After 10 years, I finally learnt how to have fun again

I have always been quietly competitive. I do not annouce that I care about any games or achievements, but if I know I can perform well. I have always held myself to a very high standard, and tried to win. The caveat, or the "quiet" part of this competitiveness, is my pride often stops me from sharing this competition with others. This is a cop out adn a crutch. If I get 90% of the way to winning and someone rushes past me at the finish line, I pretend I never truly cared only trying to decieve myself.

There have been two types of competition that have been constant in my life. Tennis and Fighting games, Both I excelled at when I was younger. As my priorities had to shift moving onto univeristy I began to play both a lot less and I quickly grew to resent them both. I had once been very competitive amognst my peers, but now I was barely keeping up as I watched them improve at rapid pace. Now I have been in the workforce longer than I played both fighting games and Tennis and both my competitive spirit towards them and my love for them have faded with time.

Recently, out of nostalgia, and a need for community. I decided to pick both back up around the same time. I had picked both up randomly every year or so only to be immediatly frustrated with my shortcomings. This time, something was different. I tossed my ego aside, and found that I never truly played tennis or fighting games for the competition in the first place. I did actually enjoy both of these activities once before I became competitive at either of them. This simple new perspective. Coming into a game with no expectations other than to play and enjoy the company of those around me. Has allowed me to have fun with both games again. I wish I had learnt this sooner.

Dropping the ego has also rapidly increased my improvement in both Fighting games and Tennis. When I was holding onto my ego I would only accept feedback from those I deemed better than me. Ignoring the fact this is such a narcissitic dick move. It also closed off my mind to strategies being developed by players of all levels, those players would go on to improve much faster. They had no ego, they were learning more than I was. Now that I am older I wish I could teach this to my younger self. I feel like this mindset with my younger body would have gone a long way!

This revalation has had a domino effect in other aspects of my life. I have never been much of a creative, I held myself to too high a standard despite never practicing the arts. Tossing my ego aside has had me enjoying my writing more, the process itself is allowed to be fun! It does not have to be a trap of perfection and comparison. I don't think what I am saying is anything new, many others I imagine have said this before. But it is the first time this has truly sunk in for me. I want to share that with others, ego and pride is the death of fun. Competition itself is not the issue, it is your ego that makes your enjoyment of competition fade. Now I find myself wanting to play competition tennis again. My body is much worse than it was when I was 17. But I look forward to overcoming the new challenges that it brings.

Similarly, my ego had trapped me in the idea that all creative or new ideas had to be completely original. I am now aware that many of the best ideas, are a frankenstein of different influences spoken in your own unique voice. I cannot stress this to myself more! In my current line of work, developing new ideas is like panning for gold, sometimes they are small ideas but they are still valuable. I feel like I have just been handed a jackhammer. I can now see other peoples ideas and use them in my own unique way. Humans have been doing this for years and yet for some reason I thought I was different.

To round this off, I want to share some creators and influences that I have found helpful to come to this conclusion. These are people who I think have mastered the imperfect, embraced their own voice. I look up to these people and hope they inspire many others to speak in their own unique way and own it!