L012/013 2023.06.11
No title (part 1)
A goal was achieved. Only 12 mazes remain until stage 2 of k3Q× is finished, and the numbers indicate that I can get there before this year is over.
The pacing has been slow but steady, more than ever, so even if the progress of this year is as minimal as 2%, it still feels more promising than the previous 30% acomplished in the span of about 7 years.
The plan as of right now is to finish stage 2, and make some preparations for stage 3 in the first two months of 2024, before taking a leap to pursue this maze full time for about a year, in order to make some substantial progress before having to return into an ordinary job in case I canʼt find a good source of income that allows me to keep the full time rhythm in maze making.
In the meantime, however, there is still plenty of road ahead, many mazes to be done, so letʼs set aside those sublime plans for a while to focus on the things required to make them happen.
The things to do are quite straightforward, though, since all thatʼs needed is to keep going at the same pace. One hour a day, up to 6 on weekends and days off. Draw the sketches, trace them over digitally, do some tests to find any mistakes and correct those flaws. Nothing special at this point.
What else…
Seems to me like Iʼm just saying the same as always, but I guess itʼs fine to remember where are we standing and how much have we moved past the point we were the day before. Not to mention that there is probably people who is reading about this for the first time, and maybe is grateful for the extra context.
Who knows.
What else…
Life outside the net is somewhat similar to that inside it. Things get done, stuff happens, we need to adjust to some changes here and there, and once things get a bit stable, we can make a relatively relaxed living knowing that at least we are neither in immediate risk of being teared appart by external forces, nor particularly suceptible to implode victim of the chaos inside us.
Itʼs nothing spectacular, incredible, amazing or unheard of.
But, maybe itʼs actually amazing, not to me, because Iʼve been at the eye of this storm for so long to get used to it, to feel almost numb at times.
…
To be so endlessly tired to the point of considering it the norm; to deal with so much excitement to be in tune with it; to take on so much stress to forget what itʼs opposite feels like; to bath in so much comfort to find it impossible to take on any substantial effort. To live surrounded with so much love to conceive the possibility of a single day of loneliness. To be so hopelessly driven towards a certain goal to even imagine a life without a laser-focus aim into the future.
A life so carefree to consider the idea of something being important.
Every extreme and every point in between, including the abstract ground zero of absolute apathy where a rock or a dead tree appear to be more sensitive than one self.
Some kind of existence so unique that it becomes… the norm.
Itʼs that idea of “so much variety becomes equal in itʼs uniqueness, becomes mundane”.
So, what makes anything amazing in the first place? Well, it might be something as obvious as being unknown to one self, since no matter how “not unique” might be anything on face of the overwhelming “uniqueness” all around, we can only see and experience the smallest amount of that, to ever really become fully numb to all there is to perceive.
Of course, there are conditions capable of triggering such numbness, and there is people living in such small societies to ever get the chance to experience the bare minimum of this uniqueness, so abundant outside the physical or abstract boundaries around them.
But the unknown is not just marvel and awe, but also uncertainty and dread. A world where everyone is a potential enemy, or might be secretly malicious towards you for no other reason than some superficial and ephemeral gain to be obtained by harming or betraying you.
All of that happens at the same time all around the world. Maybe in the future it will become a common thing, even outside the boundaries of this big tiny planet, because no matter where we go, all our human traits will follow us.
Every contradiction, every piece of absurdity, all of our fears and desires tangled with those of so many others across time and space, become that peculiar mass called humanity.
No title (part 2)
But isn’t all that obvious? Its not some hidden knowledge you can not access by simply rambling to yourself a couple minutes. But there is people who just can not afford to do that, who are afraid of doing that, or simply doesn’t want to.
I’ve been there. I’m there.
Sitting in front of the screen to type this unamusing pieces of self reflection is hard. There are many distractors at hand, and there is so much to do instead of thinking by yourself about yourself. I get stuck so constantly to even keep track of what I was thinking a paragraph earlier. There is no plan or clear sketch to guide my thoughts. Unlike the mazes, there is no path to follow or real answer you can verify in a couple of hours. Here is just a blank canvas to fill with ideas about anything that seems to be important, but having no clue about what to write about ends up more often than not in a spiraling delving into the act of writing about the act of writing about the act of thinking about the act of doing anything about the act of being.
Or something like that.
Shake off those meaningless words and try to find some meaning beneath the dust of your scathered thoughts.
It’s not futile to think about the obvious, since it’s just so obvious that we stop thinking about it.
Think of some kids tale about being nice to each other, a lesson so worn out that we just end stop thinking about. Maybe we feel the urge to go against it in some sort of adolescent rebellion, maybe we need to break the rules before finding some value in following them or vice versa. Maybe listening or reading about so many “real” things doesn’t make any difference in our ideas until we get to experience them in our own flesh to solidify those “realities” we keep on hearing since we were on the cradle.
But isn’t that obvious as well?
After all, we make movies and books about people doing things, not about them watching movies or reading books. There is no point in that, even if the act of watching or reading stuff can provide meaning as well, but you know what I mean, right?
These are not new ideas by any means. There are not many ideas that are not just a new attire on the same ideas from a thousand years ago, only adapted to fit the current time. I’m not writing something that hasn’t been said before in a million different ways in every existing language all around the globe, but maybe, just maybe, this might be the first time to someone glancing to this ideas, or not even the first, but the one to actually reach them for whatever reason.
