Played a few new games today - a few interesting abstracts, a card game, & I finally tried Railway Porters with the correct rules & not just the ones my exhausted brain had garbled from the rulebook. It works better when you play it with the correct rules! Tabletop 'expert' here, folks
No one who cares about me cares about any of that stuff. But I struggle to believe the actual me is enough. Which... look. That is an attitude likely to make any creative work incredibly stressful & high stakes, financial consequences aside.
Sometimes a game immediately connects for me. Like, we're not even through the teach & I'm like *oooooooh*. Or I love it on the first play. Some take longer before it clicks. Sometimes I have to figure out what the game is asking of me, how to weigh my choices, then it becomes engaging.
So often I've felt like a gambling addict, like I've built up a vast moral debt & that one day all my flaws & the hurts I've inflicted on others will be vindicated because I'll write something great, successful. So it asks me to double down, steer towards this pinhole of redemptive escape.
If it goes forward, there is still much to do, but I won't do it unless I can while being kind to myself. I locate so much of my self worth in my ability to write, & that is a very bad idea. We are human, we are inherently worthwhile, we don't have to do. It's enough to enjoy the sun on our faces.
I submitted a little of my new book yesterday. I think it's the hardest thing I've ever worked on, partly because of my life situation as I've written it, partly because of the subject matter. I'm not sure it is a viable book, we'll see, but my job now is to let go, & not grasp tightly.