Lessons (from DnD/complex role therapy) about meaning, neural-plasticity, and adulthood.
With a title like that, I better be talking about some pretty crazy stuff right? Especially after missing last week of these strange oversharing brain dumps. In my defense, school was kicking my butt more than usual. Which always makes me depressed because I like to picture school as an annoyance that only requires minimum thought. So when it demands more of me, it's a real blow to my over-inflated perception of myself. But I recovered and school is back in the place it belongs. I'm actually going to draft my thoughts somewhere else before writing them here, I want to make sure I'm relatively coherent.
My DND game "V'Hadrin" that I've been dungeon-mastering was incredible when we started, took a dip where I failed to prepare correctly etc, and is now even better than when it started. Our last session, we didn't even have combat, but I got to, through narrative, explain what I viewed to be an incorrect perception of heavenly reward. And my players took the opportunity to, through narrative, explain what they believed about it. When it got to the end, I apologized that there was no combat and all my players were cool with it. It was a really incredible experience of sharing really complex thoughts and ideas in a complex and intuitive way. It honestly made me feel way more connected to them in the ideas we were talking about than a complex conversation would have. It was like experiencing the magical communicative nature of art in its rudimentary, simplest form of group, improvised, storytelling. But, that leads us into a weird struggle I've been having recently. Meaning.
I'm not a horribly depressed person, I've only even been slightly suicidal once, and even then it was really just me being really bummed about an especially un-fun breakup. Looking back it's so silly. I managed to survive much more serious and mentally damaging losses. But now, I find myself locked in a battle not against depression or hopelessness, but just pure and simple antipathy. I yearn for experiences like China that forced me to survive, to have any kind of drama and stakes again. The difference between a C and an A in my grades doesn't matter, I still graduate. Getting out of debt barely matters, I'll be more able to do it when I graduate. Socializing doesn't matter, I'm just gonna move or be totally different after I graduate. I kept thinking that life would smack me over the head with a relationship, obsession, or divine purpose to get me on the write track again, and it just isn't. Which brings me back to DND. Why am I excited to play it? I like my players, and we're friends, but I don't know if our relationships would really persist outside of the game. Despite that, I can't refuse this powerful social element of storytelling. DND is just random numbers and statistics thrown around in a way to simulate randomness, and yet I seriously care about the outcomes, on an emotional level, way more than I care about school. Why? Because of my players, because I get to share these emotionally deep and intricate forms of thought in ways that are tangible. I guess its the same reason why I do art, it's just art has the whole infringing element that it has to be good to be worth anything in many social players' eyes, which I despise. Honestly, my life doesn't have a lot of "players". My life has a lot of "viewers", and "judgers", but there are not a lot of people who are in the arena with me- exposed, feeling stupid with me, and finding joy in that. The only solution I think is to be exposed and feeling stupid with more and more people I like, but that involves a lot of trail and error and pain. I'm bored enough to go for it, but it could be more costly in terms of progress toward graduation. But, I'm reaaaaallly bored lately.
I'm 25 and constantly worried about my brain settling in and become accustomed to level of knowledge I have now. I yearn for when I was 11, 12, 15, and desperately forcing my brain to learn as much as possible because I thought I needed to learn something in order to be worth anything to anyone. I loved that feeling of learning, and the dramatic mood swings that came from it. I would cry bitter tears when I thought about how at the age of 14, my potential as a ballet dancer was kaput, and laughable when compared to those who had more opportunities. It led me to push myself harder and harder and make myself accomplish a lot of things that people who are trained never did. I did that in Piano, Music Theory, Chinese, (in a sense) running, and although it doesn't feel as dramatic I've recently done it a little in directing. I say "done it a little" because recently it doesn't feel the same. I can't convince my psyche that learning things matters, not in the same way. When I was younger, I benefited from the delusion that the world was watching, that people cared, or that knowledge would make me happier. Despite my best efforts, those delusions fell as I grew up and came to know more fully how little my ability mattered to my happiness. Not completely unrelated, but unrelated enough to discourage the level of effort I put into things before. I know I'm not done learning, and despite my age, I can be the type to push my brain continuously as I get older. I've still got at least 4 languages to learn and a lot of other skills to accumulate. But it's so strange to think that my greatest enemy isn't how. I know how: hard, blister-breaking, tear spurting, hour consuming, manic work. Now that I'm older and will have money to throw at it that will also help. It's not the how that's in my way now, it's the why. Why? Because I love it? That's true, but I've got to eat. Because it'll bring others joy? Sure, but there aren't many "others" in my life. Because, just for the hell of it? Probably the best reason. But it doesn't inspire my inner mad-scientist like fear used to. I used to work myself to exhaustion and emotional implosion in fear that I would never be loved or that I wouldn't match up to something that mattered. I want to inspire that inner manic burst of crazed energy again, but it seems like he's hooked on a drug I ran out of.
