Virtual Brush Box

Off Topic: Seven Life Lessons Learned From Candy Crush

Update: a reader suggested a transition paragraph for Off Topic posts. Here goes.

Caveat: Today’s subject is not about horses. Occasionally, I think about other things. For more essays on non-equine subjects, see Off Topic. Rodney’s Saga returns to regularly scheduled programming on Friday. For more on the Off Topic blog, see tomorrow’s post, Off Topic: Yay or Nay?.

The search for meaning can be a drag. Philosophical tomes are heavy and require hours to plow through a single page. Vision quests involve deprivation, discomfort, and dieting. Mediation means sitting in quietude for way too long. Why bother? Existential enlightenment is available in a handy electronic format, courtesy of Candy Crush.

If you have had the good fortune to dodge this digital time sink, Candy Crush Saga by King is an downloadable computer game. The player matches three symbols, which then disappear. The board rearranges to reveal more potential matches. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Different combinations of symbols create variety and higher point totals. For further hypnotic effect, the game adds bright colors, shiny shapes, and congratulatory sound effects.

It’s one of those activities that part of me knows is a waste of time even as I do it. This rational, productive part of my mind is drowned out by my screaming inner toddler begging for one more one match, one more round, one more level.

Having sunk far too much time into Candy Crush, here’s what I have gleaned:

1) There is nothing wrong with candy bars and cokes. Occasionally. Aside from a small increase in pattern recognition skills, nothing about Candy Crush Saga will make you physically, materially, nor spiritually richer. That’s okay. Empty calories are not bad in themselves. Life is icing-filled, chocolate raspberry cupcakes from the Gingerbread Construction Company as well as whole wheat bran muffins made at home in a solar oven. The danger comes when Candy Crush keeps me from work [… um … er …]. Put down the iPad. Walk away.

2) If you wish to learn patience, work with something that makes you impatient. When one of the levels is being obstreperous, I inhale slowly and regard it as an opportunity to expand my zen-like calm, rather than a reason to fling the iPad across the room.

3) Take luck as it comes. Luck can run for or against me. The reaction from the last move clears the last obstacle after I had declared defeat. Yay! A game ends when I am one move away from winning. Boo! A bonus piece drops out of the sky just where I need it.Yay! A square of chocolate grows over a bonus piece. (In Candy Crush, chocolate is evil.) Boo! As human beings, we feel the boos more deeply than the yays. I try to note when good things happen. I’m not weighing-in on whether or not good and bad luck balance out karmically. Just that if I am going to bitch about bad luck, I should pause to consider when the candies fall my way.

4) It’s not luck versus skill. It’s luck and skill. I’ve been drawn into the Candy Crush vortex before. I arrived at a certain point, got fed up, and deleted the game. On this iteration, I am getting consistently higher scores and have blown past the level that stumped me last time. Clearly, there is a learned skill involved. Luck still plays a major role. I continue to lose lives on a regular basis. All the skill in the world won’t help if the candies aren’t cooperating. However, luck doesn’t do any good if I’m not ready to capitalize on a fortuitous arrangement of candies.

5) All in the asking. Candy Crush Saga is known as a freemium. The original game is free. However, extra moves, extra bonus candies, and extra lives, are available for a price. Just click here. I’m not automatically cheap. I tip waitrons. I buy books to support artists. I’m not above paying for my entertainment. If the designers asked politely, I’d pay. What I hate is the sense that the game is rigged to slyly run up a staggering bill by repeatedly asking for reasonable-seeming amounts. I object to the feeling that they are trying to suck me dry 99c at a time. I have disabled in-app purchases and will delete the damn thing before I knowingly give them a penny.

6) Eyes on the goal. Candies can combine to create bonus candies that clear other pieces and rack up points. Each bonus candy behaves differently. “Striped” candies are the easiest and can clear a row or a column. “Wrapped” candies clear a space around them. “Spotted” candies are the rarest and can clear large sections of the board. However, only striped candies reach across a gap to zap other pieces. On some of the Candy Crush levels, I have to concentrate on getting these easier, striped candies to clear the board. I must ignore the chance to make the other, more difficult bonus candies. They can’t do what I want and therefore waste moves. It is hard to turn away from what I have been trained to see as a highly desirable thing.

7) Find value in every experience. Even if that means just getting a blog post out of it.

RocketHorse

I have contributed my mite to another horse-related crowd funding project. A Big Name Rider is looking for support to get the next Big Time horse. As with my previous project support [RallyWe], I am not giving the name of the individual involved. OTOH, not many international riders are trying to buy a $500,000 horse from contributors pennies, so it wouldn’t be hard to discover. Still, I don’t want you to think I am shilling for him/her. I know nothing about the dude (I’m tired of the pronoun game). I recognize his name & haven’t heard anything horrid about him, but then, I haven’t really been paying to the international scene lately.

As before, my goal is to follow the process. Therefore, my first – of undoubtedly many – tackbox quarterback comments:

The projects have varying levels of thank you for varying levels of funding and varying durations of updates for ditto. Why? If I had any form of crowdsource project, I would send a personalized thank you by return email. I would then keep you updated on the project in specific and my business in general until you asked me to stop. Ninety-nine plus percent of the effort would be wasted. However, one person might say, ‘Oh, this is kinda fun. Why don’t I take a lesson, attend a clinic, buy him/her a horse.’ John Wanamaker is attributed with saying

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” [The Quotations Page]

I would think one would want to spread the word even more so these days now that communication is so comparatively simple: no cumbersome collating, no stamps, no address databases. Just type, click, & go. Granted, I’m a writer, so this would come easily to me. However:

a) Keeping the owner(s) happy is part of being paid to ride.

b) If the rider is not comfortable with the written word, surely there is a student, owner, employee, family member who would be willing to trade PR flack duties for love or lessons.

