Posts

Leaderboards

​Well, I’m at it again. Checking the leaderboards. I’ve always enjoyed playing video games. I am not great at most of them. But it never kills my joy. Until I start looking at the leaderboards. There’s a certain rush to being measured and found to be “good.” It’s validating, it’s an affirmation of value in that context. It’s also absolutely destructive. Once you get sucked into the hole of striving to be “good,” you tie your value only to the numbers. The experience doesn’t matter anymore, it’s become entirely about the pursuit of that threshold. And there is no “good enough.” You will say that there is. You’ll even believe it. But then you hit that plateau, and you think “maybe I can get a little better.” So you push for the next target, the next milestone, and you keep pushing. This isn’t the destructive part. Self-improvement is a beautiful thing. But it doesn’t stop there. You keep your eyes on those leaderboards. And you’re in a good place, but there’s still people better. They’re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where I’m at/Where I’ve been

Where I’m at feels oddly familiar. I’ve been trying to compete again instead of coexist. I need my voice to be the loudest again, because I’m forever terrified it’s not worth hearing. Then, I feel like I’m being intrusive. But it doesn’t feel like where I’ve been. I see the proof that I’m not an afterthought or a background character. I am finding the excitement in the moments others share with me instead of feeling the need to “keep up.” I’m finding the joy in being the hype man again. I do truly believe that this is the best version of me. The hype man. I don’t really contain the pieces to steal the show, and I get more joy in being a part of a whole than I do in being a lone survivor. The struggle that I constantly balance is how to do so without losing myself. Life is a collaborative pursuit, but we can’t take every journey with help. We can’t rely on others to validate our joy. Jealousy is gross. It takes the awe we feel from others’ accomplishments, and it twists that. It makes u...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shire Years

I haven’t wanted to burden anyone with the following thoughts, so instead I will indirectly throw them at a wide array of someones. It’s much like shotgunning my melancholy into the void, hoping to minimize its impact on the world around me. You see, these thoughts shouldn’t really carry any impact. It’s the same old feeling around my birthday. One of a lack of importance or visibility. This feeling isn’t one I like to feed. It’s a huge underlying part of my worst qualities, and it drives me to be everything I desire to not be. But around August 11, it gets harder to shoo away. We equate the anniversary of our birth with a sense of meaning, and it lends itself to selfish thoughts. And oh, my sweet Ora, I am a sucker for those. I struggle to accept my place in the stories I get to share in this journey. The truth is always that I am just happy to have a place in the tales others tell, but I desire more than I let on, almost always. It’s simple, but it’s deceptively tricky. I de...
Post a Comment
Read more

The DM Abides

“The only thing that’s ever stopping me is me” -Fall Out Boy, Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea Well, proved that yesterday with the one-shot. It felt natural… but I gave myself a day to process it before searching for conclusions to draw. I have not lost any of the joy I felt at the immediate conclusion. It felt like something I could flow and roll with, and I felt like i could do it “my way,” but still effectively. Its the joy of the “what do you think?” and the pleasure of the “yes, and?” I was in control of the moment but I was not in charge. I am less a dungeon master, and more a self-aware narrator. And I think it suits me to pursue my “style” as such. I’m lucky. I know about the “Mercer Effect” and how a lot of DMs get down on themselves for not being that guy. Listen, he’s wonderful, and I love what he does. But I’m more trying to be Sam Elliott in “The Big Lebowski,” so I get to dodge that pressure. The DM Abides, man.
Post a Comment
Read more

Thoughts on a Freedom Trainwreck

It’s been a really really long year, and it’s only January. There’s a ton of reasons for this, but right now I’m focusing on one. This is America. It’s got me so fucked up lately. And I’m not your standard, garden variety panicked yankee over here. I’m not making preparations to leave, I fucking can’t. Ain’t just that easy, I’m not marketable and my wife’s got Multiple Sclerosis, we’re not providing value, we’d be refugees not emigrants. But I’m already digressing. I think the best way to put this is that I’m not afraid. I’m concerned. Fear implies a feeling of danger. I’m a straight-passing cis white man with some beautiful baby blues, my bleeding heart is the only thing that makes me distinguishable from the alpha male misogynist and gigachad MAGA maniac. I don’t fear for myself. But i have strong concerns for people I hold dear to me. I’m also pissed off. Pissed off that my Canadians won’t be coming here because of the bullshit of our leader here and the legitimate danger he puts f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beginning to “Dare Greatly”

So, I’ve begun reading one of my gifts from a friend. The book “Daring Greatly” by Brene Brown. It may or may not have been suggested to me that I record my observations and reflections on it, and I take it to heart when these things are suggested. This will be me trying my best, chapter by chapter, to reflect, and ponder, and maybe be able to draw some useful conclusions. Tonight, I read the foreword and the introduction. I don’t know much about the author, or rather I didn’t, beside what I have been told by my friends who have read her work and listened to her TED talks and such. I knew she was very knowledgeable on things that are very relevant to my personal journey, shame, emotion, vulnerability. This was enough, but upon reading the introduction and learning a bit about Brown, I find myself feeling quite seen and understood. She’s not just a researcher of these things, she’s a sufferer of them, in many ways that feel very close to my own experiences. Let me explain… Im reading ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Come-Ups and Letdowns

I’m a new person. Well, it feels like it at the moment. This year has been me blowing up a lot of things in my mind and my being, and the spaces keep getting filled with revelations and realizations. It’s been awful and awe-inspiring, the worst year of many but so much better than the past. It hurts my brain to process it but I’m nothing if not a masochist so I’m living on the high of self-discovery right now. It’s not going to last forever. I think that’s why I was encouraged to write about it. It was a good suggestion, recording for posterity, and I’ve learned to steal those good suggestions and outside observations. One of the things that has really kicked in for me is a desire to hear the outside view, it’s taught me to listen to myself more as I apply the principles of giving others my ear and taking their words to heart. Yesterday, a friend bought tickets to a concert for himself, and also me and Chelsea. It was impulsive and I sorta advised against including me but he would not ...
Post a Comment
Read more