Spending 365 Days in Virtual Reality

I miss my wife my kids I don’t know what I’m doing time is relative sometimes it seems like a minute goes by in only a matter of seconds or an hour might seem like it passes in just tens of minutes sometimes what we are doing or who we are with can

Affect our perception of time or sometimes it’s what you’re wearing last year I decided to test out for myself just what it would be like to spend 365 days also known as a full year in virtual reality I would be free from responsibilities free from all the

Things that affect our mood in the real world no more politics no more fake smiles at work no more picking up the kids from school just me and a world that only concerns me the only responsibilities I’ll have are whatever virtual pets I may have in Minecraft VR we’re learning to become a

Great musician in B Sabre I first decided to do this when I was coming over my job on a Tuesday I’ll admit I had had a pretty bad day with coworkers and customers and I get a call from my wife asking if I could pick up some

Cereal because we were all out of cereal I said yes of course I humped the phone I start driving the grocery store I thought to myself what if I just didn’t do it after that I turned the car around I didn’t go home I ordered a VR headset off Amazon and I

Started planning out how I would be spending 365 days in virtual reality when the headset arrived I had already planned out how my real life responsibilities would be taken care of I hired my friend to show up at work and do my job for me after him the same

Wages that I was paid there so that was no problem I knew my wife would be fine with the kids so that was a non-issue and if anyone else in my life asked what happened to me I told my friend to tell them he never went anywhere far from

But we are very far away from him after one last good meal and a trip to the restroom I do right into it I put on my quest and I said hello to my new home for the first day I just sat there looking at the small minimalistic hub that would be my

House for a full year for hours I just looked around memorizing every inch of the cozy environment I tried to walk towards some of the furniture before hitting the boundary that was a rude awakening to the fact that I wouldn’t truly have the luxuries of real-life objects anymore when you think about

Living in VR you forget that you can’t touch anything at all it’s it’s virtual it’s not real and that was definitely one of those things I had not thought of ahead of time I was kind of sad at first but it wasn’t long until I remembered

That I could just sit on the real-life couch beside me as I lay on that real physical object while falling asleep in VR I couldn’t help but feel comforted by what felt like a bridge from the real world to mine I fell asleep happy looking forward to all the crazy unexpected adventures that

I would purposely put myself in the following day I woke up date two having slept pretty well you don’t realize just how much easier it is to rest when you don’t have that idea in the back of your mind of oh you have people to say good night to or people you have to look at listen to

About their day or else they’ll get upset in my small hut there was no chance of my two-year-old waking me up in the middle of the night Durr my dog waking me up early to go outside it’s just me that’s it I started the day with a hearty workout

Using the boxing training game that I had downloaded the night before I pushed myself for about 10 minutes and went back to my cottage I decided to try and move to another room in the real-life house so that I could connect to my computer but this proved more difficult

Than I had expected without being able to take the headset off it took me a long time to figure out how to navigate to the other room and planned on taking this day to explore an endless blocky world in Minecraft but instead I ended up exploring a simple hallway in real

Life when you can’t see where it starts and where it ends it too seemed like an endless world for me to explore by the time I got to my new room and figured out how to connect my headset to my PC day two was already over I slowly developed my Minecraft world going through the same excitement that any minecraft adventure holds making friends with animals building my dream home and exploring dark scary caverns to find treasure finding my first door was magical it’s funny how when you decide to live in VR and you rid yourself of

Any physical objects and physical pleasures of the real world then these virtual goods hold so much more value to you I was met with such pride at finding that or it was from a certain point of view my only possession of value Day four is when I look back on with dread it was the first day that I started really grasping just what it was I was doing with myself my clothes started to stink my forehead hurt from the pressing headset I began to miss my family and the motion sickness had

Finally began to take its toll my wife my kids at this point I really had to face what I was doing I was sick from the motion in the game I was thinking about my family and my friends my back hurt like a lot most of the day was

Spent staring out at the vast possibility filled world that I was given wondering why I wanted so badly to return to my old home and not the rift hub world no my real home with the hardships that I left behind all the stresses that I wanted so badly to get

Away from why did I desire so deeply to leave this worry-free space why did I want the real world hardships back After day four I came to the realization that I was acting like a big baby so I sucked up my emotions and I decided to grow up my life was minecraft now I was finally okay with them for almost 40 days my routine was waking up heading

