Control: I Will Miss Adepticon…
Two quick notes on Adepticon:
First:
I, Dalton Lewis, will miss Adepticon, the biggest gaming tournament of the year. I will miss it even though I will be there physically — I will go to the location and hang out with the players as they play in the event. I just won’t compete in any of the tournaments.
Why?
Because I’m not well.
I have paranoid schizophrenia, and it is flaring up right now.
Craziness.
I am a crazy person, a mentally ill person, a person on disability, someone who has a different mind than the normal people. People notice that I don’t usually pay attention to the world around me. Employers used to fire me more often than any other employee. The drug addicts held onto jobs longer than I did.
The meds have stayed the same for years now. We haven’t changed the combinations of prescription drugs that abate the schizophrenia and enable me to hear conversations and make conversations and live a relatively normal life.
They aren’t working as well as they used to, though. The meds used to help me to have normal conversations and not worry about the mental world inside of my head. Now the mental world inside of my head torments me, making me worry about it all day long. I can’t stop worrying about stupid things that aren’t real.
I don’t think about what is happening in the world around me. That is stopping me from playing more effectively in Warhammer 40k. That frustrates me constantly. I need to become more aware of the world around me. That is my goal going forward.
Second note:
What is Adepticon?
It’s a place for everyone to get together and play strategy tabletop wargames. Everyone wants to win the Warhammer 40k Championships — the singles or the teams.
The same damned people seem to win the teams every year.
I don’t know what that means. I know some of those people who usually win the teams. I talked to one yesterday over the phone with my friend Phillip. Phillip and I were in Phillip’s SUV and he called the player on the team that usually wins.
This player is super-nice to everyone. He doesn’t play the game constantly anymore. He has never been rude to me or ignored me because I am a less skilled player.
“We’re not done with painting yet,” he said.
He said what faction they were playing with. I won’t reveal it here because that would be a breach of trust.
“I am getting slammed at work, but I will go over to his (a teammate’s) home Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to help paint everything.”
I don’t know why they win just about every year.
I will say this:
They practice games. They play out two or three turns against each matchup and try to figure out how to defeat those matchups. That enables them to beat seventy-five percent of the opponents right away.
They are also very successful in life. One is a dentist, and another makes a lot of money in business.
And me?
I never beat those guys.
I don’t have an optimized list.
I don’t play out two turns against each matchup.
I don’t think several turns ahead.
Now that I’m thinking about it — maybe I should prepare for each matchup and think a couple turns ahead…
Can anyone win? Can any team win?
As I get older I don’t know. I’d like to think that anyone could get better and suddenly start competing. I think that there is hope for us all. It’s a longshot, though. The same damned people might win again this year — because they prepare more and prepare more intelligently than everyone else.
Amazing how that goes.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
