Bird droppings

My friend Dan and I play board games the same way, and its refreshing to play against each other. For nearly 10 years, we've been trying to come up with a succinct way of describing the manner in which we play games. This week, we finally figured it out: "I refuse to let you lose to me in an uninteresting way."

Basically, when we play games, we have zero to no interest in seeing who wins. What we're both looking for is an interesting and intellectually stimulating experience.

Thus, we often will openly discuss our strategic considerations with one another, and move take backs are frequent. If one player happens to win the game, it's almost a disappointment for both of us, and if the win wasn't interesting enough, we revert several moves and start again.

When it comes to oppositional contests like board games and other things, this is my preferred way of operating. I'm not trying to best my opponent as a way of proving my superiority to them. I'm trying to do my best to provide an interesting and exciting challenge for my opponent to best. To me, the best sort of contest is one where all opposing sides were equally challenged and delighted. Then we're all winners. If I compete against you and lose, but we both fought hard and struggled well, then I'm going to celebrate your victory as if it were my own.

This is why things like sports and such have always confused me. Why do people invest so much in the act of victory? Why do they only care about the outcome of the contest, not the quality of the challenge? Frankly, I can't stand it when I challenge someone to a contest and find that they are really only hell bent on winning. If I find myself competing with someone in that way, I generally just walk away. I honestly find it nauseating.

I suppose I do have a sense of pride or shame around how well I do in a contest. I feel pride when a contest is roughly even in skill on both sides. I feel shame when I find myself wildly outclassed by my opponent to the point that I was unable to provide an interesting challenge. I feel sad and nervous when I find myself on the other side of that equation, and I wildly outclass *my* opponent.

I can understand that the obsession with winning or losing seems to be related to these senses, but I have hard time grokking it. I just find it hard to conceive of a situation where narrowly beating or losing to my opponent wasn't a victory for us both.

Turn away if discussions of World of Warcraft make you ill. :)

Last night, I was playing Wow with my girlfriends, when parmonster told me that she had gotten into a 40-person raid on the horde cities. She got viesti and I into the raid, and off we went.

The thing was terribly managed. In the first raid, several people got left behind because the rest of the raid was too impatient to wait for them or help them if they got caught. The second one went a lot better, but a quarter of the group almost got left behind. That was the Silvermoon City and Undercity capitols.

Now things got really bad. A bunch of people got separated on the way to our next target, Ogrimmar, and people started acting like jack-asses on the chat, shouting things at one another, putting out incorrect information, etc. Half the group was still gathering when the other half went in and made the attack. By the time we had everyone else together, the city leader Thrall was down, and everyone was getting out.

Things were severely shaky. People were saying that the raid couldn't succeed and that we were going to fail to attack the final city of Thunderbluff. We had already lost a quarter of the raid group. Everyone was acting like asses, so there was no way we could get things working for the attack.

That's where my girlfriends and I came in. parmonster had already taken the initiative by finding a way to summon viesti so that we could summon the rest of the group. I took control of the raid and started telling everyone what was happening, where we should rendezvous, etc. The three of us got into position on the north side of the city and viesti began summoning people. I kept the rest of the raid informed, kept telling people that we would we attacking shortly, etc. I also was doing moral management, reassuring folks that we were going to succeed in our attack. I lied and said that I had succeeded with a group of this size in the past and that we were going to do just fine.

Somehow, by yelling into the chaotic din of immature nonsense, I managed to get the raid to pay attention to me and to believe in my words. The rest of the raid stopped acting like asses and got focused. People stopped saying that we weren't going to succeed and started finding ways to help us succeed. They stopped abandoning the group and started actively recruiting for more players to join us. They stopped yelling middle school obscenities and stuff.

When we finally made the attack, we all stayed at the rendezvous point until I specifically shouted "ATTACK!" No one was left behind this time. We didn't abandon half the group like we did last time.
And we executed the plan flawlessly. We were in and out more smoothly than any other capital so far.

