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Episode 237: How Alex Sparked!
150 Plays1 month ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Today it's Alex's turn to give y'all a Solo Episode. Alex is sharing his own story on How He Sparked!!
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
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As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
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Transcript
Introduction and Absent Co-hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. So this evening it is just I coming to you. Both Taya and Hobbs are taking the night off. So might as well do my introductions immediately. I am Alex Newman.
00:00:17
Speaker
found on Twitter at male underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he him.
Inspiration from Hobbs' Mental Health Journey
00:00:22
Speaker
And tonight ah decided to to to kind of repeat an episode or or not to repeat, but to go to something that Hobbs did a while ago. He he wrote an episode or he he recorded an episode called How I Sparked and where he he did a solo episode where he talked about kind of his his journey kind of what brought him to his his career in ah mental working in mental health um and that if anyone is curious is is episode 167 for for folks back who back in November 16 2022 so almost two years from from when I'm recording this
00:01:07
Speaker
um But this was a an episode where he kind of talked about his journey.
Career Path and Influence
00:01:12
Speaker
And this is a thing I've kind of had rattling around my head for a little while. And and tonight was a good opportunity for me to sit down and try to record this myself, Sam.
00:01:23
Speaker
Hobbs isn't here. He would point out that I just ah used the word try. he's He's not a fan of that, but I'll get into um and into some of that tonight as as I talk. So for him, it was his journey through his career, um getting into where where he works now um at the VA, working in and in mental health career. um For myself, I i don't...
00:01:47
Speaker
I don't, maybe it's just me, I don't really find that an interesting, I don't think where I do a job, not because it's a thing that I care about, um but because that is just where I ended up in a lot of ways.
Journey into Podcasting about Magic
00:01:59
Speaker
um It's where my parents worked, it's where I did temp work, I got a full-time job and I've been there for almost 20 years now, it's not super interesting or compelling. um I like the company, I like the people I work with and and assuming that it continues to be a company that's good to its employees as it has been. I'll be there for a while, but that's not really what I wanted to talk to about. I think for me, my journey, at least in in this instance, I kind of want to talk honestly how I got to the position that I'm sitting in tonight in front of a microphone talking to people on the internet.
Magic and Mental Health
00:02:37
Speaker
um Sort of. This is, in in a way, this is kind of um this is kind of three different journeys in my life in how these have kind of interacted to leading me to this exact point. um it's It's funny, I actually just, to kind of help me prepare for this, listened to that episode of Hobbs is um on on my way home. And it's it's funny how many little points he made in that in that episode that I kind of was already thinking about or looking to echo.
00:03:06
Speaker
So if if that is something you this is something you find interesting, and that that could be a fun fun episode to go check out. But for me, um I want to talk about kind of my my magic content creation journey, of course, that's that is the most directly connected, but that that also really significantly is impacted, or not even significantly. it is a related to my mental health journey and really my so kind of my story or my journey of magic as a source of community in my life, because that's actually a thing that sort of well predates both of these other, you know, quote unquote journeys for me um in my life. And say a lot of a lot of this stuff is stuff I have talked about in the cast. A lot of these, at least in pieces, I don't know that there's anything in specific I'm gonna talk about that I haven't talked about before.
00:04:04
Speaker
But I don't believe I've ever really talked about this altogether as ah as a linear narrative, as it were, though, of course, life is not always linear. That's kind of going to be a little bit of a theme of this and and also is kind of a thing that Hobbes talked about a little bit.
Early Magic Experiences
00:04:20
Speaker
um but I guess I will then just get started, of course. So I think the easiest... We'll talk about magic very briefly, how I got started with the game. um i I started playing magic when I was eight. I am i am far, far from that age now ah to give a reference to when that was. I started playing shortly after Revised came out.
00:04:45
Speaker
ah back in 1994. So I've been playing Magic on and off for the vast majority of my life at this point. um Actually started playing it because a friend of my dad's, who he used to play Dungeons and Dragons with, showed up to our house one day.
