Losing Kate

On Monday February 16th, I submitted my application to SCAD’s graphic design masters program. It was a year long processes of learning, struggling to understand how frames work in Adobe InDesign, and finding my point of view as a designer.

When it ended and before getting my acceptance letter, I have been trying to shut my brain off in a constructive way. So I have been going crazy on the new switch game Tiny Bookshop. It rocks.

Building a portfolio from scratch had me making decisions about five million things from limitless options all at once. And in this game there are five tasks:

• Buy books
• Sell books
• Recommend book
• Decorate
• Chat

It’s perfect. And you get to suggest real books in the game to customers which means I am getting recommendations for myself.

It’s nice to do tasks for a small virtual community. I know it’s silly, but completing quests for the townspeople reminds me what’s important in life. Doing what you’re good at and being with people.

Building my portfolio was also mostly solitary work. Duncan and other friends helped me look over everything, but mostly I was creating alone. Now that the grind is over, I’ve been thinking about how I can re-engage with the different levels of community I’m a part of.

I have close friends from college and from Duncan’s lab that I reach out to. I have coworkers who I talk to about more than just work with. I am on a first-name basis with people (and animals) at the dog park. But this game has inspired me to build out the bottom rung.

I went to a local shop to buy a birthday present for my sister, and I deliberately chose not to wear my noise cancelling headphones. Instead I chatted with an employee about how it’s dangerous that they have Baggu stocked because I am obsessed with their bags.

I didn’t have the most profound interactions with people in my life, but it reminded me that I am surrounded by others also trying to live a good life.

And sometimes it is profound. Duncan and I went to brunch after going to church. Our waiter was wearing a hand-crafted silver bracelet.

I told him I liked it, and he said it was from his mother in Sweden. We learned he fell in love with an American boy while auditioning for acting roles in Atlanta. He enjoys travel and is meeting up with his mom in Paris later this year.

And if I had never said I liked his bracelet, I would never know that I lived in a city home to such a love story.