My Recovery From American Culture Shaming and the American Dream

All I needed to see was myself being successful at something again.

My realization occurred as I slowly remembered, that if I spend time on something, I usually become quite good and skillful at it. That’s the realization I needed to set me on my path to recovery.

For me during my recovery this was embodied by many things, but the first thing, well the first one was definitely disc golf.

It’s not more than a little over a year ago that I, for the second time, first tried disc golf. It took two tries over the span of 5 years for the sport to hook me, and boy am I glad it did. Disc Golf is amazing therapy, you’re outside feeling the world around you, under your feet as you watch yourself first learn the rules of the game. And then later, watch yourself improve at something.

Which sounds just simply fantastic for anyone suffering from self esteem based issues, right? Add on top of this, that it’s mild to moderate exercise coupled with the perfect intimacy for private conversations and… Well do I even have to ask? What more could you really ask for from a therapy practice?

Disc golf is great and I highly recommend it. It’s now been a year and I have improved almost immeasurably… Wait, scratch that, I HAVE been measuring. 😉 Yes, one of the ways you improve is in how far you can physically throw these plastic discs through the air. I’m proud to say that I can take a standing driver 350’+ these days.

And just as a quick reminder to what I first stated at the beginning, “All I needed to see was myself being successful at something again.” So noticing self-improvements in my disc golf game was the catalyst to what led to me understanding the root of my base psychological problems and why I have been so “stuck in place” for so long.

The issue that compounds this already over-complex-problem is…. I was taught to be an incredibly hard person to impress… So it took me a whole year of focused effort to improve far enough in disc golf, for myself to be satisfied with myself!

Once I had the realization that I had indeed, again, improved at something, it triggered something in me. A memory of long forgotten successes and it gave me the courage I needed to once again, renew pursuing my life’s passion. My childhood passion of being a game designer!

I told myself this time however, I could be more successful at getting my resume noticed by narrowing my focus to just one gaming company in particular out of a handful of others. A company small enough that I feel like I could have a realistic shot at getting on board and I feel they’re likely to grow because their product is fantastic. Not to mention they happen to employ some of the most brilliant minds I have ever been given the pleasure to listen to. I get thrills at the thought of these humans speaking their minds! I respect these guys in so many ways it’s innumerable. But I digress.

Now I’ll have you know that at this point I had already applied to this company before with no response, but this time I had an idea for a different approach. If having a bachelor’s degree in gaming from an accredited university wouldn’t get me noticed by them, then maybe they might notice someone who also excels at the game they made. Someone who already knows their game through and through.

And it didn’t take me very long… 11 days I reckon and I reached my goal of being a master ranked competitive player on their game completely ftp. And once again, just like I used to remember about myself, “if I apply myself, I’m pretty alright!” And pretty quickly this time I improved enough to be satisfied with myself.

Oh, one thing I forgot to tell you though is that when I said I wanted to know their game through and through, I meant it! Like really meant it. So as I began to engross myself in their game, I also began researching and preparing for training to teach myself the game engine they built their game in: Unity.

I was extremely nervous to do this at first… Terrified really. I was so shamed into believing that my dream of being a game designer was wrong that for a long while I’d rather piss down the back of my proverbial pant leg then move towards my dream. But I chose to anyway.

I read a quick book on C#, the scripting language I’d need to know for Unity, and then proceeded to dive head first into their tutorials. Oh yeah, one other thing I didn’t tell you is that I also haven’t programmed in 10 years or so and I was never officially employed for it.

But the thing is… My confidence had already started to grow back due to my now recent successes with disc golf and my confidence let me know not to worry about my atrophied programming skills. Because after all… I was starting to believe in myself again for the first time in, God I don’t know how long. All because I grew some confidence from recognizing my growth in disc golf.

Once I started using Unity, I at first ran into the typical set up problems one encounters when using complicated software like Unity. Things like, “Which version of the software is the guy in the tutorial using?” And, “Where is the button he pushed on my version?” But again, as it seems I need to relearn continuously now, once I’m able to apply myself I get pretty good at things.

And I have. I have now prototyped two different game concepts in Unity. As well as laying out out the roadmap needed to release my own indie game in the, no longer, so far away, future. I’m absolutely thrilled about it! I can’t wait! I’m now my own game designer because I chose to learn an industry game engine on my own. And by doing so I have given myself the tools needed to fully develop my own stories, my own puzzles and my own game interactions. Unity is an amazing tool, and the support that is available for anyone to learn how to use it for free is fantastic. What a time to be alive, eh? To be able to educate yourself as you see fit via the power of shared collective knowledge.

But that’s the thing… I achieved my goals with Unity so quickly… Like really quickly. So why did I have such a long hang up about all of this? Why have I been in a depressed rut for so damn long? It only took two weeks to impress myself with Unity, and making game prototypes is an absolute blast for me. So why was my psychological healing taking so long? Why did I hate myself so much? What’s wrong with me?

Well after years of introspection and self assessment, today I found my answer and now finally, I know what my own personal problem has been.

Like many others I’m sure, I believe my father heeded societies cultural advice when it came to parenting me about video games. He berated me again and again, sometimes silently and sometimes violently, all in the name of video games being bad, and a waste of time, and not an “important” enough venture to the world for me to work on.

He taught me thoroughly to shame myself for my passions, to feel bad for feeling good about myself, and to never celebrate my victories. He taught me that my dreams were rubbish, and along with it that his son rubbish. That I was rubbish. He actually convinced me to believe a part of my identity was a flaw. That I wasn’t a good enough human being because of my love for gaming.

So I’d like to say thanks to my Dad, thanks to you for reading this, and thanks to society as a whole for convincing parents to belittle their children’s dreams, especially if those little dreams don’t happen to match up with the current in vogue social ideals.

Because as it turns out, 36 years later my dreams ARE bigger than the shame for them I was taught to feel. And now that I know where my shame came from and how it’s shaped me, it no longer has any influence over me. I couldn’t be any happier! I feel like today I got my “self” back. I’m alive again.

Hail World!

The cake was DEFINITELY a motherfucking lie!

Praise the Son!

-jamesdainger