JokerValentine
We Out
It’s not often that I, some cynical loser who tends to come across as ridiculous, nonsensical, bashing, or unfocused finds myself in an unusual spot. I am not going to give any names away, or any content which appalled me to write this, but recently, I saw a thread on RPN that made me feel an emotion so strong, it quite nearly brought forth tears. I’ve titled this post about confidence, so for anyone reading this, I don’t want this post to come across as some sort of false pump-up. I’m not going to embellish how I feel, nor will I tell lies. If my words are so moving, so important to at least one of you, share this with someone you know. I don’t want credit, I don’t want to be put in a position of knowing any better. What I have to say comes from the heart to all of us here.
I tend to recall anecdotes first on matters, but before going any further, why bother post this? Was there something offensive I saw? Is there some sort of awareness to an issue that demands a community response? No, simply. The thread was not even ill-intentioned by any stretch; a kind gesture was probably its intention. But at its core, the message I garnered from it rendered very powerful memories of my childhood. It’s about confidence. It’s about whatever sweet vine your passions flower on. It’s also about being afraid to blossom, being afraid, scared, ashamed to be anything more than average, a nothing, a name and a profile. It’s about having the courage to try. Try to create a role-play, or anything for that matter.
My high school days centralized on sports, but sports aren’t something I do for fame, or to be the best. It was a true passion of mine, and every moment, I wanted to be better. My first ceos-country coach was a guy who firmly believed that if you weren’t at the top, you didn’t matter. You could just fall in line, do your runs, who cares. It was the top cut of runners, the select few, that were the best, and everyone wanted to be them, but nobody wanted to be better than they currently were. I was near the bottom, probably last rung, and as the seasons crept on, I felt myself feeling worse about it. I came an inch short of quitting, when we got a new coach. A valuable lesson he decided to teach to all of us, is that if you want to be good, you need to take it. But to get there, there are people who you need to rely on not to herald you a great, but to push you as you push them, to support you as you support them.
Basketball was another important moment in my life. Thoughout the seasons, nobody believed in me, not even myself most of the time, save for one coach. I played awful for most of my time there, it was so funny looking back on it all, but still, he was the one who believed in me. He was the one who made me feel that one day, I just might good enough. He never quit on me, he never quit on my teammates. Even when another coach told me “honestly, who’d ever believe he’d be named an All-Star, a team MVP, and lead the team in three different categories?” The room was quiet, except for him. He came upon to me after that ceremony, and told me “[Joker], I knew you could do it the first day I met you. Congratulations.”
You might be bored, or wondering why the fuck is he talking about sports? For the last few years, just as sports have been, Roleplay has been a passion of mine. I get up every day, I check RPN, i hang out with great people and great friends I’ve made every day. But when it comes to project creation, I saw some things that reminded me what it felt to not have the confidence to try. We shouldn't be afraid of criticism, of not being good enough, because it's only through it that we grow. It's only through trying and failing that we learn how to improve.
Roleplays don’t have to be perfect, nor do they have to succeed for them to have meaning. Your characters, plots, lore, whatever. If you’re not good, so what? If you make a project and it fails, so what? If you wrote 10 pages of lore, and nobody read it, so what? Yes, you lost time and you’re disheartened, but you’re still a roleplayer. It doesn’t matter what attention it gets, you created something. We have this mantra of “A Nation of Creation” on this site, and for anybody to be afraid to even try, I argue, is against that code. It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, get told or tell yourself “your stuff sucks” or “you’re not good enough.” All this time, all this effort, all these projects that could have been. It’s not about being the best when you create. It’s about being better than you were. It’s about what you can create. It's about trying in the first place is what I believe this site should be about.
