steppingvistas

[steppingvistas]

[steppingvistas]

With about 1,600 hours in MSFS 2020 and already about 100 hours in MSFS 2024 I thought I might return to my roots. On one of my first tumblr blogs (now lost to history) I began posting about my first digital journey back in 2021 for almost half a year. Many things have changed in my life, but some things stayed the same - my love for this genre of simulators for once, as well as my need to travel - whether irl or virtual.

This will be infrequent, perhaps disjointed, but some people might enjoy it. So here are the first pictures, taken today - the city of Eilenburg (1), the Elbe River near Muehlberg (2), the Boxberg Power Plant (3) and the Polish town of Boleslawiec (4).

[steppingvistas]

allow yourself to feel the pride in worshipping your deities. allow yourself to be enveloped by their warmth, love, and abundance.

if there’s one thing you shouldn’t do, you should never conform to what other people expect of you. and that goes for either giving up your religion or practicing it in a way people preach on being “right”.

do it the way you find best. reach for that comfort instead of making your practice yet another challenging obstacle.

[steppingvistas]

Sometimes offerings can look like devoting acts to the gods

Sometimes offerings can look like just giving the gods a simple glass of water

Sometimes offerings can look like making things in honour of the gods

Sometimes offerings can look like giving the gods cool rocks you find

Offerings don’t have to be big or expensive to be good offerings, it’s the thought that is most important

[steppingvistas]

I like people the same way I like art pieces, without touching, and without contact. I like thinking about them and the way they behave, but not enough to get close. Having a relationship sorely based on respect and interactions is enough for me to consider someone a friend. I like my friends, the people I get along with are just fine since they don't expect anything from me.

I love seeing your shiny life through pictures, but I don't want to be part of it. I love you in my own way, but please don't perceive me or worry about me. I'm just an observer.

[steppingvistas]

Just got this bittersweet feeling of pure nostalgia while scrolling through a list of currently available MMO's.

Between 2007-2011 I played EVERY F2P MMO available in Germany: Runes of Magic, Allods Online, AION, TERA, Metin 2 - everything. I loved exploring these worlds - mostly solo - while knowing that the people around me were real people doing their stuff and not just virtual NPC's.

When it launched I began playing Guild Wars 2 and joined my first guild, meeting other players on my own initiative and chatting with them for the first time. In 2013 I switched to World of Warcraft and stayed there for the last 10 years.

And yet I still miss these old times when I didn't have the money for P2P or subscription based games. When terms like character progression, Pay2Win, build balancing and Discord guilds had no meaning for me. When I just went into a new world every few months, free to explore it and free to drop it when I stopped enjoying it without caring about the game's objective quality.

[steppingvistas]

Hello welcome my ADHD themed gameshow, "So you were holding it literally moments ago but now it's gone" the where YOU look for whatever you were just holding while going increasingly mad

[steppingvistas]

Finished Greedfall (Fem!De Sardet, Siora Romance, Anticolonialist Decisions, Kill Constantin) and all I can think about is this:

Petrus "The-Dad-Who-Stepped-Up" seeing De Sardet falling hard for a beautiful Doneigad (just like he fell for her mother all those years ago) and going "Oh Illuminated, no! She is as dumb as me!"

I actually ran most of the game with the "Found Family Squad" of De Sardet - Siora - Petrus. While supporting the native uprising for the entire time. It was great ❤️

[steppingvistas]

raskolnikov going outside for 2 seconds and immediately being exhausted by people to the point of fainting and delirium is. so me

[steppingvistas]

"That's not like you to lose face"

Has anyone else recently played Red Dead Redemption II? Well I did. It is "the" game if you want a great story, relatable characters and a living world in which even your horses testies have a realistic reaction to the cold! Anyways, I played it and noticed something funny today: Let's talk about how our brain comes up with the strangest connections when it is well-fed with source material from all over the media landscape!

By now readers should know that I like to put song lyrics in the headings of these posts. Most of them are from songs I've heard in the radio during my virtual world trip in the flight simulator. Today's quote comes from 1980's "Too Bad" by Doug and the Slugs. Heard it on a station in Kincardine, Ontario while crossing Lake Huron over to Michigan.

So what did my brain do? It created a link between the song's lyrics and RDR II's master planner Dutch van der Linde. And at first I had to check if the song wasn't on the official soundtrack since it could be his actual character theme.

Yes, the original song isn't about cowboys or outlaws or robberies at all! But it also fits a certain Mr. "Tahiti!", serving as a hillarious callout to his rampant narcissism, his failure at planning his heists and getaways and his utter unwillingness to learn from any of his mistakes. Even funnier as the artist's voice somewhat reminds me of Hosea.

I can only recommend the song to any RDR II fan - listen to it, close your eyes and think about trolley stations (without forgetting the quarter! hehe..)

[steppingvistas]

"You can't go in alone, everybody needs help"

What I love about Country music from backwater stations is their applicability. People sing about normal life. No posing, no storytelling, no dramatic twists and turns - they force you to evaluate your way of living and thinking by being so "normal".

The quote above belongs to a song I heard on a station from Burlington, Vermont while flying to Alexandria Bay. It concerned our need for real connection, for friendships with people we can trust. Trust is a difficult topic for me: I have lost my trust in others many times and I have given them cause to lose their trust in me, too. If you have a fast-moving brain and a faster-moving tongue, it happens. So to build and maintain stable relationships you have to learn to keep yourself in check. To go against the pressing need to perform for others, to stand in the center of attention.

I don't believe in "thinking of others before you think of yourself". I believe there is enough capacity to care for both. It is trying and sometimes you will fail. Sometimes you will disappoint those closest to you and sometimes they will disappoint you. But in the end it is the desire to try honestly that counts for me. And more often than not it will enable you to win back their trust or build new faith in them.

[steppingvistas]

"Beacon of Hope"

I have to confess - I struggle a lot with my favourite piece of software. More than 900 hours in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and I still ask myself: "Do I really want to fly?" But no, most of the time the question is more existential in nature: "What is the purpose of all this?"

Just picking a route and flying is a great way to kill time. It may also be great if you are either new to "the sim" or if you actually care about this specific place or region. But I never felt content with those free flights. I need a purpose, I can't just do things without a good reason. Which sucks - I am rather unable to stick to most of my plans either.

Yet the question remains as I actually figured out yesterday that I like flying and I want to fly on a regular basis. So how do I motivate myself? By writing about it. I will use this blog to write about all the little thoughts, the ideas that come up, the experience of virtual flight in a virtual world. Not a plan but a certain kind of commitment to bind myself.

This blog will be my beacon of hope - hope that I will complete my first world trip after three years of looking for motivation.

[steppingvistas]