The Joy of Scrubdom

[forsyth]

"Well, that sucked," I said, and threw my backpack on the bed.

"Not a good trip, I take it?" the buddha asked, in my spinny chair AGAIN.

"What're you doing in my chair?" I asked, "Isn't it just an illusion and distraction from Enlightenment or somesuch?"

"It's a comfortable illusion. And your bed is covered in stuff."

"Whatever," I said, and dropped down on top of a random pile of clothes on my bed. "No, it wasn't a good trip. First we got lost, and drove through DC because nobody was willing to turn around and go back to the turn we missed. And the tournaments both sucked. I can play better than that. 1-4 in Regionals, and then lose in the second round of a bloody booster draft. My deck was good, too. Sheesh. I suck. Why did I bother to go?"

"Was it all just about winning?"

"I didn't trade much, 'cause I suck at it. And so most of it was just to hang around and play Magic, and that's no fun when it sucks. Especially when my deck should have done better than that, and I should have done better than that. But no, I decided to scrub out. So got nothing to show for it, not even rares from the booster draft, 'cause I was an idiot and never drafted any rares. And lost to one of the ones I passed. Whee, a waste of a day."

"If people are going to win a game, other people have to lose. Sometimes you'll be both."

"344th out of 380? That's PATHETIC. Why did I bother? Guess I'm a worse player than I thought. And no, I'm not gonna make excuses,'cause it's my own fault for how I did. Feh."

He spun in the chair. "You're not big on failure, are you?"

"Who is? You fail, you don't get what you want, and bad things happen. Failing sucks. And it happens because you screwed up, or suck, or forgot something, or the universe just hates you. What's the good side? Oh yeah, learn from failure! Whee! I learned that I suck at Magic more than I thought! Woo! What a learning experience! I learned to get more than 4 hours sleep before doing mentally challenging things. I learned not to let people drive when they didn't sleep at all! Woo! That's SO HELPFUL!"

"I'll take that as a no. And not much good at dealing with it, either. Shit happens."

"That's not a fortune cookie."

"Cliches are nuggets of wisdom. In the same way that diamonds are nuggets of carbon."
I sat up. "That doesn't even make any sense."

"So you had two bad tournaments, and you're convinced you suck and ready to quit Magic for a while? How are you supposed to win then?"
"I probably won't."
He nodded sagely. "Ah, I see then. So it's simply everything else where you don't know how to deal with failure."

"What are you, a therapist?"

"Broadly speaking, it could be put that way."

I stood up. "So what, now you're trying to psychoanalyze me and find the subconcious root of my problems or something? Or get me to find them?"
(To be continued)


Prior:
Stories from the Rabbit Hole
Stories from the Rabbit Hole, Part 2
There's a Buddha on My Bed
A Discussion of Procrastination and Buddhism
Buddhablog
Haven't Seen Him in a While
The Illusion of Pain
Stuff that Binds

Comments

[kjatar.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, do you play for fun anymore, or just in tournaments?

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

For fun too, but most of my time when I can get together with other people to play is during the weekly FNM tournaments at the store. Which I take varyingly seriously, and I'll probably start working on some janky thing for FNMs soon. And there's playing before, and after the tournaments. And while I have fun playin weirdness, I've found I tend to have more fun trying to play the best thing I have, agaist somebody else's best deck, and see how well we can do.