Distractions

One good book, of which I have read half, said that the one thing stopping us from realizing our true potential was named Resistance.

Resistance is what keeps you in bed on mornings where you swore you'd get some work done. Resistance is the thing that whispers in a dieter's ear 'one more cookie won't do any harm.' Resistance is the voice in your head that says, 'I swear I'll start working harder...tomorrow.'

Resistance distracts you from your long term goal by throwing distractions your way...distractions that bring instant gratification and draws you away from long term benefits. I lost the chance to get straight As for my SPM by telling myself,' mehhh one more DotA game can't hurt' and '1 less hour of sleep won't make much of a difference.'

Sure, I had my pleasure of 'just one more game,' but having fun for an hour lost me my college subsidy. RM1000 is no small amount. I've seen many of my friends fall to the power of Resistance, they lose their attention to drugs and alcohol and end up regretting it later when they've failed their exams and can't get a job. Some knowingly let themselves get beaten by Resistance, some have been controlled by Resistance all their lives and have become so familiar with it that they don't notice it's there.

How many of you procrastinators? How many of you would rather party and hang out than study? How many of you have chosen to slept in instead of doing some work? Every one who answered yes is a slave to Resistance, as am I.

Tonight, I spent half my night setting a checkpoint and convincing myself that I'd get my assignment done that much by tonight, NO GAMING, NO DISTRACTIONS. I spent the other half of the night guess what, PLAYING GODDAMN DOTA.

How about my work? I managed to get about half of what I planned to get done, done. And yet, here I am, spending the last few hours of my morning blogging instead of finishing said work.

I'm SO weak.

Sigh. Anyway. I've had 4 draft games so far this weekend, and I won 3 of them. Or I should say, my team won 3 of them. I'm still very disoriented and often have no idea what to do, but I don't feel as nervous as before.

I remember last week when I was planning my transition away from pub games into clan wars, my friend remarked that I was ridiculous nervous and spoke like a gibbering maniac every time we brought up the topic. Now I feel extremely silly. It turns out the clan wars are not that scary after all. The players are far more organized and strategic than public gamers, but they aren't exactly impossible to beat either.

In each of the three games, I was the one who died the most, but at least I've gotten a small taste of victory and now I don't feel like a complete noobshit anymore. Granted, I still feel very noob I think Sam started laughing when I was panicking and asking him which was the best spot to ward before the game started.

Almost every gank that I've initiated ended up with my teammates being slaughtered and no casualties on the enemy team. But I'm lucky my teammates are pretty damned nice and just told me to learn from my mistakes, no harm done. Every opponent so far has also been very civil, and as lansi opponents was one of my biggest fears, now I feel pretty comfortable playing with a stranger's team of 5.

I also played alongside Viv, Eve and some other girls today and though I had a strange feeling that Viv was the only one who knew what she was doing, I really enjoyed the game.

Maybe it was because the girls were pretty easygoing about it all, I could almost feel the 'meh whatever we'll survive' aura emanating from them 7000km away. Most guys I play with are normally super uptight about winning, and even my most sweet-tempered male gaming friend has given me a taste of their scorn and sarcasm when we're losing at least once (intentionally or otherwise.)

I like to win of course, but if I do lose to better opponents, I really don't mind. It's a learning experience. I really like it when someone tells me nicely what I've done wrong and what I should have done instead. It's much more helpful than snappy comments and grouchy retorts. I don't mind you telling my how I suck, as long as you tell me WHY I suck (and say it nicely.)

Oh well, it feels good to actually be learning something and improving. Maybe I'll play more now :) Last time I got really sick of DotA cause it felt like such a chore, playing each hero the same way every time, watching people nitpick over the smallest mistakes and having to deal with obnoxious players and leavers.

I got tired of CS when I stopped improving. It's so frustrating to be playing at the same level and not see any progress. My friends tried, for a while, to help me improve, but eventually they gave up when my negativity took over and my skills remained stagnant. I felt them lose their conviction in telling me that 'I wasn't a bad player and I could pawn if I wanted to.' When they stopped believing it, I stopped believing in myself too.

 I even developed a nervous twitch in my mouse hand because my lack of confidence made me deteriorate. The more I twitched, the worse I played; the worse I played, the more I twitched. So I just quit completely.

That day, when I was extremely bored, I opened up CS and decided to give it another go. I was perfectly fine. After warming up I started mowing down my opponent without much effort. One time my hand slipped and I died. From that round onward, my hand started shaking when I fired my gun. I couldn't control the recoil and I started dying repeatedly. Nerves took over and I quit the game.

Performance anxiety has always been a big problem for me. I used to dread piano exams when I was little, because the examiner scared the shit out of me. I'd spend a year practicing with my teacher with an audience of a few other students. Come exam time, they throw you into the chilled freezer of a room that's so silent you could hear yourself breathing, in front of a foreigner to whom you forced yourself to say 'hello, how are you?' because your piano teacher told you manners were VERY IMPORTANT, and they expect you to perform better than ever before.

I couldn't. I just freaked out. The piano keys felt foreign. I could feel the examiner listening intently to every note I played; every mistake I made sounded 10 times louder in that soundproofed room.

When I passed Grade 5 with a score of 100/150 - the exact score required to simply pass, I quit ABRSM. No more exams. My parents were very non-asian in that respect. Certificates meant nothing, my enjoyment was far more important than a piece of paper which I could use to wipe my ass and no one would notice it was gone.

I started enjoying playing the piano again. No pressure to perform well, no need to practice the same 3 pieces over and over again, no need to learn every single goddamn scale and arpeggio that existed. I rose to what my teacher considered Grade 8 level faster than expected. And although I never ever perfected a piece of music, I really really enjoy playing the piano now.

The pressure to perform takes pleasure out of everything. If you expect me to own at DotA and tell me so, I am much more likely to feel self-conscious and make silly mistakes. I can't draw when people are watching. I flub up the music when someone walks into the dining when I'm playing the piano. I can't do mental arithmetic when someone is staring at me, waiting expectantly for the answer.

Now, if only I could get past that anxiety, I'd be able to own at anything I tried. I truly believe that. My teacher said that when we made a mistake, make it the best and most awesome goddamn mistake of our lives. I once tripped in front of my entire school during assemble, flipping my skirt up to reveal my underwear. I got up, brushed the dust off my knees and laughed it off.

If I could do that for every other thing I did...hah. If only. If only I made a bad game and people told me it wasn't fun at all and I was able to say, well I LIKE IT, YOU DON'T HAVE TO. If only my skin was that thick...then maybe I wouldn't be so hesitant to keep trying and failing until I succeed.

Well. Okay then. Tomorrow I'm going to finish that dratted design document and proceed in programming the game. If it sucks and is not fun, WHO THE FUCK CARES? It's my awesome little baby of a game and you don't have to like it. Babies are ugly anyway. Only mothers could love them.

So TOMORROW. I WILL GET WORK DONE. I will allow myself to play, but I MUST FINISH THE DOCUMENT.

YEAAAAAAAAAA! *semangat*

Ok sleep now. :D