Introduction
For those of you who are interested in some of my other work, I’d like to introduce myself a little before beginning the article. My name is David Williams (not the David Williams) and I go by the moniker of Grimfan on Eternal, and many other forms of online entertainment. I have a long history in card games, both digital and paper. Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone are both excellent games, and I have played them quite a lot. That all changed a little over two years ago when I was invited to Beta test Eternal. I fell in love with the idea of Eternal when it was first brought up at GenCon the following year and I learned my favorite professional Magic players would be designing it. We’ve come a long way since then.
Streaming Ambitions
I had a little early tournament success, but I also decided to make Eternal the game I would try and launch a streaming career from. I was working at a computer lab at the time as an assistant/lab watcher, and I had a lot of free time to do whatever I wanted. I had access to my girlfriends MacBook, and from there I decided to give streaming from the computer lab a shot. One installation of bootcamp later, I was good to go. Initially I was fairly successful, but other talented individuals came along and my inability to have a voice in the lab really hampered my success. This was the first shot to my self-worth.
I knew I could never compete with some of the more popular streamers around at that time. Stuck behind a robotic voice that I couldn't break past, there wasn't any way I could push through that barrier without a voice of my own. It was also around this time that I also started to abandon the tournament scene, as there were rules against streaming them. I wouldn’t say that the situation was bad though, I still had a good 30-40 friends every day who would come and visit with me, and soon I was known for my robotic voice and charm.
Even though I didn't give up, I really did want to keep going. After about a year of this I had to call it quits. I had gotten to the point where I really felt worthless going to the lab every day just to stream. It was fun hanging out with my new Twitch buds, and I really loved interacting with the community but I needed a career change to bring myself back to feeling like I meant something in life. This was probably my first mistake. I’ve always been very good at letting go of games, and knowing deep down that I don't deserve to win every game, even when my opponent doesn't play their best.
New Job, Same Problem
Never equate your self-worth to how well you do in a game, how good you are at your job, or how your life is in the moment.
I wish I could live by this advice.
After I quit the job at the lab, I mostly had to stop streaming as I got another full time job right away, and this time I was an actual IT individual. I have a lifetime of experience fixing and using computers, so it’s not that the job was difficult, but I did end up making it difficult. At first I was soaring far above all the expectations of those that had hired me. When we were given a task and a deadline, I would do my work, my co-workers work, and my managers work. I would do more than half of all the tickets that came in and when I thought we still wouldn’t make it, I would work from home if needed. I’ve always worked harder than my peers but this constant stress was making me feel panicked and I really didn’t know what to do. I also felt worthless and hollow. That seems counter intuitive, but I just tied my self-value to the value of my work and that of my team. Every failure was one I took on my shoulders and it brought me crashing and burning straight to the ground.
I will not give my co-workers a full pass, for I think they did end up failing me to a degree, but I knew I couldn’t continue, and that I had failed. Then, it dawned on me. I attached my self-worth to my job. Your job is not something that you alone have control over, and with that, I knew I needed a break and I put in my two weeks. I’m planning on going back to school this fall, and I don't know if that will work out, but I do know that I’m going to try, and I have been searching for a way to remove my sense of self-worth from the aspects of life that are out of my control.
Coming to Grips
For card games, it wasn’t always easy for me to brush off the losses and learn from my mistakes or the mistakes of my opponents. I remember avoiding large scale Magic: The Gathering tournaments for a long time because I was afraid that if I had attended them and lost, it would've been a giant waste of time. I was unwilling to invest and learn by getting into the thick of it and losing. We have to lose to learn and move forward. If we waste time dwelling on every, loss we’re never going to get anywhere, and if we’re too petrified to wade in and take a risk then what are we doing playing anything even remotely competitive? That’s what I ended up asking myself that finally broke me out of my “afraid of tournaments” funk.
I hope that this article inspires some of you to take risks, play in a tournament, and get out there and have fun. Let go of the losses, or even embrace them as a new learning experience. I’ll have some more articles coming in the future talking more about specific Eternal topics, but I thought that this introduction article might give you all a glance of where I am coming from as a person.
