A Meetup in Chicago and Learning from Video Games
Hello hello!
This letter I’m musing on a work meetup in Chicago and some things I’ve learned from video games lately!
Real Life Meetups are Real Awesome 🏙
Last week I was lucky enough to meet some of my colleagues in real life for the first time since I started at Litmus in August of 2021. This meetup was for peeps working in the midwest and south of the US, so while it wasn’t a full company meetup, I got to meet so many friendly faces. Chicago was a super fun destination and it was incredible to get to know my teammates, eat great food, go on tours, and rock climb!
Remote work is great, and I feel super effective when I’m at my desk at home, but I think a critical part of remote working is meeting with teammates a couple times a year. Seeing people in person gave me a jolt of energy and motivation that’s definitely impacted my happiness at work. The company culture felt tangible to me in Chicago in a way that Slack or Zoom can’t replicate.
I guess I’m doubly lucky because I’m heading out to Providence RI this coming week for a Ruby Conference with my engineering team! I’ll finally get to meet my manager, the UK team, and lots of other Rubyists at RubyConf Mini.
And since I’m staying in the northeast for Thanksgiving, things will be full speed ahead until December! 😅
Learnings from Video Games Lately 🎮
Switch-ing gears, (hah, I’m hilarious), I’ve gotten back into video games, and I’ve learned a few things about myself in the process…
I’ve lately been aware of my tendency to over-prepare at times, to minimize failure as much as possible. But sometimes, that’s just not how it shakes out. Sometimes, failure is a very real outcome, and the only way to really proceed is to get back into the arena, face it down, and try again.
In video games, I like to grind and not push myself to higher levels or tougher bosses unless I really feel ready for it. I’m noticing that I used the world feel here, which implies this is an emotional tic, not one that’s necessarily borne from rationality.
This emotion shows up in my professional life:
- Being afraid to ship code
- Not sharing a side-project with the world (but doing all the prep for it)
- Not showing my skills because I’m afraid they aren’t real
The takeaway and next steps? ⭐ Dispel the fear of failure by building resilience.
- Get into the arena of life. Be involved. Say hello.
- Practice the emotion of jumping in when it’s scary, and being graceful in defeat.
Video games are a low risk way to exercise this emotional muscle! Plus, they’re just fun.
Video Games I’m Currently Playing
(On the Nintendo Switch, hence my wonderful pun above)
- Unravel 2
- Overwatch 2
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Baba is You
- Mini Metro
Board Games - Honorable Mentions
We’ve been at the board game bistro lately and played some really fun competitive and cooperative games that I wanted to mention here (although I could probably write a totally separate letter on board games themselves…)
- Mysterium Park
- Patchwork
- 5 Minute Dungeon
- Jaipur
Reads and Projects 🌳
Books:
I’m on a bit of a literary classics tear. I ordered a bunch of them on Thriftbooks. I’ll definitely have more to write about them later. 😁
The couple I’ve enjoyed lately:
- Frankenstein ~ by Mary Shelley
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ~ by Mark Twain
Currently Reading:
- Guns Germs and Steel ~ by Jared Diamond
- Daring Greatly ~ by Brene Brown
- (Going to pick another fiction book to start!)
New Toy App: Deciduous
I built a browser extension to capture notes for me when I browse in Firefox, without having to change my context to Obsidian, my notetaking app of choice.
It’s very simple, but was fun to build! It’s called Deciduous and you can find it here if you want to check it out.
A Question For You
What’s your opinion on video games? Waste of time? Life-enriching experience? Something to be enjoyed for simple enjoyment?
Talk soon,
Saalik