Maru Mori
While attending an optician appointment last week a comment was made referring to me as middle aged. While perhaps my job and interests certainly make me feel younger than I am, the reality is, I am now at the midway point of my life. Hearing that from someone else really resonated with me and instilled a sense of urgency that has been absent for some time. Immediately I started thinking about things I want to do, goals I would like to achieve - the little things that occupy my thought process on a daily basis.
I have an urge to work on game art, something that has brought me joy and indeed a career for many years. I have a huge backlog of books, TV shows and video games that I want to experience and reflect upon. My enthusiasm for scale model building is at an all time high and I genuinely want to grow my knowledge and understanding of the various techniques and processes associated with the hobby in a meaningful way.
This new found optimism and energy has given birth to Maru Mori; a space where I can discuss what I find interesting, document my hobbies, reflecting on my creative endeavours and review the content that I consume. I have no interest in growing an audience (even writing that makes me cringe), I've gone down that path before and I have no desire to pursue it again. What follows is largely for me. If others stumble across it and find it interesting that's cool, but I will not be engaging in social media or trying to actively promote what I publish here.
Some of the topics that I intend to explore include:
Game Art - commentary, tutorials and portfolio content.
Video Games - commentary and reviews.
Scale Model Building - commentary, reviews, reflection on builds and techniques, video content.
Photography - commentary, reviews,
Warhammer 40K - commentary, reviews, reflection on builds and techniques, video content.
Books - commentary and reviews.
Content Creation - commentary and product reviews.
TV, Film, Anime - commentary and reviews.
If any of these topics are of interest to you, perhaps consider subscribing to the blog so that you can receive notifications of when I post.
To wrap up this first post and give some additional context to the blog, I felt it noteworthy to discuss the origin of the its name. I recently picked up a book called the "The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows". This is a wonderful exploration of made up terms that describe certain feelings and sensations. Maru Mori is taken from this book and refers to the heart breaking simplicity of ordinary things. You can read more about this concept and explore the book in more detail here.
“So much of life is spent in ordinary time. There’s no grand struggle, no sacraments, no epiphanies. Just simple domesticity, captured in little images, here and there. All the cheap little objects. The jittering rattle of an oscillating fan; a pair of toothbrushes waiting in a cup by the sink. There’s the ragged squeal of an old screen door, the dry electronic screech of a receipt being printed, the ambient roar of someone showering upstairs. And the feeling of pulling on a pair of wool socks on a winter morning and peeling them off at the end of the day. These are sensations that pass without a second thought.”