The Little Accomplishments

Figured I'll do what any good first post on a Blog does and first let you know what you can come to expect at Get Serious before getting into something I've been thinking about a lot today.

I consider myself a man of principles. I adhere to my beliefs about what is right and wrong in an extreme way. As such, I have a lot of views most people don't necessarily share. I am outspoken and not afraid to voice my opinions.

I'm also happily geeked out. I've been nerdy about everything for as long as I could remember. It's a trait I share with my dad: if I'm going to get into something, I'm going to do it 100 percent. Used to hate sports as a kid, now I can't get enough sports talk about the NFL or NBA. Always been a video game nerd, and always with the really fringe titles though I've really sunk my teeth into the Rock Band franchise.

Rock Band specifically leads me into my first post. Little accomplishments matter in a big way. I am ranked, as of this post, number 999th in the world for career Drums score on Rock Band 3. (And I have recently downloaded some more songs so going through them, even poorly, would up that a couple points.) I think that's a pretty cool deal. It's such a nerdy pasttime, but I'm good at it and being in the top thousand means something special to me. Especially because sales figures place the XB360 version of the game at over 600,000 units sold worldwide and has an even larger player base than games sold because not everyone owns the game that plays it. My brother, for example, doesn't own a copy and has yet played it a lot alongside me.

It pushes me to keep trying to get better. Maybe it is something that does not matter (although the skills I have  learned on the plastic drums helped a lot the few times I have had an opportunity to use real drum kits) and something that won't get me any respect among my peers. The important thing is that it matters to me and knowing I'm good at it makes me feel good and adds value to my existence. It's something to take pride in.

I wished I had learned that lesson at a younger age: Take pride in something. Anything. It really doesn't even matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's something that will never make you a buck because if you're good at something, your self esteem grows in a genuinely healthy way. I have dealt with depression a majority of my life. Doctors told me it was from lack of brain chemicals working correctly. Shrinks told me it was from repressed anger from being abused as a child. (Which, by the way, is false. I was never abused. Psychiatrists are crooks and you should make fun of anyone telling you they majored in it.) I feel it's from a complete lack of self-worth. Never had many friends, never really excelled at anything outside of school, never really had anything I was good at. I never understood the value of looking at what I did and saying "This isn't half bad. I should try to improve upon it and do even better next time."

So that is my lesson for today, friend. If there is anything I know, it's that there is always room for improvement in your life. Next time something makes you sad because you couldn't do it or you weren't as successful as you'd like to be at it, punch it squaw in the stomach and take back control. Practice til you perfect it.