A few of you might have noticed that I’ve been absent for a few months. I could offer the standard excuse and say that I’ve been busy. That’s true enough, as I’ve been quite busy these past few months. Really, I’ve been quite busy for the last year. Busyness isn’t the story behind my absence. It’s not even the primary excuse.
I think writing requires three main components: time, energy, and desire. If you have two of those components you can usually manufacture the third. If you’re a writer you usually have two of those components at all times, especially since it’s the third that’s most important and the thing that drives those of us who call ourselves writers the hardest.
I haven’t had any desire to write of late. It’s really that simple. I’ve thought about writing many times over the last couple of months but as soon as I’ve thought about it I’ve discarded the thought in favor of doing something else. What writing I’ve done has been the bare minimum necessary to communicate specific information about a specific thing.
I’ve enjoyed my hiatus from writing. I long thought that since I considered myself a writer that meant that if I didn’t write about something then it wasn’t a valid experience somehow. Since Christmas I’ve been re-evaluating pretty much everything about my self-image and how I interact with other people and see myself interacting with others. In the past I’ve gone jackrabbiting off to my laptop in the middle of those things in order to write about them and try to make sure I understood and properly processed them in an appropriately writerly sort of way. This time? Not so much. I haven’t written a damn thing about what’s gone on in my skull for quite some time.
It’s hard to say if not writing was a decision I made or the end result of a sort of weariness about the idea of writing. Whatever the answer, though, it was the right one. For the first time in a long time (possibly ever) I ended up making decisions without feeling that I had to explain them. For the first time I honestly assessed myself without feeling like I would need to justify my assessments to anyone.
One of the things I realized is that I’ve been playing to an audience my entire life. Or, if not my entire life, at least as far back as I can remember. I tend to push that off as an artifact of my time in Evangelical Christianity, where there was a definite pressure to conform and to at least seem like I wasn’t doing all of those things that weren’t deemed acceptable. I tended to talk about shame and being afraid to reveal my true self in terms that were decidedly evangelical. I could never quite shake the feeling that I wasn’t getting out the entire story there due to the simple realization that I left Christianity years ago but I was still afraid of what would happen if people found out certain things about me. I hid, I equivocated, I evaded, I outright lied.
I haven’t been lying for the last several months. I think the core reason I haven’t been lying is because I haven’t been writing. That means I’ve been avoiding that built in audience I’m always otherwise attempting to appease. It’s been pretty fantastic, I tell you what.
----------------
It’s funny, though, since that audience is sometimes necessary. When we last convened I was writing up a series of posts about digging out my old R/C cars and BattleTech stuff. One of my friends then asked me if I wanted to go to the Dragon’s Maze prerelease. I said, “Sure, why not?”[1] Mostly. We’ll pretend it was that simple, since I don’t really remember.
This means we need to talk about Magic: The Gathering for a bit.
I first started playing some time in junior high. I’m guessing it was in 1994, since I remember buying a lot of Fallen Empires and Revised and I remember when Ice Age came out and Chronicles was announced. I also know that I quit fairly shortly thereafter. I’d gotten it into my head that Satan was behind the game, so I traded my cards for a start at the Star Wars CCG.[1]
I got back in during Invasion and played through Odyssey and Onslaught and into Mirrodin. I also have a bunch of Kamigawa cards for some reason and I went to the Lorwyn prerelease. That Invasion-Odyssey-Onslaught stretch was the first time I played at sanctioned tournaments and holy crap did it suck. There were people with no social skills and even fewer hygiene skills hanging out in big rooms talking about Magic, Magic, and more Magic. I’d go to some event or other, play, and then quit for a month or two. I’d also avoid telling anyone who knew me that I played Magic, since I didn’t want to be associated with the unhygienic ones.
So I quit. I think I also quit because holy shit Magic wasn’t fun during that stretch. Also, too, I guess I played into Kamigawa block, but that was also when I went out to Western, so I might have just had other things to do. I don’t remember, honestly.[2]
I sold some of my cards when I quit. I kept some others, mostly the ones that weren’t worth much or the ones I needed to build decks I liked.[3] I then basically resolved to never tell anyone that I’d played Magic.
