A month (30 days) of playing Warframe and CS:GO and feeling very incompetent from the beginning.
Why Incompetence Month?
Feeling incompetent is biological emotion we feel. The biological reason for the emotion is to push ourselves to practice and increase our skill levels, so that we will be able to be a valuable addition to our working community. You might say that feeling incompetent is a great bad emotion to feel, as it should help us to practice and get better.
In many cases though, sadly that’s not the case. You see, our biology is very afraid of feeling incompetent. The biological emotions are part of the primordial brain, which has evolved over many millions of years. And while evolution is great, evolution is a slow worker. This means that the primordial parts of our brain still believe we live on the savannah 1000 and 1000 of years ago. Basically, meaning the emotions and the response to the emotions aren’t adapted to modern society and hence, the primordial brain often overreacts. I promise I will go into even further details in the coming updates. The above is to understand this:
Our primordial brain is afraid of feeling incompetent as being incompetent and not valuable to the group 1000 of years ago was the same as possible rejection from the community, hence death for the individual – strong emotions indeed.
So today in modern society many are still very afraid of feeling incompetent, and they don’t know why. Part of that is answered by the above, out biology is overreacting + coupled with everyone’s psychological social inheritance. How people end up reacting is very different from individual to individual.
Our modern world is full of constant shifts and changing dynamics, and so is the world of esports. There are many possibilities and ways to feel incompetent every day, but do we talk about it? And our reactions to it?
The answer in most cases is probably no. We don’t talk about it. In many cultures, the emotions connected with the incompetence is seen as a sign of weakness, hence we keep it to ourselves.
What I aim to do with Incompetence Month is to take you with me on my journey through incompetence. I will talk about my emotions, my ups and downs, wins, losses, and everything in between. I’m doing this by subjecting me to two games: Warframe and CS:GO.
Why Warframe and CS:GO?
Because of the skill levels required to be any good in them. I have been playing computer games since I was 5 years old (I’m 40 at this day of writing). I have also played a lot of shooter games, but I’ve never been very good at them, even though I enjoy them.
I chose Warframe as one of the games, as the entry to that game as a Baby Tenno is very daunting. The game doesn’t tell you very much, so it’s mostly up to you to figure things out. I’ve played this 3 times on stream and will continue on that journey with the very friendly community hopefully helping me along (and if they don’t, I will share my emotions in that regard).
CS:GO is chosen because of the massive skill level required here. The learning curve is steep and already there I will be challenged. Since I’ve primarily enjoyed games on a serious hobby / recreational basis, I’ve tended to avoid games that seemed too much like work to me. But my life circumstances have changed a bit, hence I’m up for the challenge. You will join me from having less than 1 hour in game (primarily in menus) to having a bit more experience. The last time I played Counterstrike was in MOD form at around version 1.2 – and I didn’t play it more than a couple of hours.
I plan to rely a bit on my brother-in-law to give me a few pointers in what I should be training / doing from time to time.
What’s the plan?
The plan is to play the games over a period of 30 individual days, playing each game for 2.5 hours at a time (approximately). I won’t play 30 days straight, as my life doesn’t allow for that, but I will try to do it at least once a week, all depending.
I will report on my journey here, on my blog and via videos. Hopefully I’ll be able to document that journey and hopefully it will be fun to follow. At least I hope you might be interested in getting to know yourself a bit more on a personal level and in the end hopefully be able to live a more mentally healthy life.
You are more than welcome to give pointers and tips in here or anywhere else. I know I know nothing, so anything will be helpful.
See you in next update.
Enjoy your day and thanks for reading.
Where to follow my journey:
Twitch – First stream of Incompetence Month in Friday August 12th 2022.
Here.