Cartman, I'm like the French

Growing up I had the hardest time being good at things. More specificially, I had trouble being as good as, say, my little brother at, say, computer games. Even with the age advantage, he would soon top my best scores in everything but the text-based games... and those games didn't even keep high scores.

With such a humilating defeat, I decided that computer games just weren't "for me" and went off in pursuit of other things, like writing. In a nutshell, I did what Cartman accuses the French of doing in "Make Love, Not Warcraft" and "quit playing".

This rather immature response started a thought pattern that eventually led me to a freeing truth: I'm a different person and so I should be good at different things. It's not important that I wasn't a good football player. Why? Not because "football sucks" or anything as juvenile as that, but because I'm a swimmer, not a football player.

I'm sick of hearing about how I'm "special" and "unique" so I shouldn't feel bad that others are better than me in certain areas. That is hardly uplifting. The reason nobody should ever feel bad when comparing themselves to others is due to the simple fact that we should not compare ourselves to others because we aren't them.

The truth is that I am "unique" and therefore "special", but the way it is presented normally is more discouraging than freeing. If you are having trouble feeling good about yourself, you need to stop looking at the things you can't do that others can. You need to "quit playing" if that's what it's going to take. That doesn't mean you can sit on your butt now. No, you have to go out and do your thing. What do you like to do? What do you feel you're good at doing? Do that.

I'm currently in the process of trying to get another children's story published that covers this same idea. I think it's important that kids realize this a whole lot earlier than I did so they can stop getting their faces pushed in the mud, and rather shine in their area of skill.

By the way, I do play World of Warcraft now. And since I know that I'm more of a social player, I don't mind that my wife hit 60 before me. Well, I don't mind too much.

~Luke Holzmann