We don’t need new ideas, but new ways of saying the same ones already told before, for those never exposed to them.
So, here is the moment to say something special, something impactful, something that will be engraved into your soul as it is your first and only time to experience this very instant of your life:
…
No, nothing.
There is no big revelation, no grand truth spilling out of my rambling, unless you actually find it by chance by mixing it up with your own thoughts and experiences.
Yeah, that’s probably the key of finding meaning: having your own thought process, delving into your own mind. To add memories and make connections. Find some patterns and break some others.
Simple as that.
Right?
— ef
L011 2023.05.10
Possibility of Youth
Back when you were a child, did you ever dreamt of being an astronaut?
Maybe.
Did you ever dreamt of becoming a janitor?
Maybe not.
Did you ever dreamt of growing to be an online dating ghostwriter?
Highly doubt so.
In any case, what does it take to fulfill your childhood dreams?
Step number one: Have a dream to pursue.
But where do we get our dreams from? TV? books? family and relatives?
How could you possibly dream to be an astronaut if your environment dictates that such a thing is more akin to science fiction than to a real human achievement conquered for the first time decades ago?
How could you possibly dream to be a janitor if you happen to know at least one who doesn’t seem to enjoy their life?
How could you possibly dream to be an online dating ghostwriter if such a mix of words doesn’t even exist in your vocabulary?
There are many things that just doesn’t appear in our minds as possible outcomes simply because we all have a very limited amount of knowledge available about anything.
Maybe that’s all the reason behind every irresolute teenager incapable of choosing a career path.
Maybe they haven’t found the very specific thing they actually might enjoy. Maybe they don’t see themselves as capable of even making a decition on their own, instead following blindly the linneage of their not particularly succesful family. Maybe there is something they want to do, but they don’t even know how to put it into words, let alone feeling capable the capacity of making that a sustainable source of income for a living.
So, there is a step prior to having a dream to pursue, and that is: having the proper quantity and quality of data regarding what an human being is capable of achieving, not to mention the right amount of encouragement to go-try-fail-and-retry as many times as necessary before making a choice.
Not quite easy.
…
Do you have any dream as of right now?
— ef
L010 2023.04.07
A mesmerizing view
Nothing.
Nothing comes to my mind as I sit in front of the screen to write the tenth entry of this log.
Is it just the tenth? It feels like it took an eternity to get to this point. Well, apparently, the first one was published just a month before 2021 ended. So, one year and four months later, and only six new mazes from k3qx have been uploaded, including today’s entry: layer 125.
What else?
This has become quite a repetitive routine. Wake up, get ready, go work, do stuff, eat, do stuff, go home, draw maze, eat stuff, entertain self, sleep.
Just a year ago it kinda feel like a struck of luck being able to have such a mundane lifestyle, instead of being on the verge of starvation due to what could only be refered to, as a high level of incompetence in basic human deeds.
Now, you could say that being able to made it successfully through the last year, and being consistently “ok” most of the time is an achievement worth celebrating, and I wouldn’t say you are wrong, but at the same time, once the status quo is in “ok” state, if that doesn’t change, neither for the good, nor the bad, it just starts to feel dull.
Is that a byproduct of our idealization on self improvement and non-stop “evolution”?
I kind of hate those trends and ideas. To be part of a big mass of malleable souls feeding on the same cookie cut tales sold for very little on every screen at any corner you gaze upon.
But trying to escape such system while having your entire sense of self build upon the existence of all the above doesn’t seem all that effective. Trying so hard to detach from something requires you to acknowledge and stay constantly focused on such things just so you know what is that thing you are trying to get away from.
Stop focusing on that for a brief amount of time, and you get drawn by it, not because it suddenly appears more enticing, but because you have been looking at it for so long that you don’t know anything else to put your attention in. And only years later you realize that the change inside you was so smooth and flawless that there was no way you could consciously achieve that on your own even if you were to try your hardest back then.
So, you feel utterly defeated, unable to comprehend how could you possibly change so much in the relatively short amount of a couple years, to the point where the past self seems unrecognizable by the new one.
“Where am I? How did I get here? Where am I going?”
You try to find a way in those empty hallways leading seamingly to nowhere, but it all looks exactly the same.
It is not the same, and you know it, you feel it, but you don’t know what it actually is.
So you keep walking until you find a sort of comfort in the act of moving, having a sense of security on being more of less able to predict the outcome of your following dozen of steps, which ends up becoming your new truth, your new self.
“I hope things would stay the same”
Until that same sense of security becomes tedious, and way too predictable for it’s own good.
You can predict the outcome of a hundred, a thousand, half a million of your next steps, and unless something really unlikely happens, you are pretty much capable of predicting a future of massive boredom, but you keep walking down the alley, since there is no other path to follow to begin with.
Or is it?
You know, as contradictory as it may seem, unlikely stuff happens all the time, and the reason for that is simple:
There is a lot of everything.
A lot of time goes by every day.
A lot of people do stuff every second.
A lot of unpredictable chain effects take place as a result of things happening all the time.
Even the indescribable hassle of going by a mundane and unexciting daily life is the product and catalyst to all sorts of madness taking place all around the world.
Stop for a moment and look around.
“God, it’s such an awful sight”
Stare at it long enough, and somehow it turns out quite beautiful. The intricate detail in those piles of trash and the overwhelming sight of those shiny landfills expanding before your eyes. The subtle yet powerful agony in the millions of zombified faces incapable of taking an extra drop of stress before crumbling down or exploding against just anyone who seems weaker that one self.
