Learning Curve

I still remember when I first started playing Super Monday Night Combat. There was only one tutorial video and then you were thrown into games with people who may have been playing for months. Even though getting up to speed at the beginning was difficult I had a lot of fun. In the end I feel like I got pretty good at the game. Not amazing but above average. My life right now kind of feels the same. I'm at a new job, there's onboarding at work but it still feels like getting up to speed is difficult. I tried multiple times to get into Dota 2 but I could never handle turn rates or last hitting. Unlike Dota 2, giving up now has much greater consequences.

It's also not just work. I have to spend much more effort on social interactions now if I don't want to sit alone in my apartment forever. I used to say that I was terrible at remembering names. Now, I've been pretty good at remembering names recently. I think it's because I'm actively working on building connections now. I'm still not that great at it but I'm trying.

And that's one of the reasons I moved to Seattle. Because for some fucked up reason I think that putting myself in a situation where the only options are to perform well or suffer terribly will somehow make me perform well. Now that I've started to think about it that way I figure that can't be healthy. What happens if I can't succeed at the levels expected of me at work? What happens if I don't make any social connections? What if I don't meet my own expectations? I don't have anything to fall back on.

And that's not entirely true. I don't think I'll be completely and utterly hopeless and alone 😅. It isn't black and white. My team is supportive, I've been asking questions, I've finally started coding. I remembered the name of a person who lives a floor below me.

I also was afraid of getting too comfortable. If you aren't being challenged are you able to grow? Playing through the Boss Rush mode of Hyper Light Drifter is always fun. After a while I could pretty easily get a pretty good time with the methods I had been using to beat the bosses but I knew that if I wanted to get lower times I would have to use harder strategies (I actually tried playing last night and my laptop couldn't handle it 😓). It's almost like I'm experimenting with myself. Except I didn't change one variable like accepting a more difficult position OR trying to build a new social life. I did both at the same time.

I don't even have a good goal right now. In Overwatch it's to hit a 3000 ranking in competitive matchmaking. At work? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I feel like not failing isn't a good goal. Is feeling comfortable in 3 months a good goal? At Placester it was to succeed in a difficult environment and I feel like I did that. I was in a completely new environment dealing with new problems and I made it. Maybe my current goal is fine and I'll have a better idea of what I want to hit in 3 2 months.

It really just comes down to continuing to make progress. Not giving up. I'm curious to see where I end up in a year, maybe even in 6 months. But right now I've just got to take it day by day, line by line, interaction by interaction.

And honestly I really should go to bed because I have work in the morning.