There used to be a social stigma to being a geek. I was terrified of being picked on and mocked and, as such, I did my damndest to be at least acceptable. It was doubly complicated for me, since I was trying to navigate school and church, where the definitions of acceptable were wildly different and the costs of being considered different were similarly divergent.
I realize now that I was playing to audiences then. The problem is that I was playing to the wrong audiences. There’s no reason to worry about people who are going to mock you for being you and liking the things you like, especially if those people might only be doing it in your own mind. I’ve only figured that out within the last six months or so.
So when my friend saw I was writing about R/C cars and BattleTech he decided that he could ask if I wanted to go play Magic. I said sure. I had fun. I was totally okay with that. I then spent a disturbing amount of money on small pieces of cardboard.
It’s a drug. A drug, I tells ya.
------------------
I bought a new R/C truck a couple months back. It’s an RC10T4.2 Team Edition, in case anyone cares. I painted the body the closest color I could find to TARDIS blue and put a Doctor Who sticker on the hood. I’d been planning on doing something more expansive, so I ended up with a bunch of Doctor Who stickers. I put a Dalek on my deck box since, y’know, it was a thing that looked like it could use a sticker.
I’ve had a bunch of Doctor Who-related conversations since then because of my stickers.
What I’ve realized is this: being a geek is just kind of a thing. I realized a long time ago that geekery is relative and that people who are totally into sports are geeks in the same way as people who play D&D. It’s just that when I was a kid it was acceptable to know Pete Rose’s career batting average and not acceptable to spend your weekend rolling D20s in a basement somewhere. Now you just need to find people who like the one and not the other and you’re fine. You might also find out that that guy who knows Pete Rose’s batting average and how many points Magic Johnson scored over his career also loves Star Trek.
It seems that some people think this is bad. I’ve run into a few people who think that because geekery carried social stigma when they were young it means that it should still carry a social stigma. Otherwise today’s geeks won’t be as dedicated and strong or something. And then the fake geek girls will show up and ruin all the fun.[4]
I think it’s good. It means that someone can be an anime geek and someone else can be an RPG geek and someone else can be a video game geek and if it turns out that they all like Doctor Who then they all have something in common. It also means that if someone who isn’t traditionally considered a geek happens to enjoy Doctor Who then they, too, can find enjoyment and common cause in that.
Mostly, though, it means that we’re not alone. That, I think was the biggest fear I had. I played to the audience at hand because I didn’t want to discover that I was alone.
In the end, though, I put myself in a position where I was almost always alone.
---------------
As such I feel like synthesizing where I’ve been. Writing is an itch that I haven’t scratched in a while, so I want to put some thoughts out. Then I want to seriously considering get back to writing about history and occasionally posting Letters to Cleo videos.
Consider this the intro to a week of testimony.
--------------------
[1]I still have my first release Darth Vader, Obi-Wan, and Luke Skywalker. They’re worth significantly less than a few Magic cards I own.
[2]I suppose I couldn’t have been completely ashamed of the whole Magic thing. I went to the Lorwyn prerelease with a couple friends and I remember briefly attempting to teach Amy how to play. So I guess there’s that.
Also, too, I considered getting back in ‘round about 2009. One of my teachers from juco owns a card shop in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago and he and his wife are literally two of the finest people I’ve ever known. A couple of my friends and I used to play there on Friday nights and I almost got back in just to reignite that relationship. So when my friend asked if I wanted to go to the Dragon’s Maze prerelease his trump card was to tell me that we could go there.
I, um, I’m loyal to a fault.
[3]I kept four decks together: a really good Extended Machinehead deck, a fantastic Extended Sligh deck, a Necropotence deck, and a goofy little red-blue deck I called Monkey with a Taser. When I pulled my cards back out I could also find and easily identify the remains of a white-blue Stasis deck (sadly, that deck had 4 Tundras, which were worth $10 or so when I sold them. They’re worth $120 now), a red-black land destruction deck, and a mono green elf deck (that deck had my Gaea’s Cradle, which I was shocked to discover is worth $160, so I’ve got that goin’ for me).