That’s the nature of this unsolvable enigma called humanity.
“How is this still a thing? Why isn’t all falling apart piece by piece just yet?”
Well, you tell me. Why are you still here? How are you still alive?
Dying is so easy. Everyone does it at least once.
Most of us, can only do it once.
But to live, that shit happens an infinite amount of times. You are alive now, you were alive back when you read that last sentence, and you were alive at any given point in between those two instances of time. Measure time by seconds and you have been alive easily a billion times already.
Maybe that’s why it can get so boring at times.
Abrupt end.
Think yourself what comes next.
— ef
L009 2023.03.02
Improve or die (you’ll die regardless)
Then you reach a new highest point, but itʼs neither a summit nor the goal, itʼs just a checkpoint, a moment to take a breath, rest a second and pull yourself together yet again. However, you canʼt stay still for so long, because avalanches take place quite often, and you may get caught in one of them.
Enjoy the journey, enjoy the little moments of joy; we hear that every now and then. As if the destination ainʼt the very reason we keep going, regrdless of how comfortable a certain spot is, no matter how difficult the road gets at times, and no matter how uncertain the very next step might be.
Whoever doesnʼt move forward, goes backwards. But even so, we could be moving forward into our doom, or into the start point by mistake. Can we get drawn backwards into a better place or moment? Who knows.
How many serious attempts at creating a time travel machine have been made? I donʼt know of any. All there is in that regard is theory, science fiction, and photon scale experiments, but nothing nearby to our daily lives.
With that in mind, is reasonable to speculate that we might do better by moving forward, instead of pushing back against time. Of course, itʼs still possible to make a turn, and “go back” while moving forward, but, is that really the same spot it used to be?
You grow used to thinking a lot about those big ideas, then you get sick of them and want nothing else but mindless entertainment. Then you get used to that, so you look for beauty, pleasure, recognition, reaffirmation, more stimulus, knowledge, information, data (not restricted to these points, and certainly not in that specific order) Maybe? Maybe not? Doesnʼt matter.
And there is so much time to kill in this uncomfortable elevator going from every survival checkpoint into the next one. Those seconds seem to last forever, so better fill them with mazes, music, books, or candy crush. Human connections and seemingly fulfilling jobs. Menial chores and meaningles chitchat. Escapism and repetitive news. Religious experiences and scientific glory. Artistic endeavours and practical problem solving. A good meal. Love. Affection and scorn. Duty. Inertia. Faith. Guilt. Debt. Curiosity and awe. Beauty, passion, survival instinct, shame. Power, transcendence. Self esteem. Growth. Pain. Freedom. Friendship.
Is that where our life purpose lies? I donʼt know why, but something about that feels wrong. Thereʼs something missing.
Palpable feelings? Sensorial experience? Memories? Value? Symbols.
Those things and no-things in which we put the meaning.
The act of processing all that comes into us and transform it into something new, and throw it back into the world. Our creative puke in the shape of action.
A song no one is gonna hear, a story no one is gonna read, a fuzzy idea no one is gonna comprehend. Go and smash it into your fellow humansʼ face so they hate you for that. Thatʼs good. Go and ruin someone elseʼs life with your messages. Thatʼs good. Go unnoticed until the rotting smell of your corpse becomes a nuisance to the neighbours. Thatʼs good. Thatʼs life for yaʼll. Stuff happens, and we give it meaning. That meaning is good. That meaning is bad. That meaning is great. That meaning is trash. That meaning is meaningless, so we give it a meaningless meaning, and so on and so forth. It gets better every time. It gets worst every time. And then we die. Thatʼs awesome.
So, is this meaningful for you? What does it mean to me?
— ef
L008 2023.02.11
Fear
So, after a month of working at least one hour daily in k3Q× (and about four in the weekend), I managed to progress about .4% of the entire maze. That makes about 2% every 5 months, so the remaining 70% should take about… 175 months, or… 15 years.
On the bright side, the fact is that somehow I managed to work consistently in k3Q× for a period of time never reached before, even with my dayjob consuming most of my time and energy.
To be honest, that kinda scares me.
On one side, Itʼs been a year since that period where I was on the verge of starvation, doing mazes in irregular bursts of productivity fueled by some kind of desperation to accomplish something before it was too late, and to be honest, some of that feeling still remains.
On the other side, I managed to get a stable source of income, and I even upgraded my computer for the first time in more than a decade, I think, which led to that sudden realization of “wait, isnʼt this the moment I should take to finally resume some of my old projects I keep on procrastinating because my computer is such garbage you can barely do anything with it? Oh, yeah, I donʼt have the time… Oh well, fuck it, Iʼm gonna try anyways”, and so, in the 30th of december of 2022, layer 123 of k3Q× saw some progress for the first time since that time when I published an update with the sketches of layers 121 to 128.
That happened a year ago.
But yeah, one month later, and itʼs done. Layer 123 is done.
And so, layer 124 is already on the making.
My rhythm has not been disrupted after an entire month of daily progress.
And that scares me.
Because it’s something new.
