When I was up at school for a week long intensive, I asked my best friend to show me how to play Fortnite. As she showed me, I began to feel nervous about playing and resolved myself to play at home, alone, where I could mess up with little pressure. The pressure that I put in my own head, of course, as Fortnite has about as much weight in the world as deciding what socks to wear when you know you’re about to put boots on. And my best friend would have also been wonderfully supportive, so really it was just my own brain adding pressure.
Sure enough, even though I’m bad at Fortnite, I had a great time for my first few games. (Even though I accidentally killed one of the boars you can “tame” and felt upset for the rest of the match). I kept up with the momentum that comes with having fun being a beginner, I finally started trying to play a free trial of Minecraft and quickly realized why children are the future.
There are kids out there less than half my age who can create beautiful buildings in Minecraft, whereas I was stumbling as I tried to figure out how to make mud. MUD! I ended up doing what I’m sure many type-A’s do when they realize they don’t have the right answer: I googled it.
There’s no shame in googling. There was a little shame when I had to google “how do I make mud in minecraft”. (Don’t worry, I figured it out). Add some more shame when I couldn’t find my crafting bench so I had to make another one.
All this to say that I started to realize there are learning curves even when you play video games like Minecraft. I’ve been thinking about starting a Substack forever, but it wasn’t until my Minecraft fiasco that I realized the only way you can get over the type-A fear of failure is just by failing and trying again. Even if it means you have to make a new crafting bench along the way!
My hopes for this space
I want this to be a place to talk about media, culture, reproductive justice, embodied theology, and fitness. These are all facets of my life, and ones that influence my research. As I move through my MDiv program and talk about getting into a PhD program, I hope we can journey together and explore these topics.
To be honest, I also want to start advocating for voices that are often overlooked in theology.
I also want to combine my love of wellness/fitness into my love of theology and explore what that looks like with you, reader.
This community will be one of gentle wonder, curiosity, and kindness. Not niceness - I feel in many theological spaces it’s expected of women, or those who present more feminine, to be nice and not kind. I have had my fair share of cruelty towards me because I wasn’t nice enough- and to be honest, I’m over it. I’ll take kind over nice any day.
I hope to post every Friday, but graduate school will always come first. So expect a post every other Friday just to be safe. Free subscribers will get access to these posts about theology, wellness, and graduate school. When I turn on paid we’ll see content related to discussing fantasy, news stories, and some podcast material.