Letting themselves come to the surface in new ways
Passion as unwavering supportiveness
Fantasy as easygoing humor and happiness
This poem is about realizing that sexual love can be beautiful, adventurous, and happy. It doesn’t need to be suppressed. Yet it also can feel the pain of trauma, and be expressed as deep caring and supportiveness. It’s a strange new place because I cannot wrap my head around how it works even though it feels right and true.
This morning I had a very slow start. Seems to be the same for a lot of days.
I really really focused on the idea that everything could be turned into an advantage. And today, I realized that the reason why I have slow starts is because my stomach burns, aches, and has gnawing empty pain. It is so bad, it is hard to focus and feel motivated to work.
The opportunity this morning is to devise some techniques to help with my stomach and be able to test it with the worst possible conditions. In other words, if the techniques work now, they will work anytime.
I tried this video first, and it was pretty helpful.
Then I tried this video which was helpful, but too boring to finish:
Finally, I tried drinking hot tea, which seemed to help some as well.’
And then, even though my stomach starting feeling better, I ran into another problem with avengance.
This problem was simple. Absolutely no motivation to do anything, being that I still felt tired and overwhelmed. Instead, I wanted to play games and watch tv shows.
I’m going to take the same approach here: use this as an opportunity to test out some new ideas with productivity.
So I have many many techniques in this area already, but I want to innovate further today in a different direction instead of meditation, letting go, focus, etc.
I want to look at why, even in my overwhelmed state, do I want to play Valorant and Fallout Shelter, and how I can fundamentally apply the same things to the things I want to do.
Things I Want To Do
Consulting work
Linkedin posts
Coaching work
Working out
Before I forget, here are some additional mindsets I can add the useful pile:
Walking to vent stress, find peace, ask tough questions, get answers
Workpost is to innovate something
Main Reasons Why I Want to Play Valorant
Can work on a specific skill like aim, movement, gamesense
Want to level up really quick and be a top player
Inspired by demon1, tenz, oxy, and aspas – want to be the best as well
Like working with a team, getting clutch plays off, good vibes
Main Reasons Why I Want to Play Fallout Shelter
Get control of my vault
Satisfaction in optimizing my vault
Satisfaction in leveling people up, and getting new weapons
Why It Is difficult to get the same feeling with work?
There is no specific simple skill to work on
Nothing I want to level up in
No one to inspire me
No team to work with
Don’t feel in complete ownership of the project
In a hurry to get it done
What skills am I excited want to work on in terms of work?
Faster problem solving skills
Intuition + precise logic for accurate but rapid decision making
Ability to think deeper with less effort
Memory and recall with less energy
What do I want to level up in terms of rank?
Money
Intellect
Thought leadership
Communication and charisma
Who do I draw inspiration from?
Elon Musk
Alex Hormozi
Khalid Sharara
How might I work off my team more?
Showing off the results of my work
How might I feel more in control of my work?
Understand that charisma, leadership are part of what I need to own and protect my work, just because there are other players involved doesn’t mean I don’t own it
Using all this information, I want to develop a unit of work, called a “game” or “match” to simulate what I do in Valorant. In Valorant you play a match with a clear objective, and you warm up before the game, and take breaks after the game.
Game Structure
Warmup: 15 minutes
Use to do list, practice one skill at a time:
Faster problem solving/solution creation skills
Intuition + precise logic for accurate but rapid decision making
Ability to think deeper with less effort
Memory and recall with less energy
Main game: 45 minutes
Fights:
Capture questions and answers.
Level up in:
Money
Intellect
Thought leadership
Communication and charisma
Result Calculation:
How much do I think this work is worth?
How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10?
What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation?
Today I feel very exhausted and tired. I still feel struggles with going to jiujitsu and going to bed on time. I feel overwhelmed with where I’m going with my business.
Here are some of the things I learned over the past few days:
I can combine the powerful techniques of connection theory and flow theory in the following way: first use connection theory to validate and understand my feelings, then use flow theory to somatically process it. I can then use connection theory to understand deeper, better and have a more grounded explanation.
It isn’t about what you do, it is about how you show up
It’s ok to not know where you are going, but aim your northstar and measure everything at it
Today here are the things I want to achomplish:
Complete the three tasks I created for myself
Have additional time to play Valorant before jiujitsu
Spend time after jiujitsu working on my businesses
Take a nap during the day to recover from tireness
I am completely confused and upset by how this girl that I play Valorant went from having so much fun to always getting annoyed and mad.
Facts that I know:
Used to beg me to play constantly, only stopped because I was too busy with work so I said no all the time
Used to laugh and think I was very funny in games
At first, was resistant to smurfing, but after she was convinced, had a ton of fun trolling on smurfs including doing frenzy only challenge
Used to be afraid to talk in voice chat, only talked to me
Spent all her time talking to me on Valorant and ignored her relationship because of how much she liked playing with me
She used to be my favorite person to play with for several months:
Was always fun and chill
Could make jokes or talk about deep stuff
Made me feel special because she only wanted to play with me
Would actually listen to strats unlike some girls who would get defensive when given any feedback
Was very smart and improved a great deal in the time we played
However, somehow, after months of having lots and lots of fun, everything has taken a dramatic turn:
Gets annoyed when she isn’t doing well and takes the game very seriously
Gets annoyed when I’m taking the game too seriously but also gets mad when I goof off
Wants everyone to be mean and toxic yet gets upset when people are toxic back
Is mad when I’m goofing off and think I’m somehow trying very hard to be funny
Claims that unrated it doesn’t matter if she wins or loses but gets mad when she loses
Claims smurfs don’t matter but somehow gets mad when she loses on a smurf
Somehow is able to have fun with other people and refuses to play with me now
Cannot seem to remember any of our happy times and insists that she never had fun
Some factors that I think may contribute:
May have been taught by someone that being slow and boring is a very bad thing, seems to be overly concerned with it and projects onto other people
May feel a really strong pressure to do well, seemed to take the game extremely seriously after her friend started playing on it
May also feel a great deal of pressure to play well and be less toxic around me because she wants it to work out, the pressure may cause her to do worse, and be even more toxic
May feel a sense of superiority or arrogance? When we first started playing, she kept telling me she was afraid I would stop playing with her because she was lower elo than me. I never did, but always wondered if she would stop playing with me if she got better than me.
Altogether I can’t really make sense of this phenomenon and it does bother me a great deal. I suppose on some level I must accept that something about Valorant and playing with me triggers her in some deep way and that I shouldn’t let that stop me from having fun. It does make me sad that things have changed so dramatically and I lost my favorite Valorant buddy.
Valorant has become significantly less fun for me now. It almost feels like work, instead of a game that I loved. There was a period of time when I was playing with her that I truly let go of the need to win and actually just had fun. I don’t know what I need to do to get that feeling back. I hope she finds a way to have fun as well, but it breaks my heart that it isn’t with me.