I donʼt know if I will be capable to keep up like this. I donʼt know if something will change, and the little spare time Iʼve got may be reduced even more, maybe there will come a point in which I start to question yet again the worth of this project and my entire life in the process. Could it be that this maze is just a monumental piece of procrastination Iʼm using as an excuse to avoid doing something more important out there in the real world? In any case, if things continue like this, maybe Iʼll get so sucked into a productivity spiral that wonʼt allow me that weird luxury of taking a step back and reflect upon on the road traveled so far, until I found my self entirely lost within a bigger maze than the one Iʼm drawing here, or this could be the path I have been longing for since my childhood, but the mere sight of is is just so blinding I canʼt help but doubt it is even real, and not an illusion created by my spiraling thoughts.
It’s terrifying.
Iʼm kinda glad though.
Iʼm not sure why, but Iʼll try to elaborate on that in the next log, so Iʼm gonna leave this one at that.
I think this log entry was shorter than usual, but I hope the wait until the next one will be shorter as well, so hopefully, a new entry and a new layer of k3Q× will come soon.
Thatʼs not a promise, though.
See ya.
— ef
L007 2022.09.18
A machine made to build itself and find a purpose for its own existence
Today I want to talk about two finished projects of mine, in order to find out how did k3Q× came to be, and where it’s heading to, using those examples as a reference point.
The first one is the simplest of them: a book, a novel of sorts. Let’s dive into its history:
As a part of a project made with friends, I had to create a free writing every week, could be anything, be it poems, fiction, essay… as long as it was an original product made of words, basically anything was fine, so I decided to make 52 letters (one for each week of the year) as a way of reflecting on my own life through the connections I’ve made and break with other human beings.
The first two or three were exactly that, but soon enough I started turning them into small pieces of fiction using those relationships as a basis for individual tales and weird metaphors.
By the point I reached the 10th writing, I decided to make a sort of “adventure story”, exploring all the different concepts and ideas that started boiling in my head as a result of making those first “letters”. It turned into a continuous narrative instead of isolated pieces.
I didnʼt have a specific message in mind, not a clear direction, not an ending planed, and certainly not a detailed worldbuilding or deeply thought characters, because the thing that made me choose that path for the project, was the surprise factor in having just the bare minimum of planning ahead, while most of each weekʼs chapter was unpredictable to me, as much as it was to anyone reading those weekly writtings back then.
The final product ended up being a chaos of a narrative that imploded due to its many flaws, with the best more-or-less-satisfactory conclusion being a self introspection on those flaws and everything that lead to such mess. I made only a handful of physical copies of the book to sell among friends (which were never sold out), and a free e-book available for a limited time in my main website at the time.
So, that book was not an overwhelming success, but it was my first independent project properly finished, and even if the writting itself was amateur at best, I was mostly satisfied with the process, since one of my main reasons to create stuff is to make something that surprises me, something not even I can predict, even if the result doesnʼt quite fit into conventional quality standards.
The second one is an encrypted book (still available for free), which was made following a similar recipe than the previous book.
However, this time, I made a smaller story, with a properly planned narrative that would touch on 80 topics I wanted to explore out of a list of 300 ideas I compiled through the span of about 3 years. I had a bunch of self imposed limitations in order to keep the story in an established direction, but left a lot of free range to have still plenty of room for improvisation, not to mention that the fact of being encrypted from beginning to end was an idea I had for a different project, but ended up finding itʼs way into this book, becoming a core element of the message I tried to convey with the entire project (because thereʼs an actual message in this book, which also evolved as time went by).
As a result, I can confidently say that this second project is way better than the previous one, yet, whether my writing is any good, or if the message is worth the effort needed to access it, is something I canʼt give an answer to, and since no one has decrypted it yet (as far as I know), there are no existing opinions about the book based on anything else than its presentation.
In any case, it was a very satisfying result, even if the creation process went through hell and back, because it was made in a very harsh period of my life, and the physical version had to be put in indefinite wait until I can afford its production, which doesnʼt seem to be happening anytime soon.
And so, we reach k3Q×, a project that began even before those two, but is still far from being finished, since it ended up growing way more than I could possibly expect.
You see, the goal at first was simple: to make the hardest maze in the world (not necessarily the larger, but still pretty big, made by a single person, without the help of any maze-creation algorithm, while being properly tested to be sure it’s perfectly solvable, and carefully digitalized in order to make it available be it a physical release or in an interactive fashion).
Turns out I spent like 20 minutes drawing some lines in a small piece of paper before realizing I had no clue on how to make a maze, let alone the hardest in the world, so I went for a small goal, and started drawing some easy mazes, filling up some pages until I had the first layout for Stage 01 of k3Q× already done. I used those foundations to come up with the difficulty increasing rate, and planned it so the final layers would be that “hardest maze ever”, not knowing that this process would be so demanding in terms of time and effort, to the point that almost a decade after the goal was established, Iʼm barely at 30% completion, not to mention that I had the brilliant idea to make k3Q× into yet another piece of fiction, using the mazes as a “side a” of a two sides project in which the entire path traveled will be fundamental to the message I want to build in “side b”.
But then again, most of this was not in the original plan. I wanted to make a single maze, but as time went on, it growth to the point where thatʼs not enough, and even if Iʼm just creating a monster of a project Iʼm not able to tackle in my entire life, I want to make it happen for as long as I can work on it.
Anyways, I canʼt go into more details, since k3Q×ʼs “side b” is still in an early stage, but needles to say, the result is gonna be a surprise at the very least. And letʼs not talk about my fourth big project, which is only a wild idea just as big as an entire enciclopedia made by a single person. That shit is gonna be my doom, asuming my full time job doesnʼt erradicate me before I even start.
