Why do I care about my arbitrary goals? My first thought would be because it gives my life meaning; it makes my life worth living. I would argue life has no inherent worth: it’s just a tiny, insignificant, momentary speck in an indifferent universe. Why would any life be worth living if, in the end, nothing truly matters?
That’s entirely the point. Nothing matters, so I make things matter. By choosing—subconsciously or consciously—things that gives my life some amount of worth. Things that let me feel like my life is not in vain. But that begs the question: why these goals? What motivates me to pursue these specific things?
For the creative goals, like writing a book, writing poetry, or making a video game and such, I think they come from a sincere and wholesome place. I think my imagination is too great to keep locked away in my head, and not even because I wish to share it (although I often do). If I were in a void, and had nothing but a stationery kit, I would still want to create; write stories and play with language and words and rhymes.
Another reason is that I’ve grown up on great and emotional stories and video games, like the works of Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, Chris Metzen, Quentin Tarantino and other great artists. I am deeply inspired by those who have gone before me, I wish to follow in their footsteps, but in my own way. Isn’t that beautiful? Art inspiring art, like some recursive never-ending loop of manifested human essence.
Alas, then we come to competitiveness and such games. I struggle deeply with this topic, as part of me believes the goals I set for myself pertaining this come from an unwholesome place. A part of it is good: I wish to improve, be better than my previous self. But the other part is it feeling like the “easy” road to take. I need no inspiration or ideas to play these video games, I must simply do. How do I write when no words come to mind? How I do fill a page without ink? Such questions need not be asked for competitive games. One is not asked to fill a page, rather to dip pen in ink. The beginning, the end and the world already defined. One has been given a canvas with outlines and numbered sections, then asked to fill the sections with colours. Of course one is free to choose the colours and the order of filling, but a completely new artwork cannot be made; the canvas is already filled.
Do I truly enjoy the competitiveness? Or am I avoiding creative work because I am afraid of that blank page? I think this is only true in part. Certainly when I think back on my competitive experiences, I can think of plenty of moments where I thoroughly enjoyed it; where it felt fulfilling. Yet, despite those experiences, I never feel like I’ve achieved anything. Unlike when I finish a poem, or a short story, however poor in quality they may be. The feeling of accomplishment is much too fleeting in most video games. Perhaps that is what drew to me so much to MMORPGs. Even just this past winter, when I played a lot of World of Warcraft, we worked hard to defeat the final boss of the expansion on Heroic difficulty (hard mode). And after many a struggle, and many a wipe, we finally managed to defeat him. That certainly felt—and still feels—like I achieved something. In fact I am rather proud of our achievement. I am especially proud of myself, because I was the raid leader: I made the calls and organised the group.
Perhaps in part it is an incompatibility between me and competitive games, that makes it feel like I never achieve anything when playing them. A game like WoW has a very clear goal, that is decided outside of your control. Kill the final boss. Simple, right? Where is that goal in League of Legends or in TEKKEN? Or any other competitive game? Clearly it is expected of you to set that goal for yourself, yet I have proved to be highly irresponsible when it comes to that. Either setting my goals too close or too far, neither of which create that feeling of achieving something.
I suppose in the end I didn’t really get much closer to an answer of the questions asked above. I need to think on competitiveness and getting “good” more deeply to find an answer for that, most likely. Right now I don’t think I will get much closer by mulling over it. I will sleep on it, at least, before I write on it.