I DON’T LIKE WINNING

 There's something that I never understood about myself: seems that I don't like to win. Not that I don't enjoy being good at what I do, or scoring achievements. I do, quite a bit, but for some reason, I’ve never been competitive. As a result, I don't enjoy games. I have played stuff occasionally over the years, from sports through board games to computer games, but the only stuff I enjoyed were single player computer games, and even that has waned by age 16 or so.

My ex-wife was a huge fan of games, and one of our main contentions over the years was her constant attempt to make me play with her. Once a year or so, I would capitulate (until 2016, when I finally got her to find some friends to play with instead of me), but I hated it and was just zombiying my way through the game, often times playing intentionally suboptimal to lose and get it over with.

What I still don't know is WHY. What is it that makes me not only dislike the games, but feel no interest in winning over someone else, or derive pleasure from it. It’s not that I have no aspirations or interest in general – on the contrary. Many people would categorize me as an overachiever. In my 48 years of life, I’ve pursued both wide fields of interest, and significant career growth. In my career, I started as a simple computer technician, and worked my way up to being a program-manager for two monumental products. Personally, I’ve been an artist, comedian, writer, pilot, event producer and much more. But all of that was “winning” against myself. But that same drive and zeal never pushed me to compete against others. When I was a program manager, I worked hard to make my product as good as I can, rather than just win market-share, and in my life, I worked to do well in my endeavors and not “win” against others. In my social life, I also never looked for wins. Even if a person in my life argued with me, I would often discuss or argue, but it was always just to educate and learn rather than a simple “win”.

The question still is WHY, and to this day, I don’t know. Perhaps some therapy or hypnosis might reveal the answer. I’m quite curious. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter much as this has never hurt me in any way (and probably has been to my advantage, as I believe people might like me less if I was always competing). I guess I’ll go to my grave not knowing.

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