Swizec Teller - a geek with a hatswizec.com

Senior Mindset Book

Get promoted, earn a bigger salary, work for top companies

Senior Engineer Mindset cover
Learn more

    How I justified a weekend of videogaming and gorging as an exercise in hardcore personal improvement

    And thus the three day easter weekend is behind us.

    Finally.

    Was getting a bit long to be honest.

    But what's more important than this is what I spent most of my weekend doing --> Videogames and piles upon piles of omnom yummy foods. Mostly junk foods like bits of smoked pigs and copious amounts of chocolate ... very little eggs though, that's a bit silly considering easter is supposed to be all about eggs.

    No matter, food was omnom.

    Now, how can a guy justify wasting so many hours on something as simple as videogames? Well, I could say I was trying to have fun ... but that's a cop out, way too easy.

    The most importantest thing is the mechanics of my adventures. The game I was playing was Richard Burns Rally, known far and wide as being one of the most, if not the most, difficult and realistic rally simulation games. The map I was playing was Mineshaft from Australia, in my humble opinion the hardest fucking map in the whole game.

    See in most of the maps you drive in some forrest or something and the worst that can happen is you ram a tree or lose time by going a bit wide and over some grass or something.

    But Mineshaft is different. Most of that damn thing is comprised of a road with a sheer drop cliff on one side and a cliff on the other. It's a bit like trying to rally over the Yungas Road (most dangerous road in the world FYI).

    So what the fuck are you rambling about Swizec. Just get on with the fucking point already sheesh!

    Alright alright. :D

    My point is that ALL I did. For SEVERAL fucking hours. Was. Play. Richard Burns Rally. On. The. Hardest. Map.

    But why on god's fucking earth would you do something like that?

    Well, because I could.

    But the important bit is why I wanted to. The game is insane to play on keyboards and needless to say I never once survived to the end of the map. Out of ~200 plays. I never once finished.

    Wtf, masochist?

    No. Through endless repetition and stupid iteration I learned. I learned a whole fucking lot! By the time I got fed up with playing I was habitually achieving mid times several seconds faster than the world record for that stage. Yes, the realistic world record.

    *gasp* *shocker*

    But I still didn't finish, so the quest continues.

    My point is that this little experience teaches us a lot about life, the universe and everything. Life is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster

    And that is all. Remember that. Whenever you are failing in life, you're not failing, you're learning. That's what it's all about. The more you fail the better a person you become, those times you dont' fail you haven't learned a single thing. So stop that.

    Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
    Published on April 6th, 2010 in Games, intrigues, life, Richard Burns Rally, Uncategorized, Yungas Road

    Did you enjoy this article?

    Continue reading about How I justified a weekend of videogaming and gorging as an exercise in hardcore personal improvement

    Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4

    Senior Mindset Book

    Get promoted, earn a bigger salary, work for top companies

    Learn more

    Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.

    Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.

    Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.

    Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev

    Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization

    Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections

    Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog

    Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com

    By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️

    Created by Swizec with ❤️