It continues to tie into my sense of incapability. I'm always feeling like I'm not good enough and that I'm not capable of anything of value. And yet, when I actually try to do something, I almost always succeed at it. It was personally rewarding to watch as I got 40 people that were on the verge of complete failure rise to success.

To see them all actually *wait* for me to yell "ATTACK" before doing anything was incredible, and to see them ride off into battle at my command was amazing. You have to understand that it was not the fact that they were listening to me but rather the fact that they *weren't* listening to anyone else for the other 3 attacks we had done previously. This was a terrible group that was on the verge of self-destruction, with poor leadership and a poor moral, and I managed to turn it around with the help of viesti and parmonster.

It was a really nice boost for my self-esteem and sense of capability. :)

Let's create an arbitrary division between some concepts in my head: A person can be involved in one of 3 types of activities in their life:
1) Consumption
2) Action
3) Creation

You're always doing one of these three, and they really define what kind of person you are and what you are able to accomplish.

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I spent much of 2009 reflecting on everything that was happening to me and trying to place it into the story of my life. I think that has a lot to do with just how much was happening to me last year. Much good and bad. LOTS of difficult.

I think 2009 was the year I got back to work on my life. So 2010 is going to be filled with but lots of work. I suppose my resolution this year is to do a lot of stuff. Write software, draw pictures, paint paintings, build flashy-glowy things, climb mountains, ride my bike to new locations, hike all over the place, etc. You know, stuff like that. Just be busy and do a million things.

There are some themes to my posts. Many of them go this way: "I used to have problem X, but I just accomplished some huge step in making X go away/get better! I still have issues with X, but I'm getting better all the time." or some variant thereof.

I'm not entirely sure that these posts are always 100% accurate. I misremember a lot of things. For example, throughout my childhood and high school years, I remember always feeling very lonely. I felt alone and alien. I remember being alone all the time Yet when I look at how many friends I had back then, I get confused. I *did* have friends, even if they weren't exactly the kinds of friends I wanted. In grade school, I had 3-6 friends I hung out with a lot, and in high school, about the same. It's still that way, actually. That just seems to be my number or something. It's like my memory is based on my emotional state, not the factual events that took place.

I look back on many of my posts from 2004 and 2005, and I realize just how childish and immature I was back then. I was hyperactive, overexcited about everything, and convinced that everyone else held the keys to the universe. Every relationship that came my way, I was convinced that we were destined to be together forever. I moved in with people as quickly as I could, wanting to recreate my marriage with my ex-wife or something. I wanted to replace my estranged family. I wanted to find a home.

I hurt several people as I crashed through life trying to find my way to this point and beyond. Lovers that moved in with me under the pretense that I knew myself well enough to offer to support them, that I later asked to leave because I found myself unwilling to do so. Long distance lovers that deeply cared for me and spent much of their money and energy on having a relationship with me, but despite my words when we would speak, I never found equivalent energy or money in myself to offer back.

Looking to the future, what do I want? Primarily, I want to be at peace. Peace with myself, peace with the people around me, and peace with the world in general. I want to know myself, in all of my parts, from the deepest darkest reaches of my soul to the blindspots that I still have. I want to stop running from pain and fear and learn to stand with it. I want to learn to be patient and wait for good things to come. I want to know how to be a better citizen of the earth, a better companion to my fellow beings, a better friend to those I care about, and a better partner to those I love.

As I've been getting my creative and active mojo in gear this past year, I've noticed something interesting: In order to succeed and do well, first you must perform/produce crap.

Some examples:
Starting to draw. My first works a year ago were really poor and didn't do a very good job of representing anything I really wanted them to represent. Even now, with my skill improving, I'm still producing things that I feel are quite poor and amatuerish.

Getting back into programming for personal projects has resulted in a similar experience. My first efforts took a long time and were really poor. I really wasn't able to get much good accomplished, and my UI doesn't look nearly as nice as I wanted it to look. Over time, I've re-learned the API for Swing/AWT, and my UI is starting to improve, slowly but surely.

