A few years ago I was rapidly approaching a crossroads that I was indirectly aware of. I knew I was not happy with the state of things, and I wanted to change. I didn't know this in a coherent sense, but more in an overall sense of wrongness. I had been quite content as a New Orleans tour guide living in the heart of the historic French Quarter, but that life was over and it was time to move on. My family was being penalized by my anxiety attacks, my lack of drive, and my constant avoidance tactics which generally revolved around playing video games for hours at a time, daily. Something inside me knew this was wrong, no matter how deep down it was and how hard I tried to ignore it. Something inside of me wanted me to change.
It started with shoelaces. That doesn't really sound particularly momentous or awe inspiring, but I think the way I approached my shoelaces was a good place to start.
For most of my life I have tied my shoelaces with what I remember calling "the bunny ear method". Unlike normal children who eventually learn how to tie their shoes using the standard method, I gave up and found a workaround that I could comprehend, and stuck with that method. The bunny ear method is to basically do an overhand knot with the two laces, then create two loops, one with each lace, and then do another overhand knot with the two loops. This was easy, worked well for me, and I never made it past Cub Scouts so I never ran into an issue where I would need something more complicated. I could blame the invention of Velcro™ and the popularity of Velcro™ sneakers at the time, but the reality is that I was easily defeated by the sophistication level of the standard shoelace knot.
Being someone who doesn't like to fail at something, especially fail repeatedly, I gave up and used another method that most people would never realize was any different.
So sometime in 2009 I set out to change how I tied the laces on my shoes. I was 34 at the time, and what did I have to lose? My oldest child could tie her shoes using the standard method, so what was my problem?
The embarrassing part of this story was that it was actually pretty easy to learn how to tie my shoes the standard way. When I was a child I stubbornly created a false reality where I could never possibly learn this method, but the truth of the matter was I just needed to try a little harder, and practice.
I now tie my shoes using the standard method every single day.
So now you might be thinking, "Great!", right? "So you can now tie your shoes differently. Whup de do. Somehow this is supposed to impress us?" The answer is no, I don't expect you to be impressed. I'm trying to be honest about my consistent ability to self-sabotage myself that started way back when I was a young child, and I think it's an important message because I want it to be known that you can change that about yourself.
Do I still self-sabotage? Sure! Old habits die hard. I have to be pretty vigilant to avoid it, but the one way I try is to employ my technique of open-mindedness towards tasks that ordinarily would provoke an anxiety attack. I'm not always successful but it's a lot better than giving up and turning to World of Warcraft to ease my self-pity.
I still have Meat MUD II running on my server. It's based on a game that could be considered the Great Great Granddaddy of World of Warcraft and similar games. I don't play it religiously like I did in college, but when you quit from the game it has this message: "Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.", which is Latin for "Add little to little and there will be a big pile". This is a simple message that means big things come from small beginnings, and while in the context of an MMO style game is meant to inspire the players to waste more of their lives trying to reach the next level of achievement, the message can be extracted from that environment to be inspirational in real world achievements.
During the course of my twelve years or so of being a computer repair technician, one of the things I would never willingly touch was a soldering iron. The source of this unwillingness was fear - fear of failure, and fear of damaging electronics equipment that was not my property beyond repair. This fear was borderline idiotic - in college I learned how to handle an acetylene torch to make jewelry, melt metal and cut steel, and yet here I was afraid of a bit of metal that didn't even have an exposed flame. Yet so it was - whenever possible I avoided repairs that entailed soldering, and should such a repair job come up I would hand it off to someone else.
I blamed my shaky hands. "I could never solder because I wouldn't be able to avoid touching the wrong thing," I'd say. "I don't want to ruin the electronics or make them worse than they already are."
The reality was I was afraid of failure. There was a certain amount of fear of responsibility as well, but the core was the fear of failure.
I now own vintage arcade game systems with 30 year old circuitry. Should something go wrong with them I now have two choices - 1) pay a crapload of money for a (hopefully) experienced electronics technician to go in and figure out the cause or 2) figure it out and fix it myself. I started collecting these systems with the idea that I would be doing a lot of option 2, and so far I've been pretty successful. At this time all four systems are running and playable, although two of them need some additional TLC, and I still need to install a potentiometer on Soul Calibur III so we can have audio that doesn't cause ear canal ruptures.
I failed to install the potentiometer correctly on the first try - even though I'm pretty sure I followed online instructions correctly, I ended up with no sound at all. I reverted my installation and sound works again, but is still ridiculously loud. So I need to do some more research - I'm planning on choosing a different spot and to use connectors in order to permit easier trial and error and save time.
That said, during the course of this repair, and also the repair of my Pole Position cabinet, I did something I swore I would never do.
I picked up and used a soldering iron. And...I did so successfully. Three times now. Without damaging valuable and in some cases irreplaceable circuitry.
So that's a bigger example than the shoelaces. It's also one of several examples of my slow method of changing my brain chemistry away from that which is constantly afraid to that which is eager to accept new challenges. In simple chemical terms, this should be easier and more permanent than taking pharmaceuticals. For one thing, my body is producing the endorphin rush I get when I succeed at something, so there really shouldn't be any serious or harmful side effects. For another, that endorphin rush is a form of positive reinforcement that I'm pretty sure cannot be easily duplicated in prescription pill form.
What's another measure of the change? I spoke to my mother twice on the phone in the past few weeks for the first time in a few years and felt pretty happy about the entire exchange.
I'm different, and it's a good thing. Not perfect mind you, I still need to be vigilant about falling back to old habits. But I am different, and I feel different too.