Out the door and seeing what new adventure would meet me I grown very accustomed to it and I was willing to spend the rest of my VR life here I was really beginning to feel like I belonged in Minecraft when on day 42 my friend tasked me on

The shoulder and he says hey you’ve been throwing up a ton it stinks in here please play something else you I think at that point I really needed someone to say that to me my friend had reminded me that there was still so much to explore in VR than just

One game and so I said goodbye to my Minecraft life and set forth for another one in beat sabor to learn the art of music I’d always wanted to learn an instrument in real life and now I could finally do that without the interruptions of the real world I

Started the game chose the first song and began what would be the greatest learning curve of my entire life forty days later beat saber had taken over my brain all my focus all my emotion on my value was based around these colored squares and the only reward I felt as a

Human being was directly swiping through them with my lightsabers I had grown a lot in those forty days finally being able to beat songs on medium difficulty and at the time I felt like I had finally reached my potential in the game when you play every Green Day song over

200 times you you get the feeling that you’ve learned all the game is gonna teach you so I moved on to another game at this point I was very proud of what I had accomplished in both games I’ve played and I had come to terms with the

Idea of being alone and being away from my past life and the people who occupied it but as any human would there were still days where I felt extra lonely or just wished for a minute of interaction with another living being so I decided next to venture into the

World of moss a game that I was told could melt the heart of even a hardened killer and in the days to come I would say that’s the greatest understatement of our modern times my life in Minecraft and beat Sabre had brought me through the many ups and downs of adventure

Challenge risk and reward but all throughout they lacked the companionship that I found in my life playing through moss as I guided the main character through the mystical danger filled world I felt like quill and I grew very close to one another with every puzzle we solved and high-five we exchanged I felt

The humanity returning to my emotionless self now Moss is a really short game it took me maybe three hours to beat it on my first try but by the hundred and fiftieth playthrough I really started to feel a connection to this Mouse character it was it was a greater bond than probably

Anything I had formed in my past real life every time I would begin playing through the story again quill would meet me for the first time in that starting cutscene for getting all of what past memories we had made but with each first encounter I felt like deep down she knew

Who I was that somewhere somehow she had this deep memory of what we had gone through in the last playthrough after some time as I guided her time and time again through the dangers and hardships that the game threw at us I took my role as her protector more and

More seriously and eventually cared for her as I did my own real-life daughter perhaps even more so after a while the day came where I felt like I had helped quill as much as a father should I taught her how to brave the dangers of this world to the best of

My knowledge and one day I just knew she would be fine without me so I moved on other games I lived other lives I never forgot the ones that I had lived but with Minecraft and beat Sabre I had always felt like staying alive was my top priority

Living on to see what the next adventure would be what Leyden store for me after each game I was the most important thing to me through those games and I had so much to live for but things change after raising a child into the world there was still a lot to

Explore don’t get me wrong but I know the purpose of my life was to raise quill to the best of my abilities and with that being done I didn’t worry about what might happen to me anymore and so my life simply went on in an almost worried ‘less way with my life’s

Purpose complete I simply drifted about from game to game taking in experiences as that of a retired soldier for the rest of my VR days finally the day had come it had been one year since I began my journey into a life of VR and I felt

Like I had lived a thousand lives within the course of only a fraction of time it was time to finally take off the headset I honestly was scared and a bit sad because I felt like I could have spent my whole life in VR but I knew my time

Had come for one thing I had played through every game on the store and probably around a hundred times seeing as they’re so short I was spending around $400 a month on Google Drive storage to keep recording everything it was time to face the real world again

And so I said my last goodbyes to my small Hut and prepared to shut down the quest when as if the end of my journey had been known to the whole world I get a timely phone call right as I’m taking my headset off my wife calls me and says

Where have you been I wasn’t able to speak words because I hadn’t spoken in like a year so I could only make mumbling sounds and she says hey where have you been for the past five days I hadn’t spoken to anyone for a year keep

In mind and I said she said yeah you were supposed to pick up cereal like five days ago and you just never came home and I just sat there thinking to myself I’ve been in VR for 365 days I’ve been counting the time in my head since

Day one I know it’s been that long and then it dawned on me VR has to be the secret to time travel You