Wish me luck.
Oh, and there is no new maze for k3Q× along this entry. Instead, a bunch of mazes Iʼve made as practice or as pure hobby were added to the website. Enjoy them while I go back to work in yet another project, which is a derivative work (not an original creation of mine), so it doesnʼt fit todayʼs log, but it certainly is just as time consuming as any other project, and it might be relevant here in the future.
See you then.
— ef
L006 2022.04.10
Success ~ Failure
As previously predicted, my spare time has disappeared almost completely, and the rythm in which I can work in k3Q× has declined considerably. Iʼm no longer at the verge of starvation, and Iʼm doing just fine on a daily basis, but is that the best possible outcome? I donʼt think so, but still, itʼs not like I have a better path in front of me.
Maybe…
At least not yet…
Lost within the maze as always, there is no other choice than keep walking, even after days and weeks and months and years of not knowing where are you going, even after an eternity of not knowing where are you headed to, or what are you looking for at your final destination.
“Someday, someday, may we reach it, the sky”
But today is not the day.
Today we have to struggle, today we have to ponder, today we have to set aside our dreams and hopes, today we have to work… Until we earn a day off, until we find a moment of peace, until we get some vacations, until we just die at some point.
Whatever comes first.
Furthermore, the very small amount of time I can spend in k3Q× means that at the current pace, the project will probably not be finished in this lifetime. Itʼs just not feasible, especially considering that I want to do other things, so the maze isnʼt even always my top priority whenever I have some time at hands.
Time.
Ainʼt that shit incredibly valuable?
Yet, I happen to live in a place where human life isnʼt as valuable as it probably is somewhere else.
Bad luck, I guess.
Bad luck shared with millions and millions around the world.
Maybe itʼs just the “regular luck”, maybe Iʼm actually more fortunate that most people, but my limited vision spectrum impedes me to appreciate my real position in the scale of worldwide luckyness, asuming there is such a thing.
Good luck, I guess.
…
Do you feel lucky, anonymous traveler?
Are you happy with the current state of your life?
Do you consider your daily life a success on itʼs own, or is it a failure to be fixed at some point?
Whatever it is… it is and that’s it.
So, I guess you just have to keep walking, whether you like it or not, change is inevitable, so be careful with your steps, or you might get lost like many others around here.
(But who really knows where are they standing at the moment or where are they going? Is it possible to know for sure such things? Everything is speculation in some degree…)
Anyway, I managed to finish layer 122 of k3Q×, but Iʼm not jumping straight into 123, since my current situation urges me to reconsider what to do with my limited spare time, so Iʼm going into a hiatus in order to work in other proyects that doesnʼt require decades until completion.
Keep an eye open for whatever comes next.
See you later, maybe…
— ef
L005 2022.02.10
How to become a millionaire while following your dreams, or…
Why is it that I want so badly to keep going with this project? There are many things Iʼve given up on, not sparing a second thought on. Many things I wanted to do or to become that simply didnʼt happened, many dreams I just set aside out of fear, ignorance, lack of resources or unsufficient will to keep going. Even if many of those goals are still not unreachable at this point, I just donʼt care enough about them right now, and yet, one of the most eclectic, unambitious or broadly appealing projects is the one Iʼm betting on every last penny remaining in my pockets. Why?
Why am I spending entire days drawing a maze when Iʼm at the verge of total bankruptcy, instead of doing something that can actually keep me away from starvation?
Well, itʼs simple.
Because this is what I want to do, or so I think.
(Or so I want to believe…)
Iʼve spent my entire life going with the flow, not thinking much about the future, expecting that things play out just fine. Nothing excellent has happened, nothing particularly exciting or truly inspiring, but neither something really bad or catastrophically life-changing. A quite existence, that is.
But then, reality strikes, you are no longer a child, you shall take a step into the unknown and look for your own purpose, which is not just about finding a way of living, but about choosing what will you be living for.
What is that you are gonna aim to.
Thatʼs an easy question for some, not so much for many others.
“I want creative freedom” has grown as some sort of goal for me, and, in a way, this little maze is the embodiement of that, but such kind of freedom is pretty much unsustainable if you canʼt make it your way of living.
Business isn’t my forte. Iʼd say is even my weakest point, since I do not like advertising, marketing, promotion and all that stuff.
“If you need or want something, you look for it, if you donʼt, there is no need for someone else come at you to tell you to buy something you are not looking for in the first place”
But who the hell wants this maze to exist (besides me, of course)? Who is willing to put resources into allowing the continuation of this project (besides me, of course)? Who believes there is value in the time and effort spent here (…)?
I donʼt know. Very few, maybe none, which is something that doesnʼt come as a surprise to be honest. I already knew very well this could be the lost niche of a niche within another niche. This isnʼt something that will become viral and suddenly transform into a reliable source of income to keep the project going.
In order to recover just a minimum of the work invested, I probably need many years of regularly documented and published work, but I donʼt have years to spare, not even months.
In less than two weeks, my savings will drain completly. I have to collect some debts so I can persist some extra time, while selling my remaining non-crucial possesions in order to allow me just another breath of “creative freedom”.
But, is that enough? No, not at all. Or at least, I donʼt think so.
So, why keep going?
