3/16/17

i'm thankful, though, for the most part, for the metrics tracking my performance at my new job. i'm thankful to know that it's easy to be thankful for the metrics because i'm usually hitting the target expectations set by my team lead, but i'm thankful regardless. i'm thankful for the reason that i'm thankful, at my old job, at the end of a hard day full of hard conversations, i often wouldn't have anything tangible or concrete to show for my day, just the general feeling of exhaustion. i'm thankful that now, at the end of a hard day full of hard conversations, i have a number i can hang my hat on, that i can look at that number and say "okay, i did this many things today" and take a kind of solace in that, even if i am exhausted.

i'm thankful that last night after finishing my day's work at my job and receiving my number, i played the VR game job simulator, in which you simulate jobs. i'm thankful for the level i played, in which you are a short-order cook who has to assemble a number of ridiculous dishes for a restaurant full of floating robots. i'm thankful for the sensation of preparing a cup of tea in VR (filling the kettle, boiling the water in the kettle, getting a mug from the cupboard, putting a tea bag in the mug)—i'm thankful for the way that it defamiliarizes the action and reminds me of how amazing preparing a mug of tea is in the real world, how it is made up of these component movements and actions which we have internalized so much that they pass in a blur. i'm thankful to hope that virtual reality, which seems on the face of things like an escape from the world as it is, could actually provide a path toward greater appreciation of that world and enhance our presentness inside it. i'm thankful that i spent probably a good minute opening and closing the door of the virtual microwave, just for the satisfaction of the feeling of doing so.

i'm thankful for the strange sense in virtual reality of both having and not having a body. i'm thankful that more than traditional video games, VR reflects the movements of your body in a 1:1 way—as you turn your head left, your character turns their head left and you see what is to the left of you; if you step to the right, your character steps to the right; if you lift your arm, your character lifts their arm. i'm thankful that this makes even standing in the tron-like light grid while waiting for a game to load feel compelling in and of itself a way that flat, static traditional loading screens never do. i'm thankful, though, that even as VR enhances your feeling of embodiment from one angle, it (at least in its current incarnation and in the games i've played) also reduces it in another way.

i'm thankful this is because VR is only tracking the movements of your head and your hands and so in the virtual world, you are just a head and a pair of hands—if you look down in your body, you just see empty space. i'm thankful that this could be disturbing, but as i was playing last night, felt liberating. i'm thankful that though i have always felt i am bad at dancing and have felt uncomfortable in situations that require me to dance in public and done everything i can to avoid them, last night, in the virtual reality kitchen, there was a boom box and i inserted a CD into the boom box and started the music playing, mostly just to see what would happened. 

i'm thankful that as i cooked and as the music played, i found myself dancing along with the the music, first slightly but with increasing gusto. i'm thankful that though dancing in the real world feels uncomfortable because i feel ungainly, like my body isn't moving in the correct way, because in the game i couldn't see my body, didn't have a body, just a head (which i bobbed) and hands (which i swayed and swooped) i could concentrate on feeling the music and letting it work on me in a way that has always felt difficult. i'm thankful for the release of that after a hard day full of hard conversations. i'm thankful for the slight but sweet satire of the love song playing in the virtual world, the chorus of which was "i [emotion] you." i'm thankful to have a body but i'm also thankful to not have a body.