Good morning.
You’ll notice a few things today. The first and foremost is that I’ve changed the theme and identity of my blog a bit. This is in effort to clean it up, and make more older posts accessible thanks to the grid-style layout of the blog page. Now, new readers may be able to spot older posts that catch their attention, and old readers can find older posts easier to share with friends and whomever they think may be interested.
The second, is that my past few posts have all begun with that line at the top, “Good morning.” In the classic Gandalf style, perhaps you aren’t sure if I’m withing you a good morning, or simply announcing to the world that I think this morning happens to be a good one. Either way, it adds a little positivity right at the beginning, don’t you think?
It’s colloquial, and I try to avoid tropes and colloquialisms where I can, but I need something positive right at the start of my day, and my guess is that millions, or even billions of other people do too, whether they think so or not.
As you may know, I’ve been streaming to Twitch again lately (it’s the boxy icon next to the Twitter logo at the top, come by and say hello later today!), and I’ve been playing a lot of Heroes of the Storm this week.
So far it’s been about 50/50, although with an awesome (sarcasm) three loss streak at the end of yesterday’s stream, My record for the season is now 11-13, and it #FeelsBadMan. Most of these losses came from the party making a few mistakes after around 60-75% of the way through the game, which snowball into vitriol and anger as the game that we were winning, slips away from us in the last several minutes.
People are frustrated, something went wrong, and more often than not people in online games like to blame others instead of realize their own mistakes. I’m not sure what it is about games that make people lose their sense of reason, but it happens, and it’s hard to keep folks on track. Even when I make damn sure not to feed trolls, to “mute and move on” as I like to encourage others to do if someone is being really toxic, and start a majority of my games with the Jeff Cannata line, “Stay positive, don’t die :)” from Into The Nexus (A great HotS Podcast), people still find a way to rage.
The part that bothers me most isn’t people calling me trash, or using obscene profanity, but the complete lack of insight into the harm they’re doing to themselves. They want to win the game, they wouldn’t be so pissed off if we had won, so it’s not that they actually want to lose games, but their attitude increases their own chances of not being able to actually focus on what matters, and therefore lose more games.
I had one game yesterday where the team was communicating well, and it wasn’t until the last fight we lost, our team dead, and the enemy team marching into our base to win the game that someone starting calling people out for mistakes. No one else did however, and one person even thanked everyone for staying positive. Even though we lost, it didn’t feel as bad as those games you lose because someone is typing garbage at people half the game instead of watching their mini-map. Also, because of the positive energy, I felt better going into my next game.
I was able to identify any mistakes that I made, and calls that were bad, and take a mental note to not to that in the future. You can’t take mental notes, when you’ve spent 15-20 minutes grinding your pencil across your mental page making a collage of thick black lines everywhere, leaving you no space to take productive notes for yourself.
So I’m making an effort to be more positive. After our Dungeons and Dragons session last night, after everyone else signed off, one of my best friends asked how I was doing, and he meant how was my mental state. We’ve had discussions in the past, and he knows that I struggle a lot. He was there one of the times I got blackout drunk and was throwing up outside and crying my eyes out. He knows me, and he cares about me. He asked how I was, and I could honestly tell him that I was doing okay.
Sober October has been challenging, but good for me, I know that. Writing has been great for me. Streaming has been really awesome to try to get back into. One of the few stressors I have left is my uncertain financial future, and I’m writing and streaming almost everyday to try to be able to monetize one or both of these things that I know I can make money from, and that don’t cause me extreme mental distress.
I’ve been pretty genuinely positive this week, and this post is asking you to do the same. Don’t expend any mental (or other) energy on negative things that don’t help you. Don’t be unnecessarily hateful towards others, even when they make mistakes, or do things you don’t like, we each have an entire life that almost no one in the world knows anything about, and being negative hurts you and those around you.
So I say, good morning to you, and wish that you wish others a good morning, a good day, and a good life as well.
Cheers!