We’re not perfect writers, most of us at least. I for one am not a good writer at all. But what we have is a soul, a passion. When you write that reply or make that character, the one thing people can’t take away by criticizing it, telling it it’s no good, is that you put your heart into it. They can’t take that away. Nobody can fake it either. Your abilities don’t matter. No, we’re sometimes foolishly attracted to that. But the soul of what Roleplay is to me is spirit. It’s that spirit of being able to tell people “yeah, I didn’t do a good reply,” or “yeah, maybe my role play concept wasn’t fleshed out,” or even “you know, maybe I don’t meet your minimum length requirements.” Because you had the audacity and the courage to put a manifestation of your soul into writing. You created something when there was nothing. You can’t ever beat that, from the one-liners to the many-paragraph detailed role plays. Because one day, the writer can look back on it all and say "I grew."
So this is for the ones who, like me all those years ago, and still up to now, have that dilemma. They have that pause in their thought where they doubt themselves. They think that they shouldn’t try. They feel that they should let someone else do it for them. They feel that they should let someone else do it because they’d do it better. If role play is your passion, then you have no need to feel ashamed about anything. It’s not about how you start, it’s about what you do to improve. It’s about what you do to slay the behemoth of self-doubt a bit at a time. It’s about improvement, a step at a time, a word of advice at a time. Because only through our failures do we grow, do we succeed, to we become hungrier and better. This is your easel, this is your brush. Use it to paint the strokes so delicately as you want them, or as broadly as you desire.
But know that you don’t have to be the best, or good. You just have to create. You just have to try to get better with every word. Because one day, you can show the people that put you down, or offered you a tempting offer to throw the towel in that you have the confidence you once lacked. You have the strength to move mountains with the typing on your keyboard. You have your soul, and you’re not afraid to be who you are and do what you do best. If things gets rough, ask a friend, learn from them. Ask, and learn. Be open in your thoughts and not closed in your sense of shame.
If I were to be able to talk to myself through some of the rough patches, to offer up some word of advice to a kid who was scared to try many times, who felt that they couldn’t return to role play, or create a project. I’d just tell him what I told you. It’s not about where you start, whether at the top or the bottom; it’s not about if you had nobody to lean on, no friends to tell you you did a good job. It’s about how you finish, it’s about what you do to get better, and take every jab, set-back, punch, scuffle, or disappointment as a lesson learned, and a stripe earned.
I close in the words of Wayne Gretzky. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” Never be afraid to take yours, and never be afraid to miss.
I tend to recall anecdotes first on matters, but before going any further, why bother post this? Was there something offensive I saw? Is there some sort of awareness to an issue that demands a community response? No, simply. The thread was not even ill-intentioned by any stretch; a kind gesture was probably its intention. But at its core, the message I garnered from it rendered very powerful memories of my childhood. It’s about confidence. It’s about whatever sweet vine your passions flower on. It’s also about being afraid to blossom, being afraid, scared, ashamed to be anything more than average, a nothing, a name and a profile. It’s about having the courage to try. Try to create a role-play, or anything for that matter.
My high school days centralized on sports, but sports aren’t something I do for fame, or to be the best. It was a true passion of mine, and every moment, I wanted to be better. My first ceos-country coach was a guy who firmly believed that if you weren’t at the top, you didn’t matter. You could just fall in line, do your runs, who cares. It was the top cut of runners, the select few, that were the best, and everyone wanted to be them, but nobody wanted to be better than they currently were. I was near the bottom, probably last rung, and as the seasons crept on, I felt myself feeling worse about it. I came an inch short of quitting, when we got a new coach. A valuable lesson he decided to teach to all of us, is that if you want to be good, you need to take it. But to get there, there are people who you need to rely on not to herald you a great, but to push you as you push them, to support you as you support them.
Basketball was another important moment in my life. Thoughout the seasons, nobody believed in me, not even myself most of the time, save for one coach. I played awful for most of my time there, it was so funny looking back on it all, but still, he was the one who believed in me. He was the one who made me feel that one day, I just might good enough. He never quit on me, he never quit on my teammates. Even when another coach told me “honestly, who’d ever believe he’d be named an All-Star, a team MVP, and lead the team in three different categories?” The room was quiet, except for him. He came upon to me after that ceremony, and told me “[Joker], I knew you could do it the first day I met you. Congratulations.”