Personal Note
32 years ago I made the decision to keep my riding as a hobby. I have yet to see anything that makes me regret that decision.

Long Winter

Between deliberate time off [They Said], horse care [Back: updates], holidays, and the joys of winter [Post Called]. I’ve ridden 6 times in the three months since the Nationals at the beginning of November [Day 3+3]. That’s five lessons and one schooling show. Extra points for the show; minus points for missing the first show. Furthermore, the forecast does not appear to be done screwing with our heads.

This is not good for my psyche. It is undoubtedly worse for those what have to live with me.

Addendum 1) I am overlooking the fact that my riding life has devolved to weekly lessons. We’ll leave those worms canned for now.

Addendum 2) Yes, yes. Petty problem. The sad bourgeoisie can’t ride her horsie. Granted, my roll in the craps game of life has provided me with security in body & spirit (so far, she adds superstitiously). Is that it? Should I be content to potter through life? Shouldn’t I be racking up substantial achievements given substantial advantages? Yes, yes. Wanting to follow Mother Teresa is more admirable than wanting to make an Olympic team. Either is more admirable than being a couch potato. But I digress.

Addendum 3) An infusion of acetate eases the strain.

Text Art: Snow Letters

Happy Horse Year

Hopes & fears are fragile things. We don’t talk about our hopes lest they fail to materialize. We don’t mention our darkest fears lest they do.

We have entered the Year of the Horse. I have a good feeling about this. That’s all I’m going to say. Shhhhh.

Year of the Horse Image Galleries
Writing From the Right Side of the Stall: Gong Xi Fa Cai & Gong Xi Fa Cai one more time!

Life, the Universe, and Everything: Year of the Horse & More Year of the Horse art

Foto Friday: Snow Day Montage

Writing For A New Audience

[End of the month, State of the Blog for January 2014. List of previous SotB posts.]

Hello Horse Collaborative!

Earlier this month, I posted for the first time on Horse Collaborative [main page, my page, first HC blog post]. Instead of having cross-posts every day, the web editor would like weekly posts, give or take. The plan is to let me know which ones to repost over there. I assume he doesn’t want daily doses of Rodney’s Saga swamping his feed. This works for me. I get to meet a new audience, but still offer value for coming over to my main site.

When we discussed this, my first response was ‘Yipppee! Happy Dance! People want to read my writing!’ My second response was, ‘I wonder how I should write for HC.’ I could feel the blog bending to meet new expectations. Some amount of judgment is inherent in the system. The nice man (waves hi) will be selecting posts. I will wonder why this one and not that one. If I write this way, will more posts get chosen? If I write that way, will everyone at HC hate it? Was this whole thing a mistake? It is over? Should I go eat worms?

Ahem.

Part of this attitude comes from being a pathologic people pleaser. I want everyone, everywhere to think I am wonderful and to remind me so on a regular basis. Part of this, believe it or not, is professional. The writing required for editing a medical paper is different than the writing required for reviewing adult videos. If an editor asks for 1000 words on the history of dressage in the US, she does not want a 2000-word, amusingly-crafted essay on My First Dressage Test. Write to order. It’s what I did.

After 3 & 1/2 years, I have finally – almost – convinced myself that this approach does not work for blogging. To quote myself, “I have come to decide that writing a blog is closer in method to writing fiction. You write the story you have to tell, then you look for an audience.” [Check]

So this is my promise to Horse Collaborative. I will not change for you. I will continue to say what I have to say about my horses. I will attempt to adhere to the manifesto (manifestoes? manifesti?) at which I arrived after my most recent meltdown [Baack]. If our tastes mesh, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s okay too. We will shake hands, part friends, and wander our merry ways. If the arrangement does not work out, I am a not a terrible writer who should never be trusted near a keyboard ever again, nor is Horse Collaborative a hive of scum and villainy.

That’s the plan.

One thing HC requested was a recap for new readers. A sensible enough request to fulfill without immediately violating the above.

Recap for Content
For pictures & stats, see Cast of Critters.

Rodney was bought to be my mid-life crisis horse for eventing, hunter, jumper, dressage, all of it. After a year of diligent searching, I had found a horse who embodied every virtue for which I was looking. I brought him home, rode him for a month, and stopped. He now canters happily around my backyard. As to how I got myself in this position, I refer you to the rest of the blog. Despite a compost-pile worth of words on the subject, I still do not have a concise explanation.

Mathilda is our retired, geriatric husband horse. At least, she is geriatric in years; in body & spirit, not so much.

With two horses to care for and nothing to ride, I took a saddleseat lesson [Random] and fell down the rabbit hole. Between lessons, showing, and the novelty thereof, much of last year was about the American Saddlebred. This year looks to be similar.

Recap for Format
As a freelance writer, I was on a constant mission to monetize my life. Toward the end of my horse shopping, I offered to chronicle my experiences in a monthly column. When the main subject declined to embrace a competitive career, the column staggered on for a few months and finally cavitated. I continued monthly on my own for reasons that now escape me. I switched to daily for a year as a writing exercise. After that, I continued with the daily posts because I discovered I enjoy yapping about myself. And here we are.

Posts of Interest
Name my horse. Win books. Seriously. New Year, New Contest

My current favorite post is A Horse Show In 86 Tweets, both because it was a new format for me [Toy], and for reasons that will become obvious when you read the post.

Explanation of Sunday’s Text Art posts – Brush Pen
Explanation of the rest of the features – Where Do We Go From Here?: KEEPING

Let’s hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, only without the adultery, heartbreak, & Nazis.
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Gratuitous Cat Picture