…
I have lost many things in these years, and I keep losing them as time goes by, which isnʼt something necessarily negative, since Iʼm learning to let things go and to not get overly attached to a wide variety of stuff, but still, there’s that old pipe dream of artistic integrity that urges me into holding on with teeth and nails into this project, even if my chances of coming out victorious are inferior to the 0.1%, and the consequences of failing are no less than a severe breakdown I might not be able to overcome any time soon, since the tools to do so are mostly unavailable at best.
But thatʼs precisely why I feel the need to keep going. Maybe Iʼm just a bad gambler who doesnʼt know when to admit defeat and keeps losing everything for the smallest chance of a miraculous comeback, or maybe thatʼs exactly the only way of winning the prize Iʼm after at, and therefore, as little as the opportunity is, there is not a better way of achieving the only goal that justifies my eccentric behaviour.
I donʼt know.
Do you know? I donʼt think so.
The only thing I’m sure of, is that I know nothing, and even that is still an assumption. I might be doing the best I can, I might be doing the worst I can, so I wonʼt tell you that your thoughts and opinions about my procedures are right or wrong, since they are just assumptions to my eyes, since you really know nothing, just as me.
Do you have proper documentation and statistics that support your point of view? Does everything in your carefully crafted calculations says that my path is 99.999% destined to failure? Thatʼs fine, Iʼll take that 0.001% remaining.
Itʼs not like I have such a strong attachment to anything I can lose at this point, besides the one thing I’m clenching on (my creative freedom) which might be the biggest lose I can think of, so I really really want to triumph, and because of that, Iʼll keep moving forward, with the ever present thought that this might be the very last chance I get to do what I want to do, in the hopes of being able to reach the point where instead of losing things and letting my dreams fade away, I can actually pursue new goals, while acquiring new tools to make those become a new reality in the new world Iʼll dwell at some point in the future.
…
Yet, as of today, layer 121 of k3Q× and every other update I drop here and there are the most I can provide as a proof of my resolve. Those +70 hours poured in a maze +many more deposited in related tasks shall be the testament of what I was capable of doing at this point of my life. Is that enough? I donʼt think so, but maybe it is, I donʼt know. Therefore, I guess I have to keep working.
Thatʼs all I have for today. Nothing really that important. Just the current events. Like going out to buy some candy. As mundane as that. And so, we keep living as we always do. Nothing changes. Things just happen, until they donʼt. No more, no less, I guess.
— ef
L004 2022.01.20
The altruistic egoism theory (or, is this project useful?)
Everything changes, to remain the same is impossible, since the very act of perpetuate the state of something requires to put concious effort in avoiding itʼs deterioration, by taking energy from somewhere else, by “consuming” X in order to “preserve” something estimated as more valuable than the thing consumed in the process.
That said, we can state that we live for two basic purposes. First, to preserve our own life, by consuming the resources necesary for the meat vessel we require as entities, and second, to consume that very life of ours to preserve the gigantic abstract being known as humanity.
(Why does humanity requires itʼs own existence? Is there a more complex system consuming humanity to preserve itself? We wonʼt dig into that here, not today at least)
So, basically, everything we make and stop making with our lifes is what we percieve (conciously or not) as the most appropiate way of preserving our species, just like every organ or cell withing us works all the time in keeping us alive.
Itʼs easy to say that those we know as altruistic people, “good people”, are inmproving our lifes, while those known as unnadapted people, like criminals, or “bad people” are a direct threat to our existence. Then, there is everything in between, those grey areas of people with both “good” and “bad” qualities, which basically entails the entirety of human kind, since there is no pure “good” or “evil”.
So, what does any of this have to do with this maze?
You see, itʼs very easy to look at the amount of time this project has required already (not to mention the energy necessary to reach the end of it), and say: Is it really worth it? Is this really useful for the greater good? Isnʼt just the work a malfunctioning creature wasting resources that could be better used in a different way? Why not put that effort into something clearly more benefitial for the species?
Well, so here is the thing. I donʼt really know if anything I do or make is any “good” or “bad”, but just as all of us keep choosing to stay alive again and again every second (maybe because our bodies are programmed to do so), we do the same for humanity because thatʼs what we believe itʼs the best course of action. We are, at the same time, egoistic for using any means necessary to keep going our individual existence an our projects for as much time as we can, but we do so because we believe thatʼs the best for the species.
We are egoistic at taking our own lifes regardless of any inconvenience we may cause to others derived from that, but anyone in that position firmly believes that such a choice will be ultimately more benefitial than harmful for themselves and everyone still alive.
However, we are not capable of knowing if anything we make is actually having the impact we desire, because there are so many variables at place to actually be capable of knowing for sure if at any second of our life are we making the right choice.
We could very well be humanityʼs cancer, overconsuming valuable resources in futile enveavours, leading to hardships that we just donʼt percieve as such because our limited understanding of reality. We could be the allergy overreacting to certain stimulus, spreading panic and breaking the delicate control of society, even if we think itʼs the most rational behaviour.
Do you see what Iʼm getting at?
I donʼt know it itʼs something “good” or “bad”, but I think of myself as someone capable of questioning and having doubts about everything, while totally incapable of being certain about anything. A “bless” or a “curse”? I donʼt know, but Iʼm not looking for answers here.
