A Gustav 30 in 30, #20: Ripple In Still Water

[Gustav 6,468]

 

2020 was a time of huge social, political, and mental unrest for just about everyone. Here, in a "20" of its own, I'll talk about how that influenced both myself and the league, and how those things affected each other.

 

 

You may have noticed a common theme between many of my articles in this series. I like to end these things, if I can, by reflecting on what a given story means to me, how it's shaped me as a person, and what we can learn from each other through the VHL. Even the one I wrote about Kranch has that to some extent.

 

If you've read hard enough, you also know that I believe hard enough for it to matter to me that everyone's humanity should be respected. Now, I don't think that's saying much--it's not like the average person truly believes themselves to be hateful--but it is an idea that I've had nothing holding me back from getting out there over the years. Sometimes, I've gone on and on about it. 

 

It's fair to say that the league has had its share of teachable moments around this point over the years. I think things like the toxic Houston-Philly rivalry or the SBA drama wouldn't have unfolded in the ways that we did if we all knew how to take a deep breath and chill out a bit. But nothing up to this point is anything new to this series or even to what I've put out there on this forum prior to it.

 

A big time in presumably everyone's life, and a time when this point was especially true, was the dreaded "COVID times"--a phrase I personally dislike, but the shortest way to get my point across. I remember sitting in my university's student union in early March of 2020 and watching people come and go across the lobby, wondering how much longer I'd be able to do that amid lots of rumors about what was in store for the rest of the semester. Regardless of how anyone may editorialize on what happened thereafter, or which political party we'd like to blame for those events, the objective facts of the situation were that a nebulous "let's all stay at home for two weeks and see what happens" turned very quickly into a "this keeps getting worse and you're going to be at home for the rest of the school year." The day before everything shut down, I went out to Barnes & Noble and made a few impulse purchases, one of them being a CD (yes, a CD) of Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters - one of the greatest jazz fusion albums of all time and something I listened to compulsively all year. It's still one of my favorites and I credit it as the origin of lots of my current musical taste.

 

COVID was horrible. I never had it when it was a big deal, but it did a huge number on my life. At the time, I was halfway through my second year in a program where I had taken some unconventional turns through my general coursework and also wasn't in many classes exclusive to my major until the third year. Having bounced between a few places, I was friends with zero people at school when we all went home, and going to classes knowing that lots of the other little squares on the screen cared about each other by that point--but I might as well not even exist--made me feel bad. On top of that, I watched some members of my family suddenly get intensely political over the situation in ways I'd never seen before, and the whole whirlwind that came with that was something else. My extended family has some who felt quite strongly the other way, causing big divides that aren't fully fixed yet. I'll also say that by not jumping on board with the passion for who-even-knows-what, I had some of the negative feelings for also-who-even-knows-what taken out on me--and all I'd done "wrong" was to try to stay uncontroversial. I hated my job before COVID, and that really never changed, but there were certainly days where I was just happy it was getting me out of the house.

 

"But Gustav," you say, "This isn't VHL-related in the slightest! I am going to deny all of your updates this week and call you an asshole in some restricted channel in the league server that I'm assuming you don't check very often!"

 

To that, I urge you to chill. Not only am I getting there, but if you're still with me at this point, it means that my article has been more "forum content" and generated greater interest than the one you just approved about the contents of someone's player page.

 

Where was I? Yeah, COVID forced me inside for over a year and fundamentally changed lots of the people around me. That was dumb. It also meant that all that time I had to sit in my room in front of my computer was potential VHL time. I wrote articles when classes I couldn't bring myself to care about played in the background and made scouting spreadsheets when it would have been really helpful for me to be using Excel for homework instead. This was also the first few seasons of my time in Davos, and I was going absolutely full-tilt into making my locker room a great place to be and trying to earn the respect of all the other GMs and players in the league as a noob.

 

At the same time, I was using the VHL as my main social outlet and going through some rough stuff. I was up late every night to get some time purely by myself, during which I more often than not ended up lost in a weird jumble of thoughts. I don't think I remember ever dumping out onto the forum that I was sad and lonely and felt picked on and whatnot--I understand that at the end of the day, the people in the VHL are not my therapists and shouldn't have to sort through whatever negativity I have in any case. But that was also a time in my life where I felt those things more than ever--and it did work its way into my posting.

 

I got all that out there not by expressing it directly, but just by getting really weirdly philosophical sometimes. I don't know where I'd find everything I wrote, because I'm pretty sure lots of these threads were VHL.com articles, but I took a dig through the General Discussion forum and found a couple of them. One thread puts forth an interesting question that was the topic of a speech I gave at my high school graduation a couple years earlier--the version of you that exists in the mind of one person is entirely different from the one in the mind of another, and all of those infinite "you"s are not equal to who you are in your own head, so what do you think about that and what are you going to do about it? Another one asks the community to think about something they've done recently that they're proud of and to share it and reflect on it. And, like I said, I put out many .com articles in that time that got into one thing or another--we're all real people with real hopes and dreams, you should take time in life to appreciate the things around you, do something nice for someone, all of that touchy-feely bullshit sort of thing. As a central theme, lots of what I wrote (and what I still believe) was centered on the idea that there's so much out there in our lives that we never notice because we just make ourselves too busy to be bothered. I still think that's important to consider--you ever put on a song you're familiar with and decide to really listen to it and pick up a keyboard part or a bass part that you never thought about before, or just vibe to it a little extra? What about walking around where you work and imagining the building itself being built by real people, thinking about someone putting down the tiles where you're walking or installing the lights over your head? What about driving on the highway and wondering who all these other people are and where they're going? There's so much that you make yourself miss out on, and you can tune right into it by just opening your eyes a little wider.

 

Anyway. Before I write a whole other one of those for the first time in a few years...

 

I'll admit that I clicked into those old threads I linked and cringed a little bit. To me now, it reads a bit like a 20-year-old kid thinking he's figured out the universe (I wonder why). I'm sure many people here went through one thread or another and judged it the same way, and I wouldn't blame them for doing so. Overall, though, I don't regret having done it. I want to say that I wrote these things to make a positive difference in others' lives, and based on some of the replies some of my threads generated, I like to think that worked. But overall, a big part of using the league as my stream-of-consciousness diary in that time was to use it as an outlet for lots of what was in my head then. By the end of one article or another, I always felt less frustrated, and it did feel good to see positive replies and a few people wanting to talk about what I'd just written. I could talk on and on about how "I spent a lot of time online" over COVID, but didn't we all? Recruitment numbers booming as hard as they did then told us everything we needed to know about how many people were trapped in their rooms. What matters to me about spending so much time online was how I used that to help myself deal with the circumstances, and I think this is the first time I've gotten even close to this far in detail about my story. 

 

Long story very short, the VHL helped me stay sane over COVID, and I still think you should slow down and be amazed by the simple things again.

 

 

#1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name

#2: Can't We All Just Get Along?

#3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway?

#4: The House That I Built

#5: Can We Fix It?

#6: American Beauty

#7: The Kids Are Alright

#8: Dogs In A Pile

#9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake

#10: This Old House

#11: Go Directly to Jail

#12: If You Can Dodge a Color, You Can Dodge a Ball

#13: How I Messed Up Davos

#14: Ello Gov'nor

#15: Weewoo

#16: Jolly Kranchers

#17: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 2

#18: I've Been Everywhere, Man

#19: The Sun Also Rises