the block rock

i was playing with my daughter's wooden blocks tonight and realized that i feel like a far more creative person than i did when i was younger. at one point i stopped to look at what i was building and thought, 'how interesting, i never thought that i would see myself build something like that.'

when i was a child, it was all right angles. i can remember the thing that i used to build with my legos. it was based on a very small piece of flat green lego, that any lego user would be familiar with. it was probably 40-50 nubs in length and 25-30 in width. i would build, deconstruct, and rebuild the exact same thing over and over, and it was this: four walls made of interlocked [brick-style staggering] blocks. for the first two years that i had my og primitive lego set, this is what i created.

looking at my latest efforts in wood block, i am staggered by how much i have changed. i never thought outside of the box when i was young. i would buy lego sets when i was old enough to earn some spending money, and build them according to the instructions. i never greatly altered them. i might make some slight modifications to the occasional set, but never did i change the underlying structure of the set.

on the whole, i think this spells greater happiness for me. i feel so much more free and unlimited in my new way of thinking. my childhood was, in retrospect, very much about doing what i was told, but more specifically, doing what i was told was possible. i see so much more of the world from this more expanded viewpoint, and i am the better person for it.