I donʼt know if making this project is “good” or “bad”, but I have to believe that there is no better choice than to keep moving forward. I want to believe that I really want to make it to the end of the road, and see what awaits for me in there. Itʼs my wish, my dream to see this project finished (or so I want to believe), whether it ends up being just a monumental waste of time, or a meaningful piece of art, itʼs not up to me to decide, because Iʼm not doing this just to please the inner mechanism propelling the living thing writting this lines, but because I have no other choice but to try to believe that Iʼm doing something “good” for humanity, even if that could be a mistake of mine.
So, what do you think? Is k3Q× worth existing? Is my life being properly spend here? Shoud I go back to a “real job” to aquire the income necesary to survive in this world? Or should I keep working in this uncomprehensible mammoth of a maze? Is my entire fisicality just a waste of resources better used in fertilize the ground? I donʼt know, since all I have are theories, and not enough data to think I have a big enough sample of reality to prove anything to myself nor to anyone else.
To conclude, act according your believes, but if you think you have certainty about anything, just remember that you donʼt (or maybe not, if you believe that you shouldnʼt remember that). At least, thatʼs what I think is the best for all of us, but of course, that might not be the case, and maybe I change my mind as time goes by, maybe Iʼll doubt this theory tomorrow, and propose the opposite in the following day, because everything changes, to remain the same is impossible, since the very act of perpetuate the state of something requires to put concious effort in avoiding itʼs deterioration, by taking energy from somewhere else, by “consuming” X in order to “preserve” something estimated as more valuable than the thing consumed in the process…
…
So, if you think this project is worth existing, consider support it via Ko-fi or Patreon.
In the meantine, today’s update consists of the sketch of layers 121–128, which might require the entire year to be properly digitized, or maybe just 3 to 4 months, depending on the time I can spend tracing those.
— ef
L003 2021.12.17
Origin, method, aesthetics and future
About 10 years ago I decided to draw the hardest maze ever (maybe out of wonder after looking at the work of Kazuo Nomura (野村一雄), Andrew Bernhardt and Motoi Yamamoto (山本 基) to name a few). Later, I realized that I could spent years drawing a huge maze, but no one will solve it, because it's like fighting the final boss before the tutorial, plus, I had no idea on how to make it properly, so I also needed to start from the “tutorial”, and that's where all began, with no other plan but to “move slowly, while finding out where to go”.
Eventually I started to figure out how to draw the mazes, how many I wanted to make, how the size and difficulty will evolve, which rules/game mechanics I wanted to implement, how to properly test them before publishing, and so on…
Today I want to talk about one of the core aspects of this maze, which is that of aesthetics. You see, most mazes you will find out there fall in two categories: human made, and computer generated. The first ones usually have the charm of the pen on paper tracing, and the unpredictability of the human mind crafting each path, but tend to lack in fine detail and precision (they look good, but raw and amateur). On the other hand, many computer generated mazes can be programmed to be traveled interactively and have all the fine polish you just can not get in paper, but due to limitations in the algorithms involved, they often lack in complexity and variety (they look clean, but cold and uninspired).
Well, k3Q× wants to take the best of each world in order to draw a maze no computer will be able to ever create, but with such attention to detail that you have to wonder on how is it possible for a single human to craft such a work.
Yet, as I said earlier, I had to start with the tutorial, and thatʼs why the first bunch of layers of k3Q× still look very simple and are really easy to solve. There is not much of a challenge there, and you wonʼt get amazed by those mazes, but you are not suposed to.
…
The length of the main path, the amount of dead ends, how to trick the player into losing their way inside an infinite loop, how to sketch, digitize, test and publish each maze… Many technical and practical issues had to be under control before going full into aesthetics, because, you see, I planned to make organic mazes from the very beggining, but I knew those were too big of a challenge for me at the time, but after some testing that paid off in the newest layers, I feel confident in both the logical and visual aspect of maze making, and so, now is time to take on new challenges awaiting in the near future, because, remember, k3Q× is still at just 30% completion.
…
Anyways, this entry is being written in commemoration of the publishing of layer 120, so just for the record, here are some numbers in regards to that:
Layer 120 is 0.32% from the entirety of the maze
From layer 001 to 120 the total progress is exactly 29.43%
Layer 120 alone took about 66 hours of work, distributed in 11 days (about 6 hours each day).
Of those 66 hours, the sketch was made in less than 4 hours, while the tracing took 58. The last 4 hours went into looking for any possible mistake and further adjustments, and preparing the maze for publishing and archive of the original files.
Originally I expected this would take an entire month of work, but it seems that I was able to work better and faster due to the experience with previous layers, so yeah, the future of the project looks very promising, but again, I only make progress on my spare time, which can only last for a short period of time, given my current income of zero…
As for the time being, this might be the last update of 2021, so merry christmas, and have an excellent new year. Yee!
— ef
L002 2021.12.08
FAQ: What do you make this project for?
Or rather, “why would you spend so much time drawing a fucking maze?”
To give some context, let me tell you that this is a slow process, which gets tiring after one or two months of repeating the steps involved. Also, none of this drawings are meant to improve peopleʼs lives, not even mine, but still, I keep using entire weeks in planning, sketching, digitizing, printing, testing, polishing, preparing and publishing each and every maze you can already find here.
But why though?
The goal is not precisely to spend some time alone, sitting in front of a computer or a sheet of paper, drawing more than a hundred mazes in the span of more than decade of ocassional bursts of productivity and spare time combined. Those are the means necessary to achieve the true objective, which, believe it or not, is not “drawing the hardest of largest maze ever”. Thatʼs actually another of the means to achieve the real goal.