Also, funny story, I discovered that there was a new, fixed format called “Modern.” So I figured that I might be able to build something for that, only to discover that most of my cards were too old. So I guess I played in pre-Modern times.
[4]I’ve really, really been wanting to write a post on the fake geek girl thing. Here’s the abstract of my thoughts: STFU. No, seriously, STFU. Women are allowed to be geeks, too. And, in general, if you think the worst of an entire gender then they’re probably not the problem. You are.
I think writing requires three main components: time, energy, and desire. If you have two of those components you can usually manufacture the third. If you’re a writer you usually have two of those components at all times, especially since it’s the third that’s most important and the thing that drives those of us who call ourselves writers the hardest.
I haven’t had any desire to write of late. It’s really that simple. I’ve thought about writing many times over the last couple of months but as soon as I’ve thought about it I’ve discarded the thought in favor of doing something else. What writing I’ve done has been the bare minimum necessary to communicate specific information about a specific thing.
I’ve enjoyed my hiatus from writing. I long thought that since I considered myself a writer that meant that if I didn’t write about something then it wasn’t a valid experience somehow. Since Christmas I’ve been re-evaluating pretty much everything about my self-image and how I interact with other people and see myself interacting with others. In the past I’ve gone jackrabbiting off to my laptop in the middle of those things in order to write about them and try to make sure I understood and properly processed them in an appropriately writerly sort of way. This time? Not so much. I haven’t written a damn thing about what’s gone on in my skull for quite some time.
It’s hard to say if not writing was a decision I made or the end result of a sort of weariness about the idea of writing. Whatever the answer, though, it was the right one. For the first time in a long time (possibly ever) I ended up making decisions without feeling that I had to explain them. For the first time I honestly assessed myself without feeling like I would need to justify my assessments to anyone.
One of the things I realized is that I’ve been playing to an audience my entire life. Or, if not my entire life, at least as far back as I can remember. I tend to push that off as an artifact of my time in Evangelical Christianity, where there was a definite pressure to conform and to at least seem like I wasn’t doing all of those things that weren’t deemed acceptable. I tended to talk about shame and being afraid to reveal my true self in terms that were decidedly evangelical. I could never quite shake the feeling that I wasn’t getting out the entire story there due to the simple realization that I left Christianity years ago but I was still afraid of what would happen if people found out certain things about me. I hid, I equivocated, I evaded, I outright lied.
I haven’t been lying for the last several months. I think the core reason I haven’t been lying is because I haven’t been writing. That means I’ve been avoiding that built in audience I’m always otherwise attempting to appease. It’s been pretty fantastic, I tell you what.
----------------
It’s funny, though, since that audience is sometimes necessary. When we last convened I was writing up a series of posts about digging out my old R/C cars and BattleTech stuff. One of my friends then asked me if I wanted to go to the Dragon’s Maze prerelease. I said, “Sure, why not?”[1] Mostly. We’ll pretend it was that simple, since I don’t really remember.
This means we need to talk about Magic: The Gathering for a bit.
I first started playing some time in junior high. I’m guessing it was in 1994, since I remember buying a lot of Fallen Empires and Revised and I remember when Ice Age came out and Chronicles was announced. I also know that I quit fairly shortly thereafter. I’d gotten it into my head that Satan was behind the game, so I traded my cards for a start at the Star Wars CCG.[1]
I got back in during Invasion and played through Odyssey and Onslaught and into Mirrodin. I also have a bunch of Kamigawa cards for some reason and I went to the Lorwyn prerelease. That Invasion-Odyssey-Onslaught stretch was the first time I played at sanctioned tournaments and holy crap did it suck. There were people with no social skills and even fewer hygiene skills hanging out in big rooms talking about Magic, Magic, and more Magic. I’d go to some event or other, play, and then quit for a month or two. I’d also avoid telling anyone who knew me that I played Magic, since I didn’t want to be associated with the unhygienic ones.