You might be bored, or wondering why the fuck is he talking about sports? For the last few years, just as sports have been, Roleplay has been a passion of mine. I get up every day, I check RPN, i hang out with great people and great friends I’ve made every day. But when it comes to project creation, I saw some things that reminded me what it felt to not have the confidence to try. We shouldn't be afraid of criticism, of not being good enough, because it's only through it that we grow. It's only through trying and failing that we learn how to improve.
Roleplays don’t have to be perfect, nor do they have to succeed for them to have meaning. Your characters, plots, lore, whatever. If you’re not good, so what? If you make a project and it fails, so what? If you wrote 10 pages of lore, and nobody read it, so what? Yes, you lost time and you’re disheartened, but you’re still a roleplayer. It doesn’t matter what attention it gets, you created something. We have this mantra of “A Nation of Creation” on this site, and for anybody to be afraid to even try, I argue, is against that code. It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, get told or tell yourself “your stuff sucks” or “you’re not good enough.” All this time, all this effort, all these projects that could have been. It’s not about being the best when you create. It’s about being better than you were. It’s about what you can create. It's about trying in the first place is what I believe this site should be about.
We’re not perfect writers, most of us at least. I for one am not a good writer at all. But what we have is a soul, a passion. When you write that reply or make that character, the one thing people can’t take away by criticizing it, telling it it’s no good, is that you put your heart into it. They can’t take that away. Nobody can fake it either. Your abilities don’t matter. No, we’re sometimes foolishly attracted to that. But the soul of what Roleplay is to me is spirit. It’s that spirit of being able to tell people “yeah, I didn’t do a good reply,” or “yeah, maybe my role play concept wasn’t fleshed out,” or even “you know, maybe I don’t meet your minimum length requirements.” Because you had the audacity and the courage to put a manifestation of your soul into writing. You created something when there was nothing. You can’t ever beat that, from the one-liners to the many-paragraph detailed role plays. Because one day, the writer can look back on it all and say "I grew."
So this is for the ones who, like me all those years ago, and still up to now, have that dilemma. They have that pause in their thought where they doubt themselves. They think that they shouldn’t try. They feel that they should let someone else do it for them. They feel that they should let someone else do it because they’d do it better. If role play is your passion, then you have no need to feel ashamed about anything. It’s not about how you start, it’s about what you do to improve. It’s about what you do to slay the behemoth of self-doubt a bit at a time. It’s about improvement, a step at a time, a word of advice at a time. Because only through our failures do we grow, do we succeed, to we become hungrier and better. This is your easel, this is your brush. Use it to paint the strokes so delicately as you want them, or as broadly as you desire.
But know that you don’t have to be the best, or good. You just have to create. You just have to try to get better with every word. Because one day, you can show the people that put you down, or offered you a tempting offer to throw the towel in that you have the confidence you once lacked. You have the strength to move mountains with the typing on your keyboard. You have your soul, and you’re not afraid to be who you are and do what you do best. If things gets rough, ask a friend, learn from them. Ask, and learn. Be open in your thoughts and not closed in your sense of shame.
If I were to be able to talk to myself through some of the rough patches, to offer up some word of advice to a kid who was scared to try many times, who felt that they couldn’t return to role play, or create a project. I’d just tell him what I told you. It’s not about where you start, whether at the top or the bottom; it’s not about if you had nobody to lean on, no friends to tell you you did a good job. It’s about how you finish, it’s about what you do to get better, and take every jab, set-back, punch, scuffle, or disappointment as a lesson learned, and a stripe earned.
I close in the words of Wayne Gretzky. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” Never be afraid to take yours, and never be afraid to miss.
