The Onion

Y' know - if it gets the kid through the hike, there's nothing wrong with it. (Yes, I know it's the onion, but let's be real).

When I was a kid, I had my nose in books all the time. On long road trips, my parents sometimes told me to put down the book and look out the window, appreciate the landscape. I had no appreciation for landscape at that age. I do now that I'm in my mid-40s. But back then? I wanted to read my books.

My parents loved to go on long hikes. I kept up, I sometimes struggled, I sometimes hated it. What was I looking forward to at the end of the hike? Settling down with one of my books. My reward, if you so will. I like a good hike these days, back then not so much. If I'd had video games at the time, I'd probably have fantasised about them too, if it got me through a long and (in my mind) boring hike.

This was me in church every Sunday calculating how many lobsters id have to sell to buy a full set of Rune armor in RuneScape

Having the down time to let my mind wander is one of the best parts of hiking or any other alone time, even if it's about the stuff you plan to do when you're done. It's underrated imo

The only thing I ever saw break my kids' device spell was the Grand Canyon. When we walked up to it, my son was stunned and said, "Whoa, what happened?"

Yup that was me as a kid lol. Took me a long time to just enjoy where I was at and not rush to do the thing that gave the most dopamine. Games, porn, drugs, sex... There's always something to jonse for, but just breathing in and out where your at and relaxing where you are just doing what you're doing is super great

Cries in his 30s

Fuck, I'm a 12yo stuck in an old man dad bod.

I've used to do semi-competitive swimming as a child. Honestly one of the worst (as in boring, great for health and fixed my scoliosis) types of sport to do for an agitated child who wants to explore the world.

For an hour and a half you do laps while staring at the tiles on the bottom of your olympic pool. Would spend the entire time memorizing every crack on the tiles as well as doing entire video game playthroughs in my head lol

I feel called out

I haven't properly played Minecraft in years but I find myself out in nature and just imagining how I would build the area up, how the house would be made, what sort of pathways I would make. Guess what I am saying is I left Minecraft a while back but it has not left me yet.

To be honest, I've done that while enjoying the activity I was doing, or at least not resenting it. I have ADHD so I know I can hyperfocus on something for too long, but I also k ow I can burn out. So I specifically stop doing things I want to keep doing because I know I'll enjoy it more later if I do so.

Literally was thinking about how I'd have made my last worldgen datapacks differently on my last hike.

It started snowing in the middle and I ended up going for like 5 times longer than I intended and meandering all over every path on Cougar Mountain literally, I'm embarrassed to say how long I was out. Had to do all my errands today instead. Was totally transfixed by the beauty of these gigantic Dippin Dots ass snowflakes

I saw what I was looking at, kind of, the beautiful lichens and mosses. But I constantly thought about them in potential Minecraft/Minetest terms. Worst Tetris effect there is!