PowerWash Simulator and the Gateway to Zen
To reference “Zen” or imagine a “Zen master” is something that westerners have co-opted to mean they are “one-with” something. While that’s not far from what the Mahayna Buddhists would tell you Zen actually is (no Mahayana Buddhists were consulted for this writing so technically I have no clue), these references lack nuance and are somewhat misappropriated. Achieving Zen requires more than a singular experience. It requires meditation, concentration, mantras, and most of all: practice. It requires one to regulate their attention and think about nothing, which is difficult to do if you have a human brain and even more difficult without lots of trying.
I have heard people offhandedly say they have experienced Zen when high, and while I get the comparison, and certainly you can be aided toward a Zen-like experience, they are not directly correlated. I got so high once, that I swear the ornate carpet designs down the hallway of a Ramada Inn were moving and made me feel like I was floating down the corridor. I would not quite call it pure Zen as I certainly had thoughts banging off the inside of my skull, mostly paranoia that others would see me and know immediately I was high because I was clung to the wall Spider-man-style, like I got into a Gravitron at the county fair backward. I was also screaming because the carpet was moving and I thought I might throw up on the magic.
Depending on your Zen dealer the principles vary. In short, there is no self, things we value are empty, attachment is suffering, logic is misleading, you must be mindful, free yourself from greed, have compassion, life is simple, and show respect. You don’t have to scan the internet for “Principles of Zen” for very long to realize that there are a million different ways to describe it and a million different ways people want your money to tell you their way to achieve it.
I’m no different. Consider me your hack Zen master today because I found Zen on Microsoft Gamepass. Power Washing Simulator. It is a “video game” which is a shame to have to call it that just because society has no patience for nuance, especially when it comes to interactive media. There are gamey aspects to it, sure. You do a job, earn money, and buy new equipment but that’s also a way to describe a hobby or a career. I’m not saying that Power Washing Simulator is a “video job”, but that would be more apt. And “chore” sounds derogatory for something I find so much joy in. I prefer “video zen” because after playing it, I still have a gaping hole in the side of my brain with rainbows falling out of it. It looks like a job, it sounds like a chore, but it is much more than that to me.
PowerWash Simulator is what it sounds like. In a first person perspective, you take control of an unseen human wielding a machine capable of spraying a high-pressure stream of very hot water to blast away dirt and grime from materials and mostly outdoor surfaces. The combination of the high pressure and the temperature of the water, which is not apparent to you in the “video zen”, makes it easier to remove all that accumulated filth than using an ordinary garden hose would. It’s certainly a lot easier than scrubbing by hand - afterall, we’re cleaning entire houses, playgrounds, and mansions.
I have a weird kink in my hose when it comes to power washing. I’m not unique, there are thousands of people subscribed to the subreddit r/powerwashingporn right along with me. People will post videos of jobs they’ve done, the occasional before and after side-by-side image, or fun references in pop-culture to power washing. You would think the latter would be rare and nothing worth getting excited about, but you would be wrong: power washing people stick together and look out for each other’s interest. In fact, the most common comments in r/powerwashingporn revolve around ensuring that the power washer submitting the content used the appropriate safety equipment. Have fun, but be safe. Do I own my own power washer? No. But thanks to PowerWash Simulator, I might soon.
You would think that playing PowerWash Simulator would redirect my power washing desires. Like how you might hope that a real looking sex doll might stave off the unsavory desires of a would-be serial killer. Unfortunately, well, for my wallet, this has only given me a taste of the life I could enjoy. Why do I love power washing so much?
I don’t know but “Zen” is the closest thing to describing it. There’s something about making a tarnished object appear new again, and seeing that progress over time. I get the same sense when mowing, although mowing, ironically, is less clean cut. You create clippings that need to be removed and you’re not erasing grass, just chopping it down. Your lawn still looks like a lawn, like it did last week. Power washing gives the godly ability to erase years of time and it does it instantly, and to multiple types of surfaces. You can only mow your yard but you can power wash EVERYTHING (except your yard, children, anything electrical, anything with an easily dentable surface, food, etc.)
In PowerWash Simulator you start on a simple, muddy van. It’s your company’s service van. You want that bad boy cleaned up so that when you roll up to a new job, the customers know you are capable of getting things spic-and-span. FIrst impressions are everything. After a few small jobs, you graduate to a full sized house or a giant playground, places with large surface areas and intricate features. Nooks, crannies, and overhangs for dirt to hide. It’s up to you, with your arsenal of nozzles, to hunt down all of the filth on the premises and eradicate it with a direct blast from your power washer.
It sounds mind numbing and it is. I mentioned mowing and I also enjoy working in Excel. These are often mundane yet satisfying tasks for me but each come with the occasional surprise. The mower can run out of gas, there could be sticks or rocks in my path that I have to mind, and worst of all, it takes time out of a weekend. Excel may require the implementation of a complex formula for data to appear the exact way you need it to or there could be a formatting issue with an imported file that stifles your progress. PowerWash Simulator has no surprises. Thing is dirty, so clean it. You’ll never run out of water and your machine won’t break down. Nothing will break except for the molecules holding the dirt to the surface of the thing you intend to clean.
