I’ve been thinking about the fine line between venting and creating an echo chamber. If I’m really upset at A, and I complain to B a lot about it, am I venting in a healthy way to prevent repression and resentment, or am I creating an echo chamber that stirs up yet more anger?
My recent analysis of this is as below.
Continue readingOur farm did not go very smoothly today. And I cannot help but wonder if it is in part because of the fact that I did not say anything or do anything to help almost at all. Normally I remind people of things that I believe will make them focus on performing well, but I was told that I make raid feel like a job and not fun when I do this, and now I will probably never be able to do this freely like I used to again. Normally I try to pipe up at key moments to help with morale, and today I didn’t help with that at all. Though shandare really really shined today, he was able to turn around the bad morale that comes from bad farm nights, and make things better. And he was even more of the recipient of the negativity than I was, somehow he has been able to power through and be great for us all. Thank god for shandare. But I can’t help but feel if I had used my voice today farm would have gone much smoother.
Continue readingI think I’m extremely empathetic. It is not necessarily a good thing, I view it as one of my biggest strengths and also one of my biggest weaknesses. I do not really have much control of my empathy. I naturally want to put myself in other people’s shoes, to see things from their perspective, to feel things from their perspective. I think it’s because I grew up reading thousands of novels, that it is second nature for me to become someone else, to relate to their thoughts and feelings, without even trying to. This is why I feel no animosity to the person that raped me before, I understand what he did was wrong, but I also feel what he felt, and understand what he thought.
Continue readingIt’s something I am unable to not do. Almost always in the context of when I see someone bullied or treated badly, I cannot let it pass without trying to do something. Only, I fail spectacularly each time and the aggressors not only double down on the legitimacy of their intolerance and mean behavior, but often end up attacking me as a result.
My first memory of this was in middle school. A kid with low IQ who also had low EQ and was often naughty was ostracized and excluded by the class. I stood up for him time and time again and tried to explain that he couldn’t always control himself, and basically appeal to people to try to empathize with him. People did not end up treating him better, and eventually my own friend group ostracized me.
Continue readingRecently, both shandare and I have spent over 10 hours, often up to 30 hours a week every week doing the various preparation needed for raid. We also try a variety of things to accommodate everyone’s desires: running keys, hosting an off-night run, putting aside time to discuss strategies that anyone can join, having boss channels where we can write down discussions ahead of time and encourage everyone to participate, absorbing feedback that people made last tier and attempting to get better at that (for example, to try to spend less time during precious raid hours discussing things instead of practicing our decided strat). And our raid progression is quite good. But last night, in both public forums and private messages, many people showed me that they do not appreciate this, and think we overcomplicate things, that we pressure people into preparing for raid by doing this, and that overall all leadership is not good (for a variety of reasons, each person has a different one, the main common one being that we ignore people’s suggestions, which factually is entirely untrue, but people feel it and fault us for it anyway).
Continue readingSince a couple weeks ago when I went through a succession of events of various people talking to me about things that triggered various parts of my trauma, I’ve had a hard time recovering. Almost every day, I’m upset and in a bad mood. Almost every day, I notice things in the game that anger me. As a result, much of my energy is spent on managing my emotions so they don’t affect others, and I have very little motivation left to do all the things I normally do to help make things better, like studying bosses, helping people, etc.
Continue readingI had a conversation with someone today that brought back all my trauma from the past. And the result of the conversation is that I once again need to sacrifice my personal well being for the happiness of raiders. I can do this, but just like I knew this would tear me down before, I know it will again this time.
Continue readingI have been creating YouTube videos of our recent kills, to provide vods for raiders and recruits. Looking through my YouTube channel, I found a video of my LijiPUG progression on mythic archimonde from many years ago. It’s a 3.5 hour long video, so I clicked in to see what things were like then.
I’m a bit in shock. It’s not that I have seen that many raid leaders, but at least from all the raid leaders I’ve seen, I think the leader I was at the time is by far the best raid leader. And this includes comparing to the me right now. You would think that with more experience a person could only get better at something like raid leading, but I think I was much better then.
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Lijiworld 