with an alter ego that walks around living a perfect life when in reality, that is far from the truth. We are often too afraid to genuinely share the ugly sides of ourselves because that requires a level of vulnerability that we are not willing to express. If we are willing to share We will all continue to compare ourselves to one another until we are all just slightly different variations of one another.

So we continue to seek perfection, but the real question is who are we doing it for?

We have developed several platforms to share with our friends what we are up to, and in the end, we have ironically encountered a new problem with all of this connection.

Being alone.

We all log on to Instagram or Facebook, and we are bombarded with pictures of happy people doing amazing things on their new boat, or they just got their dream job, or they just moved into their first amazing house with their amazing partner, and amazing kids. Happy people in Europe, happy people just looking happy while eating avocado toast that is expertly placed and the cup in the corner turned at the perfect angle. But you just see happy people.

We are then reminded of our own loneliness, I mean, you can’t really be that busy or preoccupied with your life if you’re scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, are you? We are then instantly reminded of our projects that haven’t kicked off yet or the goals and dreams tha we haven’t achieve. We are then reminded that we are just not good enough and we have yet to acheive perfection.

We forget that being uncomfortable, or unhappy is a very natural feeling, and in fact, is required for growth. We did not grow as a society because we were comfortable taking a shit in the ground and covering it up with dirt. We knew that it was uncomfortable so we used that energy in order to find other ways to take a shit that wasn’t as unsanitary.

We are using the ease of convenience and commodity incorrectly by demanding for more and stewing in our own dissatisfaction and suffering. We are so caught up in our own lives and presenting ourselves in a certain way that we have almost forgotten to care about one another and ourselves. We get so caught up in our own dissatisfaction and suffering that we further bury ourselves in the hole and find ourselves battling depression and anxiety. We get so caught up in what we don’t have, that we forget that we are so lucky and privileged to have items that make our lives easier like iPhone’s and a toilet in the bathroom instead of the hole in the ground outside.

Suffering is natural and it is okay, and we should become once again comfortable with life’s discomforts. Being comfortable does not allow us to grow, and who would we be if we weren’t growing as individuals?