So, now that I'm adult, the conclusion I've come to is that adulthood is truly just about survival. Made your bills? An adult. Over 18? Adult. Able to not get committed for not being a crazy person? Adult. The bar is pretty low. So I can't use it as an excuse to not employ my mad-scientist again. To feel that mad rush of learning and pushing myself. I'm craving it. I dream about it constantly. That and my first girlfriend because we were really close buds even though our relationship was super toxic and it's a good thing it ended. Maybe that's a sign? Connections are the new drug? Dunno still thinking about it.
I'm talking about this partially because of something that I'm working on with my therapist. A new character to employ with role therapy. Basically, I "act" as a character I've created that has more of the traits that I want and experiences life in a different way I do. The first time I did it, it worked incredible well. It was for the duration of my stay in China, and helped me recover from previously mentioned bad breakup. Mordecai was a survivor. A creature of the demands of his surroundings. He was useful, and he did some incredible things for me. A marathon on the great wall of China, an entire apartment with Chinese practice sheets for wallpaper, an improvised travel experience to Xi'An and Shanghai for three weeks entirely on my lonesome. But, he's a loner, he's a scrapper, he was made to work with little, do his best, and survive with one road ahead of him. And that doesn't help me as much in states where I can do anything, be anything, have the bounty of the most wealthy and lush nations in the world. So what happens? I got fat for one thing, and I lost my purpose to do anything. Mordecai didn't work with Carrots, he lived for the Stick. In that way he did channel some of that manic fear my teenage self understood.
Since then I've tried two characters: Luther and Calias. Both underdeveloped idealized pictures without faults, created in the desperation of boredom and antipathy. So, now I'm working on the next character, the next attempt to be better, and it can't be like Luther or Calias; it's gotta be something built in the same way to Mordecai. He was built with planned faults, groundedness, and acceptance that he would live in the real world and therefore have real problems and handle them differently than me.
Eh. What a bunch of hooey. Not dead yet and I'll keep trying to figure it out. Toodles.
My DND game "V'Hadrin" that I've been dungeon-mastering was incredible when we started, took a dip where I failed to prepare correctly etc, and is now even better than when it started. Our last session, we didn't even have combat, but I got to, through narrative, explain what I viewed to be an incorrect perception of heavenly reward. And my players took the opportunity to, through narrative, explain what they believed about it. When it got to the end, I apologized that there was no combat and all my players were cool with it. It was a really incredible experience of sharing really complex thoughts and ideas in a complex and intuitive way. It honestly made me feel way more connected to them in the ideas we were talking about than a complex conversation would have. It was like experiencing the magical communicative nature of art in its rudimentary, simplest form of group, improvised, storytelling. But, that leads us into a weird struggle I've been having recently. Meaning.
I'm not a horribly depressed person, I've only even been slightly suicidal once, and even then it was really just me being really bummed about an especially un-fun breakup. Looking back it's so silly. I managed to survive much more serious and mentally damaging losses. But now, I find myself locked in a battle not against depression or hopelessness, but just pure and simple antipathy. I yearn for experiences like China that forced me to survive, to have any kind of drama and stakes again. The difference between a C and an A in my grades doesn't matter, I still graduate. Getting out of debt barely matters, I'll be more able to do it when I graduate. Socializing doesn't matter, I'm just gonna move or be totally different after I graduate. I kept thinking that life would smack me over the head with a relationship, obsession, or divine purpose to get me on the write track again, and it just isn't. Which brings me back to DND. Why am I excited to play it? I like my players, and we're friends, but I don't know if our relationships would really persist outside of the game. Despite that, I can't refuse this powerful social element of storytelling. DND is just random numbers and statistics thrown around in a way to simulate randomness, and yet I seriously care about the outcomes, on an emotional level, way more than I care about school. Why? Because of my players, because I get to share these emotionally deep and intricate forms of thought in ways that are tangible. I guess its the same reason why I do art, it's just art has the whole infringing element that it has to be good to be worth anything in many social players' eyes, which I despise. Honestly, my life doesn't have a lot of "players". My life has a lot of "viewers", and "judgers", but there are not a lot of people who are in the arena with me- exposed, feeling stupid with me, and finding joy in that. The only solution I think is to be exposed and feeling stupid with more and more people I like, but that involves a lot of trail and error and pain. I'm bored enough to go for it, but it could be more costly in terms of progress toward graduation. But, I'm reaaaaallly bored lately.