I should mention that I know there is also a mowing simulator game but it did not do it for me. I played it for over an hour and I think the biggest difference is the lack of contrast between the before and after. It is much more apparent in PowerWash Simulator that you are making a difference, although, it’s almost to a comical degree. The houses, cars, and parks in PowerWash Simulator are so dirty, you wonder what on earth happened to let it get this far? Did a volcano erupt nearby? Did everyone empty out their chimney on this one house?
Here is how I achieved “Zen” with PowerWash Simulator. As you know, life is full of stressors, to-do lists, due-dates, expectations, regrets, and intimidations. Someone playing PowerWash Simulator has four options for how to spend their mental energies while playing, and the player can shift those mental energies between three of the options at any time. To achieve the last option requires a perfect overlap of circumstance, mindset, predisposition, and wakefulness.
1) You can power wash and think about power washing
You can be self aware in the game and really treat it as a role playing experience. You are a power washing expert going out to do jobs, make the community happy, make the town beautiful, and earn more money to outfit your power washing character in custom gear.
2) You can power wash and listen to a book or a podcast
Now that I work remotely from home, I no longer have a commute that allows me to soak in my favorite podcasts or catch up on the books I want to. Most video games, unless it is a grind-heavy RPG or puzzle game where dialog is absent, prevents multimodal entertainment from being easy. Playing a game that requires reading while also listening to something else is cognitively difficult, and arguably impossible. PowerWash Simulator has great sound effects - birds, water, foot falls - but if you were power washing in real life, you would probably also have some headphones in, so you might as well do it while you play PowerWash Simulator.
The consternation comes from how to stop doing either. You might still have plenty of washing work to do, but your podcast is over. Do you stop and go to bed, leaving the job unfinished? Or do you start a new podcast and finish the job?
“I should really get some sleep but this Starbucks hasn’t opened yet.”
3) You can power wash and think about your life
As I said, life is full of stressors, to-do lists, etc. When do you take the time to process these things? While driving? While doing chores? If you’re like me, you use that time to soak in podcasts and books (see multimodal entertainment above). Once again, if you’re like me, you probably wait until you’re about to fall asleep and you let all those things rush into your head. Where were those thoughts all day long? If what is keeping you awake is so important, why didn’t you think about it and address it during the several hours you were awake and capable of addressing it? Exactly. You were avoiding it or you were too busy. Or maybe you forgot. The IRS, your babysitter, your boss, your significant other, the bank, or whoever is keeping you awake will not forget.
Don’t wait until you go to sleep to process all of your pent up emotions and worries - do it while playing PowerWash Simulator! Clean the muck off a pre-modern home with an attached garage, a home you wouldn’t mind living in and owning yourself some day, while simultaneously cleaning the muck off your brain and processing those worries so that you can rest easy. You like to stay busy and entertainment is an escape? Do both while also confronting those mental hurdles you keep running around instead of overcoming.
4) You can power wash and think about NOTHING
This took a while. At first, I power washed as I thought about power washing (see option 1). That was fine for a bit. I like to power wash but I don’t want to be a power washER. The fantasy was short lived.
Then, I listened to a podcast. I like to wait a few weeks and go back to listen to some podcasts I’m featured on to see how they hold up. A few do. Then I moved on to the audiobook of Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne, read by Frances Sternhagen. Frances absolutely killed it, what a performance! I listened to the whole thing while swiping away the muck in the PowerWash Simulator and was entranced. After I finished listening to that book, I decided I needed a break and took my headphones out and continued to power wash. Brick by brick, strip of siding after strip of siding, window after window…
My mind came to an hour later. I had completely washed an entire old, and previously very filthy, ginger bread-like house. Did I do this? The screen said “Job Complete” but had I done anything? I walked my power washing character around the home’s property. It looked familiar but I don’t remember interacting with it. I don’t remember taking the ladder to the roof to clean it. I don’t remember edging the sides of the windows to ensure the trim was muck free. I don’t remember turning around and spraying the stone wall that encircled the property.
I wasn’t concerned that I didn’t remember. I was not confused as a dementia patient might be when suddenly realizing they’re holding a coffee mug upside down. I realized immediately that my mind, in the midst of being on autopilot and doing the mundane yet somehow still enthralling task of meticulously erasing dirt from virtual features, had been freed. I felt spiritually more free. I would say until then I would never describe feeling anything I have ever felt as “spiritual” or close, but my inner vibrations were hitting a consistent sine wave that had previously been cluttered with signal noise. It’s difficult to describe in relatable terms but a portal in my frontal lobe swallowed my working mind whole and spit me out an hour later clean from the muck and grime that had accumulated a lifetime of filth.
PowerWash Simulator, 10/10.
