Ikigai and The Aleph

 

So, yesterday I released a rules lite tabletop role-playing game. The game is a total of 1 page. I worked on it for the last year and that work included writing about 100 pages and doing about 50 pieces of art (actually more that never made it into the game) and laying the whole thing out and playtesting and all that stuff that goes into making a game. And all of that was reduced down to one page, something someone can read in about 10 minutes.

I never thought about it while I was working on it but looking back, I basically had to create 100 pages to get 1 page of what I wanted. I had to burn away all of the extra (99%) to get to core. I know that is part of my process in writing. The Way Things End, a novel I published in 2019, has hundreds of pages and stories and drafts that never made it into the book. I write like a sculptor I guess - where I start with this big block of whatever and add and takeaway until what remains is what has to exist – the tangible parallel to my previous intangible vision.

I know this may seem like a huge waste of time for many people, to enter into a process like a game or a piece of writing and spend a year writing a single page. I often question it too, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? What’s the point? It’s easy to get cynical and part of all of this is the up and down with the creative process. But now that the project is mostly done, I find it really beautiful, that I spent a year writing a single page. It feels so complete and meaningful, like the superfluous gave way to elegance. For me, I have no other way to achieve that elegance.    

There is something incredibly beautiful to me at this point in my life, to engage in a single endeavor and see it through, regardless of what anyone thinks about it or how much money it makes or how much prestige it brings. This is ikigai. This is also a way for me to see the Aleph, not all places in the universe but all places in that process and experience. The burning away of the extra leaving the core and allowing me to see each of those layers through new eyes. I guess it’s sort of a faux Aleph but it has monumental meaning (to me) nonetheless.

I wanted to put this out there in case other people are in a similar space. Create what you want. You will find people who understand because those people know the process, the struggle that is involved in making. You will find people to consume the thing you birth. 

I think we should talk about this more often.

Dirk