I feel that I know what it takes to be able to make a mythic team quite strong, regardless of the original strength of its individual members. If the raid leader(s) do a humongous amount of preparation for the bosses, if the raid team is incentivized or motivated to go beyond what they would naturally do themselves, if potential problems that arise from 25 individuals working on a difficult common goal together are nipped in the bud, etc.

So for the past couple weeks I have spent more than 40 hours a week doing boss prep; writing long paragraphs to inspire people as well as provide concrete, achievable steps they can take to become stronger; recruiting; talking to people who potentially have issues to nip all that in the bud. This is on top of the maybe 40 hours a week I spend playing the game to help myself and others get more gear. None of this is hard for me to do, though it is very time-consuming. All the time I spend awake, other than work-time, is spent on making us stronger in one manner or other. Some of the stuff I do I don’t particularly enjoy, but some of it, and in particular the boss prep, I truly love. And all of it is stuff I feel I do well.

But though I don’t mind doing a lot of this stuff, and don’t really mind too much the amount of time I put into this during these crucial few weeks, I’m starting to wonder if my heart is too invested in it.

Before, during the last raid, when I heard we were going to lose healers mid-raid, my reaction was concern for how that would affect shandare’s morale, and a serene acceptance that this happens and it’s fine I’ll recruit and we’ll move on. I was able to move forward with it calmly, unflappably, smoothly. I think it’s because at that time I was not personally too invested in anything other than to always try to support shandare and make things easier for him. I also did not deal at all with any interpersonal friction, nor make any effort to inspire people to become a stronger version of themselves.

But this raid, I have done a lot the extra stuff, and I appear to care a lot more for the actual raid and raiders than before, when I only focused my care on shandare. And though we are doing better, possibly in part because of my efforts, these past few days I myself have been feeling awful.

I feel so sad and disappointed about people who behave in ways where they are obviously just thinking about what makes themselves happy, even if that makes things worse for the raid team. I feel betrayed by people who made promises to me and may end up breaking these promises for reasons that I myself would never deem sufficient to let down 20+ people. I feel weighed down by the very few people who think badly of others and tell me about it, resulting in my doubting people in ways I don’t want to.

It has made me wonder about what truly bothers me when I get invested in this game. The time spent and the effort required do not seem to bother me all that much. I have been doing it willingly and cheerfully. I think it fulfills me to work hard and then see some good results of my work, and feel the appreciation of those I work hard for. So I’m wondering, is my problem not in the time and effort that I put in, but in how much of my heart I devote?

Would it help me if I go back to thinking none of this is my business or responsibility, and I’ll just help out when it makes me happy to? Certainly it would not make us as strong if I am not consistently and wholeheartedly invested and devoted to the raid team. It is very difficult to improve and become stronger if opportunities to inspire are let slide, and the lack of consistency and reliability from leaders results in unpredictability and uncertainty in the team.

We have come once again to what I view as my fatal flaw in my leadership: that though I think I know all the right ways to make things good, though I likely have a good ability to inspire others and make them stronger, though I have good enough EQ to be decent at interacting with and managing people… though I have many of the ostensible traits and abilities of a good leader, I don’t appear to have the mental capacity to deal with others’ casual selfishness and willingness to wrong me and our team. It is not to say that many people at all are like this, indeed almost all the team, especially now, are the opposite of this, and I was able to really focus on this side of things before. But it really only takes a couple people behaving in ways that casually hurts the team to throw me back into depression, once I have invested in them. And indeed I don’t even think the people who do this realize that they are being self-centered and hurting me and the team through their focus just on their personal needs.

But this hurt, sadness, disappointment, betrayal I feel saps my essence right out of me. And what is the use of intuitively and naturally being a great leader if I cannot handle a basic aspect of humanity, and end up depressed and eventually suicidal? Is the answer, as some have suggested, to give what I am given, to not invest in a team that has members who are willing to hurt the team for their personal desires? Is the answer, as I have often thought before, to not ever be a leader and ignore all my leadership abilities? Or is the answer to not be as strong a leader as I could be, by simply not caring as much?