Ego, Film, Work and Life

So your anecdotal evidence is better than his anecdotal evidence? I knew you had an ego problem, Keggy, but I never knew until now just how bad it was.

This is from this forum post on RPG.net where I, somewhat foolishly, got involved in a debate about the new Fourth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Now folks who know me well, would know that I love this game. They probably also know I have a habit of getting into debates.

I have a thing about people making wildly inaccurate claims, a bad habit when I have been known to do the same myself at times. However, in this particular case I was pretty confident that the person who wrote the review that this forum was linked to had made a number of inaccurate claims. I made an effort to be reasonable and stick purely to the facts.

This this guy/gal, who clearly knows me outside of the interweb (s/he refers to my name in a way that he knew would give this fact away) says this. Now I will be humble enough to say that I took the bait - but I did make an effort to keep my response sharp, simple and avoiding too much in the way of personal attack.

But it does niggle at me. Not because I feel s/he's right - but rather it has played on one of my weaknesses. I worry too much about being too arrogant. I have a habit of lecturing people when I don't mean to, and I have a low self-confidence because of people like this. No doubt this "spectral knight" is one of the infamous a-holes from Auckland who spent five years trying to wear me down because I had the audacity to suggest that the Auckland University roleplaying club could use improvement.

There were a core of people who hated the idea that I suggested AMERICA pay attention to such events as KapCon and Buckets - that the club should aim to draw in more members and actually promote our hobby. Thankfully a large number of the newer crowd at the club seem to have taken up this goal thanks to the hard work of Karen - who was part of a group of us who all felt that the club needed to be more inclusive.

But for five years I had to put up with people accusing me of doing it for my own self-aggrandizement. Despite my working hard to encourage people to join, donating time games and energy to the club - it was always seen as to benefit my ego. Of course if I took a step back and decided to just run games... me being egotistical again. Anything I said - it was out of ego.

How do you deal with that? I would end up feeling exhausted and frustrated. I really believed in helping the club out and supporting the hobby - but some people didn't want to see me do that because they got it in their heads I was doing it for my own benefit.

Because, you know, being known as the guy who changed a small university roleplaying club into a happier small university roleplaying club with fun activities would be the pinnacle of my life.

It was kind of depressing and taught me a valuable lesson about how much damage a few negative people can do.

So I do have an ego problem - in that I don't always have faith in my abilities. Not that I think I can do no wrong - but that I feel I will inevitably fail and that it is hard to rely on others because they will always expect you to think only of yourself, and in doing so will do the same.

Yet another part of me knows that I should be proud of myself. Not in an arrogant manner, but in a healthy confident manner. And this week has shown why...

Firstly, work is offering me a chance to prove myself and develop my skills to move up to management. I have been there only four months, and they are that pleased with the work I do. I have kept my head down and slaved away, and it hasn't gone unnoticed. It doesn't pay more - but the opportunities for the future are amazing!

Secondly, my web tv project proceeds nicely. William is doing some amazing design and art work for the project, and I recently started casting calls - already we have some very talented and experienced actors keen to volunteer their time for the project! If this keeps up I'll have more actors than roles!

Life in general is improving, one of my major debts is almost paid off and while I'm poor for the next couple of weeks I'm feeling positive about the future.

There are a number of people who are being great sources of support and encouragement, and if I was such an egotistical wanker, I'm sure I wouldn't be getting so much coming this way. I am confident that the next few months are going to see my fortunes improve. We have so many talented people working on this web show, and more coming on board over the next few weeks.

Work has informed me of how well I'm doing and how pleased they are with my efforts.

I could possibly be forgiven for having a little bit of a swollen head on these matters. :)

Love and Huggles

Conan