Escaping Normality

For Christmas, my husband and I were gifted a voucher for a local escape room. We've done a couple before with friends and absolutely loved them, but have never done one as just the two of us. This weekend we put it to use and had a real 'date' afternoon for the first time in a long while. 

I'll be honest, my husband and I are very different in how we approach tasks: he's an engineer so very methodical, has a good head on him and stays calm in all situations, I, however, am definitely the more chaotic of the two of us with my approach not always being the most logical or methodical, but it gets the job done! Our brains operate in different ways, but that's partly why we work so well together - he sees through the problem in front of us to compartmentalise into its different parts, and I see the road less trodden and am able to pick up on the hidden clues... that's if he's not already solved it and onto the next thing! 

It turns out that our different approaches complimented eachother well in the escape room and we got out with 15 minutes to spare! Allowing us to move on to the bonus clues just for fun. I must admit, part of me did worry that we may butt heads on a couple of things where our different approaches clashed, but my small anxieties were unfounded. We found ourselves working well together, communicating effectively and getting through the tasks together, splitting up when needed to solve a couple of less difficult tasks that formed a bigger picture. We came out feeling brilliant having solved it together and been able to focus our problem solving prowess on something we could actually get to the bottom of. This brings me to the title of today's installment: escaping reality. Being locked in a vault set up for an hour with multiple puzzles to solve definitely focuses the mind and takes you out of the day to day. Whilst I was in there, I was a jewel thief trying not to get caught and working with my partner in crime to get us out with the biggest haul possible. In a lot of ways, we needed that hour. It helped us be 'us' without the weight of day to day worries weighing on our shoulders. 

With that in mind, I encourage anyone who enjoys solving riddles and puzzles with a clear end goal, looking to forget reality for a bit, to go and do an escape room - the escape isn't just the aim of the game, it's what the experience gives to the player too. 

Ta ta for now! 

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