I've also been witness to other folks trying to get started on things. People that learn to play go generally play really badly when they first start out. I know I did and have for the past 10 years, and now folks that I'm teaching to play play really poor moves at times.

Similarly, I'm watching viesti struggle with getting back into programming herself, and I'm seeing a lot of the same kinds of struggles that I used to have as she gets her mojo working again.

This initial step seems vital to the entire system of teaching yourself something. But it can be so hard to deal with. Recognizing that your first attempts at creating/doing... anything really... are going to be complete crap. That you're going to produce something that perhaps only a few people are really going to like and many people will actively dislike. That's a big pill to swallow. For me, it makes me fret and worry that I'll never produce anything good. That my efforts will always be in vain and my art/programming/projects of any sort will always look like crap and never evolve beyond that.

Many creative/skill-based communities can be quite judgemental, too, which works even harder to encourage the kind of mental attitude that I have struggled with. Writing software? Well, your code is crap, your UI is incomprehensible, and the performance of your program leaves a lot to be desired. What kind of programmer are you, anyways? Did you get your CS degree out of a cereal box? ... Drawing or painting? Wow! My two year old nephew can draw better than that with his doodie. You might want to give up drawing before you hurt yourself. ... You can't climb a 5.10a? I'm surprised you're even in here trying. Maybe you should go back to something easy, like walking?

etc.

And yet, getting over that hurdle... Facing down the judgemental voices both internal and external to create something... To do something... That's what you have to do to become great at anything. Or at least good. Or decent.

It's something daunting to me when I look forward to new projects on the horizon. My idea for getting my computer game-making skills up to snuff and actually writing games faster and better than what I've done before. My desire to produce drawings and paintings on the order of artists whose work I look up to.

It's all going to be a hell of a challenge, as the first thing that I have to do... The first task I have to accomplish... is to produce crap.

I had an interesting experience today.

I went out to lunch with chirik, tarathene, and kitlet at Joey Basil's. They were seriously understaffed, and we were there for a long time, but the waitress really seemed to be trying to do her best to get things out and handled. And in the end, even though it took forever, the food was great.

Anyways, our waitress seemed really stressed when she was trying to handle our payment for the bill, and I went up to the front counter to save her a trip back to the table to get my signature. She couldn't get the machine to work because she needed a manager override, and the manager was nowhere to be found. While I stood there, one customer, unhappy with the service, told the waitress that the service was so bad that they've lost a customer. A few moments later, another person walked past behind me and told the waitress to cancel their order as they had been waiting too long and were now going to leave.

She was really upset and stressed and near tears. She couldn't get the computer to work. She had terribly irate customers. And frankly, her service for us had been a bit poor. She just kept apologizing and apologizing, despite me telling her that everything was fine. I gave her a 40% tip to try to cheer her up, and as we walked out, she yelped when she saw the tip and said, "Really?! Thank you!"

It made me think about doing things like this: Helping people out and doing good things for other people.

Frankly, I gave her that tip because I wanted to see her smile. Because when I make people smile, that makes me really happy. I don't know that I cared about her or her situation one bit. But I do like that rush I get when I do something that makes someone else smile or laugh or something like that. When I can brighten someone's day.

I was thinking about this. Doing this sort of thing might make some people think that I'm some sort of altruisitic good person or something. But honestly, I feel completely selfish in these sorts of actions. I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for that rush I get, which is entirely for me.

I think it's a fascinating concept. Is it really good of me to do things for other people that I am completely selfishly motivated to do? Is this simply how all people are? Is true altruism merely an illusion?

Perspective is a fascinating thing.

This past Sunday, I had a conversation wherein the other person lauded my adventurous spirit. According to her, I am one of the most active and adventurous people she has ever met. I don't shy from any challenge or obstacle in my path. I go wandering into the wilderness, climbing cliffs and hills and rocks. I'm often leading the pack, pushing everyone around me to explore what's around the next bend in the trail. She celebrated the fact that on a whim we could find ourselves anywhere from the beach to the redwood forest to the middle of a college campus during a gay pride parade.