So I quit. I think I also quit because holy shit Magic wasn’t fun during that stretch. Also, too, I guess I played into Kamigawa block, but that was also when I went out to Western, so I might have just had other things to do. I don’t remember, honestly.[2]
I sold some of my cards when I quit. I kept some others, mostly the ones that weren’t worth much or the ones I needed to build decks I liked.[3] I then basically resolved to never tell anyone that I’d played Magic.
There used to be a social stigma to being a geek. I was terrified of being picked on and mocked and, as such, I did my damndest to be at least acceptable. It was doubly complicated for me, since I was trying to navigate school and church, where the definitions of acceptable were wildly different and the costs of being considered different were similarly divergent.
I realize now that I was playing to audiences then. The problem is that I was playing to the wrong audiences. There’s no reason to worry about people who are going to mock you for being you and liking the things you like, especially if those people might only be doing it in your own mind. I’ve only figured that out within the last six months or so.
So when my friend saw I was writing about R/C cars and BattleTech he decided that he could ask if I wanted to go play Magic. I said sure. I had fun. I was totally okay with that. I then spent a disturbing amount of money on small pieces of cardboard.
It’s a drug. A drug, I tells ya.
------------------
I bought a new R/C truck a couple months back. It’s an RC10T4.2 Team Edition, in case anyone cares. I painted the body the closest color I could find to TARDIS blue and put a Doctor Who sticker on the hood. I’d been planning on doing something more expansive, so I ended up with a bunch of Doctor Who stickers. I put a Dalek on my deck box since, y’know, it was a thing that looked like it could use a sticker.
I’ve had a bunch of Doctor Who-related conversations since then because of my stickers.
What I’ve realized is this: being a geek is just kind of a thing. I realized a long time ago that geekery is relative and that people who are totally into sports are geeks in the same way as people who play D&D. It’s just that when I was a kid it was acceptable to know Pete Rose’s career batting average and not acceptable to spend your weekend rolling D20s in a basement somewhere. Now you just need to find people who like the one and not the other and you’re fine. You might also find out that that guy who knows Pete Rose’s batting average and how many points Magic Johnson scored over his career also loves Star Trek.
It seems that some people think this is bad. I’ve run into a few people who think that because geekery carried social stigma when they were young it means that it should still carry a social stigma. Otherwise today’s geeks won’t be as dedicated and strong or something. And then the fake geek girls will show up and ruin all the fun.[4]
I think it’s good. It means that someone can be an anime geek and someone else can be an RPG geek and someone else can be a video game geek and if it turns out that they all like Doctor Who then they all have something in common. It also means that if someone who isn’t traditionally considered a geek happens to enjoy Doctor Who then they, too, can find enjoyment and common cause in that.
Mostly, though, it means that we’re not alone. That, I think was the biggest fear I had. I played to the audience at hand because I didn’t want to discover that I was alone.
In the end, though, I put myself in a position where I was almost always alone.
---------------
As such I feel like synthesizing where I’ve been. Writing is an itch that I haven’t scratched in a while, so I want to put some thoughts out. Then I want to seriously considering get back to writing about history and occasionally posting Letters to Cleo videos.
Consider this the intro to a week of testimony.
--------------------
[1]I still have my first release Darth Vader, Obi-Wan, and Luke Skywalker. They’re worth significantly less than a few Magic cards I own.
[2]I suppose I couldn’t have been completely ashamed of the whole Magic thing. I went to the Lorwyn prerelease with a couple friends and I remember briefly attempting to teach Amy how to play. So I guess there’s that.
Also, too, I considered getting back in ‘round about 2009. One of my teachers from juco owns a card shop in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago and he and his wife are literally two of the finest people I’ve ever known. A couple of my friends and I used to play there on Friday nights and I almost got back in just to reignite that relationship. So when my friend asked if I wanted to go to the Dragon’s Maze prerelease his trump card was to tell me that we could go there.
I, um, I’m loyal to a fault.
