Visiting an Old Neighborhood
Last night I did something I haven’t done in over a year; I dug out my Switch from a messy cabinet and started up Animal Crossing, New Horizons.
These days I’ve found myself bound to the couch for hours a day while my Little-Guy nurses or naps. Sometimes it’s worth the peaceful quiet to not risk transferring him to his bed, sometimes he won’t sleep anywhere but in my lap. And in these quiet times I’ve sat on my phone and often done nothing much, leaving me feeling frustrated rather than rested!
Yesterday, something dawned on me. So simple and yet I hadn’t thought of it! Through my usual scrolling of YouTube to put something pleasant on tv as background noise as Little-Guy napped, I ran across a creator’s video touring their Animal Crossing island to music. And it hit me! Why haven’t I revisited it my little island for so long?
I remember receiving my cute, coral Switch Lite as a gift Christmas 2020 and thanking my sister through happy-tears. The Pandemic had already been so hard on my mental health, and getting a Switch with Animal Crossing felt like an invitation home! It may sound silly, but I had been so isolated for so long, and with no way to get a Switch, I’d sat on the sidelines of yet another community I would have loved to join in on, watching their world-building and positivity despite the trying times of COVID-19 lockdown.
The beginning of that year was helped by the fun I had, not just playing, but by being able to chat about it! Though everyone’s experience and opinons surrounding COVID was so different, Animal Crossing was a pleasant topic of discussion without all the baggage, if you know what I mean!
And if you haven’t played it yourself, just know that the game is very meditative. There is no hard goal of the game, so if you want to pop on for a few minutes and water flowers and that’s it, well that’s great! It is slow moving, welcoming, relaxing, and is affected by the real-world calendar year (seasons change), so you can feel a little more “grounded” in time. This virtual environment was exactly what I needed then, and as I just realized, exactly what I need more of now. And hey, it’s got me writing this blog post, so it’s a win-win in my book ;)
I know it’s an “old” game now, but I still have much to explore in it. I did spend much of my in-game time watering flowers after all. Who knows, maybe I will write about it again here. But for now, I guess I just wanted to make my appreciation known. Thank you Nintendo, thank you a zillion times to my sister, and wishing everyone a relaxing, restorative visit to their AC islands :)