An Article About Nothing

[Gustav 6,417]

At least three times this week, I've opened up the VHL.com article subforum meaning to write an article, and every time I've found myself staring blankly at my computer screen and doing absolutely nothing, because I went there meaning to earn some TPE rather than to talk about something I find interesting about the league or something that matters to me.

 

And in that I found the thing that matters to me for this week, and that's what I'm going to talk about.

 

I've always expected a certain level of quality from my own work. I like to think that I go far more in-depth and try to make things way more worth reading than I need to. It's perhaps my largest contribution to the league, and it's something I'm proud of, as I know there are some who legitimately enjoy reading what I write and it makes me happy to know that. One of my favorite running examples of writing just to earn is doing a VHL.com article every week that just takes one's own player page and recites the numbers on it up to 150 (or even 500) words every week and claiming it--I don't consider that interesting new content, and I would encourage anyone who just pumps out the minimum amount of words in that setting to experience the satisfaction of putting together a major project and getting some positive feedback from it--but at least those articles are something, and they serve a purpose. Of course, that's much better than having zero thoughts cross my mind as I zone out with the goal of randomly stumbling upon a great idea for this week.

 

But you know what? I think that's OK for this week. I think it's OK to not have ideas, and I don't like the idea of trying to force myself to come up with material--ideas should come naturally, and I should care about what I'm putting in this little text box. Scientifically, burnout happens when something someone wants to do slowly turns into something that person feels they have to do. In general, I don't have that problem because I care about the community and I think I have some ideas worth sharing (as the kids are saying these days). I'm not going to resort to "here's my player page", but I'm also not going to act like I have anything of value to add in this space this week. At least I warned you that this article was about nothing.

 

I learned about a religion called Druzism the other day--it's an Abrahamic faith (in the same realm as Islam/Christianity/Judaism) that's very different from any others you've heard of. One of the defining features of Druzism is that performing religious rituals is seen as (almost) entirely voluntary, and that a Druze who does not participate in these rituals is viewed as no less than one who does. I have zero connection to the Druze faith, but I think that part is a good analogy to our community--if you're doing everything you can to be active and noticed and respected, great, but if you're just getting by and enjoying the league on your own terms, that's cool too. There's a lot of pressure on some members to fit into certain boxes and conform to certain expectations that shouldn't really be there at all.

 

I guess the main point here, so I can point to something that is the point if someone tries to tell me this shouldn't be approved, is that we should be conscious of how we feel about what we're doing. Are you forcing yourself to VHL because you feel you have to? It might be time to evaluate that (or to find the parts of it that you don't like and change them). Let's be a community that wants to be a community! And that's not to say you should sit back and think it's everyone else's thing to do--start with you and make sure you are where you want to be.

[Shindigs 1,771]

4 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

There's a lot of pressure on some members to fit into certain boxes and conform to certain expectations that shouldn't really be there at all.

A lot of these are self-inflicted though. I know I placed a lot of really unhealthy expectations on myself after a lot of my early content did so well. I started to expect myself to maintain 100 reactions a week. Aim to get 20+ reacts a day. Aim to win days. That's not a healthy mindset. Those are things that can/should only happen organically because you happened to just have a spark of creativity that day/week/month. Not some standard to set for yourself.

 

Coming to terms with that more healthy view on it. I've happily dropped down to a more sane level of content creation and forum activity, while moving a lot of activity to discord. Which is a much better spot to be in.