[3]I kept four decks together: a really good Extended Machinehead deck, a fantastic Extended Sligh deck, a Necropotence deck, and a goofy little red-blue deck I called Monkey with a Taser. When I pulled my cards back out I could also find and easily identify the remains of a white-blue Stasis deck (sadly, that deck had 4 Tundras, which were worth $10 or so when I sold them. They’re worth $120 now), a red-black land destruction deck, and a mono green elf deck (that deck had my Gaea’s Cradle, which I was shocked to discover is worth $160, so I’ve got that goin’ for me).
Also, funny story, I discovered that there was a new, fixed format called “Modern.” So I figured that I might be able to build something for that, only to discover that most of my cards were too old. So I guess I played in pre-Modern times.
[4]I’ve really, really been wanting to write a post on the fake geek girl thing. Here’s the abstract of my thoughts: STFU. No, seriously, STFU. Women are allowed to be geeks, too. And, in general, if you think the worst of an entire gender then they’re probably not the problem. You are.
Thoughts:
1. One of the great things about being alive right now, about "geek" being, y'know, not an insult, is this: you get to like what you like. Everybody does that anyway, but now they do it with a lot less criticism and pushback.
2. And, yeah, the folks who are seriously into sports stats and rating are about a mouse's whisker away from the hardcore D'n'D players. They're doing the same math, it's just a slightly different topic.
3. Dude, you are so, so not alone. And to the extent that you are, you are absolutely no more alone than anyone - everyone - else is.
4. I financed a particularly enjoyable camping trip on the back of a batch of Beta Magic Cards that I sold.
5. On a related note - damn, it's been a long time since I've played.
Posted by: Michael Mock | 07/08/2013 at 09:33 PM
1) Bravo.
2) What I've always believed is that it's fun to be into stuff. I try to illustrate that with as many disparate and nonsequitirous things as I can, because that too is something to be into. The important corollary to "It's fun to be into stuff", I figured out much more slowly- and I'm not done working it out. It's that begrudging another person the harmless thing they're really into is not a good thing to do. Just on the plane ride home, I was sitting next to someone watching a TV show I have distaste for on their iPad. Not you-know-who levels of distaste, but enough to mentally roll my eyes. If I was truly free of of the bad kind of judgment, the factual statement "This person likes this show." would be the beginning and the end of my thoughts on the subject. But... I did waste a solid 30-45 seconds thinking about it. And then I spent the next two hours sneaking glances. I cite the precedent of "Stewie Griffin discussing The Bernie Mac Show" for that.
3) I like how this dovetails with your more recent posts. Magic players are people too. Some of us spend more money, time, or emotion on the game than others. We're old people, small children, and everything in between. We're males, females, LGBT's, and straights. We're more nationalities than I can name. We have a common interest we've all independently decided is worth a Friday night or a Saturday. That means most of us are tolerable to each other most of the time. Not getting what we want or expect out of the game will turn most of us into a real asshole for a night if it happens often enough, but we usually get better. Then since we are a group of human beings, some of us are jerks and some of us are awesome. Most of us are both.
5) My binder is partially covered with MLB team logo stickers, the most frequently appearing of which is the Montreal Expos. I am in love with this fact, but I can't help but think it needs a few Rockies, Marlins, D-Backs, and Rays stickers. Original logos.
Finally off: This really made me laugh. I spent my first 5 or so hours back in IL doing the freaking BOOKKEEPING for Magic. Figuring out a budget, cracking packs, sorting, setting out possible decks and trade scenarios, pulling off one of those awesome trades where good stuff falls into place for everyone, all that junk. It was a blast and a half, and I have three new shocklands now. But around ten I kind of thought, shouldn't we, um, play some games of Magic at some point? So we cracked more packs and did a sealed. And right now I might be eyeing the sealed box of Return to Ravnica in front of me suspiciously, as though it might contain certain cards and I might feel ways about that whenever I decide to bust open a few. Ah hell, how about now.
Oh... and you're welcome to draft with us sometime. Not that this is addictive or anything.
Posted by: The Everlasting Dave | 07/11/2013 at 04:04 AM