The day before that, someone lauded me for my energy at Spiral Dance. They thanked me for putting so much energy and vitality into the dance. I think I even managed to start a trend where everyone was jumping up and down while they danced. It was pretty incredible and intense, and I was putting forth tons of energy. I get like that a lot when I'm at a place where there is much dancing going on. I become a wild woman, dancing in a crazy and passionate way.

But then later on Sunday, I ran into someone who has a very different perspective of me. She sees me as a slow and lethargic person. Someone who needs to be dragged on a hike because I am uncomfortable walking on uneven terrain and going to unfamiliar places. I'm inactive and not very into my body.

It really emphasizes how much of the way we describe things is based on our relative perspective of things. We take our known experience as a baseline and describe something relative to that, but we'll often use absolute terms. Like the whole freedom vs. fear thing. People that are trapped deep in fear and often refuse to step too far out of the norm see me as a free spirit without bounds or chains. People that live without fear of the things that I'm afraid of describe me as a deeply frightened individual that is too afraid to do anything. Most of the time, I will describe myself as being free because of how afraid and bound up I know I *used* to be. All of these descriptions are accurate only when they are placed in the context of the perspective of the person making them.

It really makes certain types of communication rather difficult. If I'm trying to describe my life philosophy to you, I will unavoidably use absolute terms to describe relative experiences. What I call "being in the moment" and "living in the now" someone else might describe as "planning carefully for the future and contemplating the past." That's because I've always been so stuck in the future and past that I've ignored the now, and this hypothetical other person may have been living so much in the now that they weren't making any plans or considering the consequences of their actions. We both decide to do the exact same thing: Experience the moment, reflect on the past without clinging, and plan for the future without expectation. But we describe it completely differently.

Again, it makes it difficult to communicate things like life philosophies, personal development, etc. I see this even when I read books by great spiritual leaders. For example, they'll talk about things like "letting go of attachments," but I don't think they mean that in an absolute sense, given the other things I read from that author.

I wonder how to use this observation to improve communication abilities.

I find it interesting that I have very very slow information processing going on in my head on some topics, but on others, I'm lightning fast, to the point that it feels as though I just *know* things.

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I like having bad eyesight. I can see things many other people can't because of it.

I am constantly changing. I'm really tired of it lately. I have a hard time expecting people to take me seriously when the entire world might be different for me tomorrow.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling introverted or stressed, I just want to be the quiet smiling person in the back of the room that buys you a drink and then walks out of the club, metaphorically speaking.

Living with soquili_gitli has made me very aware of the "flavor" of my energy. It is very... fluttery. Vibrating at a high frequency. Almost insubstantial at times. This is who I tend to be, but I often find myself longing to be lower frequency. More relaxed. More solid.

Because everything is always changing around me... I take life at high speed. Everything I do always feels like it is at an accelerated pace from a lot of the people around me. But when I try to slow down, I feel like everything is rushing past me. It's like I'm in a different time stream than the rest of the world.

I feel so alien as regards human customs, rituals, thought patterns, and behaviors sometimes. I've learned to interact with humans through many years of careful study, but it still feels alien to me, like speaking a language that doesn't feel quite natural yet.

At this moment, I feel alien in the concept of celebrations. I'm not sure I quite understand how and why people take part in certain celebrations of things. I've always felt very private about the way I celebrate things, and never really part of the crowd in terms of these sorts of things. When I have gotten to be part of a crowd, though, it has been wonderful. I suppose I worry that I am intruding on someone else's belief about what is being celebrated...

I think I need to get more comfortable with my way of living life. It is sometimes very unique to me, and because of that, I get nervous about what other people might think about it. It's me. It's my way of life. I choose it. so... I should embrace that.

Alright, I have a little more stuff to talk about while I'm waiting here in the airport lobby.

I've seen this weird little thing happen with some people, and I've seen it not happen with others. It's...

This is a little hard to explain. Let me start from this point here: ( Read more... )