[ I mean, I donʼt even have a clue about how does k3Q× compares to the current holder of the Guinness records for the largest maze in existence (which, as far as I know, is measured by the dimentions of the paper used, but not by the relative size between the total size of the entire filled space of the material containing the maze, and the density of the individual paths within it), but I couldnʼt care less about breaking that record, or any other you can think of… ]
But then why? And here is the best clue Iʼve find to answer that question (spoiler: itʼs another question).
“Whatʼs the driving force behind any project with no guaranteed reward, both in short or long term?”
Take the original question and remove the context to analize it from a proper distance, and we find deeper, broader questions: What do you want to tell yourself with your actions? Whatʼs the reality you are enhancing by doing the specific activities you choose every day? What are you trying to prove by acting the way you do? Do you want to test your discipline, your will, your patience? Are you looking to show your talent, your creativity, your ideals? Do you want to display power, intelect, freedom? Do you want to achieve selfworth, trascendence, fame? Do you need money, love, safeness?
To put it simple, the more you feel adressed by one of this particular questions (or any other you can think of), the more likely is that your motivations are hidding there, but I was supposed to tell you exactly why is it that I chose to make this project, but instead it seems that Iʼm just walking you into a spiral where you donʼt seem to be approaching the center even if it looks like you are walking towards it, and it certainly feels like you are getting deeper into something, but at the same time, not at all…
Anyways, my current answer is rather simple: Iʼm doing this to find out why Iʼm doing this. You didnʼt see that one coming, right? Kind of lame, donʼt you think so?
But thatʼs what it is. The only thing Iʼve found while traveling this immense maze of questions is that your questions, your actions, and the way you interact with The Reality that carves your personal reality is what you are, even if you never find the words to descrive it, because that set of beliefs called “your reality” are already getting materialized by everything you think, say and make, be it by creating some absurdly complext piece of art, questioning even the motivations behind your actions, or living the most quiet and peaceful life you can imagine…
Whatever you do or stop doing is essentialy your own answer to the question of “why”, because your whole identity depends on having that answer, you can not live without a reason, which not necesarily means that people needs to be able to put that into words, or to materialize it through some sort of creative endeavor. You might also translate it into actions, ideals and behaviours, all of which are susceptible to change as time goes by.
Anyways, thatʼs all I have to say about the topic for the time being, but given you have reached this far into my thoughts, let me ask you something in return: why are you here? Think about it.
…
By the way, I’ve finished the sketch of level 120, and digitized the crude version of it. Now, let’s see how long it takes until I finish the fine tuning, testing and final adjustments. My bet is an entire month, but we’ll see…
— ef
L001 2021.11.27
An introduction to k3Q×
Somewhere around 2013 I decided to make the largest multilayer maze ever, and started wondering on how could I approach the task in a realistic way. One or two years later, I had nothing but ideas scatered around, but not even a single maze done (Some sketches were made, just that).
Then I just started drawing the first levels of k3Q× on my journal with no clear goal as to how many of them I wanted to make, or which size each one. Actually, it was the size of the paper what gave shape to the entirety of the first stage, which I finished digitizing around 2017.
And just then is where I actually made a proper plan for the 210 levels and their respective size and rules, based on what I made prior, just going with the flow, to the point of not having a name for the project at the time.
But, why? Whatʼs the pourpose of this thing?
You see, my goal is not to break any specific record, nor to become rich selling prints, or an interactive maze game (both of which I want to make, though), neither I was particulary obsesed with mazes prior to this… No, it was just an impulse which eventually became a serious endeavor (even if I work rather sporadically), and at some point, I found a message to tell with this maze, a concept that could only be embodied by this maze, but thatʼs still a secret to be revealed after the last one is published, which may occur in the following decade, or later on. Who knows…
In the meantime, I draw some of this mazes when I have spare time, because this is not a job for which I have been paid a single dollar, but I have spent years, and Iʼm only at 29% completion, however, I feel like the project has enough progress to be shared, in the hopes that the message I want to comunicate may reach more people when the time comes, while encouraging me to keep going when I feel that life itself is a waste of time (which happens quite often).
Of course, another reason is that if I can recover at least a small amount of the resources I have invested here, I might be able to spend more time working on this, instead of just using my spare time, which only becomes more sparse as the years go by. So, idealy, this could become a source of income I can live of for a couple of years, but at the time of this writing, such a goal looks like mere fantasy.
At the moment, there are 119 mazes finished, with 91 left. Levels 117-119 were made in about a month of work, at a rate 7 hours each day with some breaks, but my "vacations" (aka. savings) are almost over, so I donʼt have the time to continue at such rate, so this first log may be the only one for a good period of time, unless some good luck knocks the door as a result of the extra work put into creating this new website. (Because there was another before this one, but I wasnʼt satisfied with the looks of it, so I never gave it much promotion, and even now, that part of the process is still the one I struggle the most with, due to my innate lack of social and marketing skills)
So, if you happen to be interested in this project, stick around to get updates every now and then, also, share it with anyone you may think could be also interested, or even share a Ko-fi with me!
Regarding donations, currently there are no rewards in the kofi page, because all the content I make (for this and other projects of mine) is free, but if you feel that anything Iʼm making here is worth a dollar or two, I will be endlesly grateful for your support!
Finally, if you want to contact me for whatever reason you have (be it bussines stuff, ideas or questions about the project, or just pure curiosity) feel free to reach me via e-mail.
— ef
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