I'm 25 and constantly worried about my brain settling in and become accustomed to level of knowledge I have now. I yearn for when I was 11, 12, 15, and desperately forcing my brain to learn as much as possible because I thought I needed to learn something in order to be worth anything to anyone. I loved that feeling of learning, and the dramatic mood swings that came from it. I would cry bitter tears when I thought about how at the age of 14, my potential as a ballet dancer was kaput, and laughable when compared to those who had more opportunities. It led me to push myself harder and harder and make myself accomplish a lot of things that people who are trained never did. I did that in Piano, Music Theory, Chinese, (in a sense) running, and although it doesn't feel as dramatic I've recently done it a little in directing. I say "done it a little" because recently it doesn't feel the same. I can't convince my psyche that learning things matters, not in the same way. When I was younger, I benefited from the delusion that the world was watching, that people cared, or that knowledge would make me happier. Despite my best efforts, those delusions fell as I grew up and came to know more fully how little my ability mattered to my happiness. Not completely unrelated, but unrelated enough to discourage the level of effort I put into things before. I know I'm not done learning, and despite my age, I can be the type to push my brain continuously as I get older. I've still got at least 4 languages to learn and a lot of other skills to accumulate. But it's so strange to think that my greatest enemy isn't how. I know how: hard, blister-breaking, tear spurting, hour consuming, manic work. Now that I'm older and will have money to throw at it that will also help. It's not the how that's in my way now, it's the why. Why? Because I love it? That's true, but I've got to eat. Because it'll bring others joy? Sure, but there aren't many "others" in my life. Because, just for the hell of it? Probably the best reason. But it doesn't inspire my inner mad-scientist like fear used to. I used to work myself to exhaustion and emotional implosion in fear that I would never be loved or that I wouldn't match up to something that mattered. I want to inspire that inner manic burst of crazed energy again, but it seems like he's hooked on a drug I ran out of.
So, now that I'm adult, the conclusion I've come to is that adulthood is truly just about survival. Made your bills? An adult. Over 18? Adult. Able to not get committed for not being a crazy person? Adult. The bar is pretty low. So I can't use it as an excuse to not employ my mad-scientist again. To feel that mad rush of learning and pushing myself. I'm craving it. I dream about it constantly. That and my first girlfriend because we were really close buds even though our relationship was super toxic and it's a good thing it ended. Maybe that's a sign? Connections are the new drug? Dunno still thinking about it.
I'm talking about this partially because of something that I'm working on with my therapist. A new character to employ with role therapy. Basically, I "act" as a character I've created that has more of the traits that I want and experiences life in a different way I do. The first time I did it, it worked incredible well. It was for the duration of my stay in China, and helped me recover from previously mentioned bad breakup. Mordecai was a survivor. A creature of the demands of his surroundings. He was useful, and he did some incredible things for me. A marathon on the great wall of China, an entire apartment with Chinese practice sheets for wallpaper, an improvised travel experience to Xi'An and Shanghai for three weeks entirely on my lonesome. But, he's a loner, he's a scrapper, he was made to work with little, do his best, and survive with one road ahead of him. And that doesn't help me as much in states where I can do anything, be anything, have the bounty of the most wealthy and lush nations in the world. So what happens? I got fat for one thing, and I lost my purpose to do anything. Mordecai didn't work with Carrots, he lived for the Stick. In that way he did channel some of that manic fear my teenage self understood.
Since then I've tried two characters: Luther and Calias. Both underdeveloped idealized pictures without faults, created in the desperation of boredom and antipathy. So, now I'm working on the next character, the next attempt to be better, and it can't be like Luther or Calias; it's gotta be something built in the same way to Mordecai. He was built with planned faults, groundedness, and acceptance that he would live in the real world and therefore have real problems and handle them differently than me.
Eh. What a bunch of hooey. Not dead yet and I'll keep trying to figure it out. Toodles.
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