Failure is something that we all deal with in our real lives, but failure in the guild really bites at me. Now that I am in a senior officer position, I feel that I have to be infallible and unwavering. Earlier tonight I screwed up Dragonflight three times in a row, the last two times directly because of me not being fast enough or causing enough damage. This really riles me up because I not only wasted 3 Golden Bells to start the event, but I also wasted about 12 people's time (almost 30 mins) for literally nothing.
That really ticked me off, and I just exited the game and shut down TS3 to cool off.
I think it's important that we remind ourselves that failure is not the end of the world. It is good for our lower members to see that officers and leaders are not invincible or infallible; rather, we are as human and flawed as any. We may be good at leading people, but we make mistakes with the rest of them.
However, even keeping this in mind does not lessen the sting of letting people down. Not only my own guild members, but members in our Alliance as well. Failure has always gotten to me, and it always makes me unreasonably angry. Why am I not better than I am? How could this possibly happen? I know I am capable of X, Y or Z but yet it eludes me. Am I really that weak and useless? Of course not, but it still feels that way in the moment. I also struggle with jealousy. When I fail at something after really, really struggling at it, and then someone else does it with ease, it flashes a flame of jealousy inside me that I find difficult to quell. I don't know why I struggle with that so much, but there it is. When I see others succeed, I am very happy and excited for them, yet at the same time I can't help but feel inferior, feel like a fraud and feel as though I should just quit and walk away.
Yet, for some inexplicable reason, I always push on and push harder the next time. Is it the drive to be the best, and to be at the top of the mountain? Maybe. I sure hope it isn't because I like to see others fail. While all humans experience schaudenfreude from time to time, we feel guilty afterwards, which is the sign of our humanity and compassion. So after the heat of the moment passes I always kick mysef and think "Why did I get so upset? Just because I failed and they succeeded, that doesn't reflect on who we are as people."
But I believe that failure just makes success all that much sweeter. The next time I run the event and we massacre that dragon, I will disintegrate him. We will rise over him and grind him into dust. The Royal Black Watch is unstoppable when we work together, and compensate for each others' strengths and weaknesses.