00:05:02
Speaker
And honestly, there may I don't know if there was other context to it. I was i was eight, but he brought multiple starter decks for us. And we immediately sat down and started playing big group games, four or five people. I can't remember remember exactly how big that was, but that that is was our pattern.
00:05:19
Speaker
we We played big group games. um It but honestly took me years to play a game that was was one-on-one. That just wasn't really how we played in our group. Even though, despite that being how the rules kind of assumed you were going to play, like the rulebook, the cards, everything about the game kind of assumed it was a 1v1 game, that's just not how we played.
00:05:42
Speaker
we We didn't care, because honestly, you know in a sense, we were we were, quote unquote, playing it like Richard Garfield intended, at least in the sense that we were literally playing it with people we played D and&D with. Not exactly in the sense where, when Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic, sort of envisioned this, it was a Magic was a game people would play between sessions of of RPGs. It's not exactly how we played it. but um It was with a lot of the same folks. And so, you know, you had five, six people in your campaign, you we played with five or six people, eventually did end up playing with a lot of other folks, finding folks like my my dad, um ultimately found some people at work.
Community Transition and Anxiety
00:06:25
Speaker
that that started playing hell. There was ah a point where he was playing during lunch with a friend of his, I think, and one of the people who was in the the janitorial like staff at their office building was like, what is this? And sort of talked to them about it. And then he went out and got some cards. He ultimately got a job at the same company and like then just became kind of one of my dad's friends. And that was, for me, being as young as I was, my my first play group were my dad and his friends.
00:06:53
Speaker
I eventually got into, found my own friends kind of in high school, middle school a little bit, and and started playing group games at school. That was was a big part of of kind of my community at the time. Never really went to stores other than to like buy product. I don't know that I played in an officially sanctioned thing ever until like maybe 2006 or something. like it It took a long time. and during that that During that period, that's just not how we played.
00:07:24
Speaker
But then after I finished high school and I kind of went to college, I lost that community, even though I actually honestly kept in ah kept in contact to this day with with several friends of mine who I used to play with. We didn't have that set time to to play anymore. We didn't have lunch in school, this building that we were all going to every day anyway. And so I kind of lost that.
00:07:50
Speaker
that structure and that ah for that community. um Around this time, um but around the the time that I went to college and things, um like my kind of my social anxiety was starting to to show up more. It was undiagnosed at the time. I had no idea that this was what this really was. I didn't know that there was a thing. Just my my world started to narrow.
00:08:17
Speaker
um I had close friends and family, some of whom were the folks from high school I used to play Magic with and some other folks from high school. And I'd do stuff and hang out with them, but it started to get to be less and less. I became more insular even with with that group of friends started going out less with with other people. And I started to really feel trapped and I couldn't I couldn't really say what the specifics of or how I felt trapped, but that was kind of this building feeling that I had. And then one day, at this point in time too, I had stopped playing Magic entirely. i
00:08:53
Speaker
Briefly a few years before um the anxiety attack, which i which I had at this point, but a few years before that I actually had found some people at work who played magic, and I did some magic with them. They, though, were were competitive players. They were 1v1 players. They went to Friday Night Magic, and that was how I learned that that was a thing, Friday Night Magic. I never really knew this. Learned about standard.
00:09:17
Speaker
not a format that I'd ever even really heard of. They're the real vague rumblings of people talking about type one and type two and type one and a half for for the oldies out there who also remember those from me, like me. But anyway, so I actually did for for a little while. I hung out with this group. They would do go over to someone's house I think on like a Saturday night and spend time testing and playing decks with each other and so you'd get six people together but they were all playing 1v1 which is a very different way to play the game than I was used to but it was fun to play the game and try to to kind of wrap my head around a different way to play magic which I have always enjoyed. um and did I did go to a few a few Friday night magic events but the
00:10:01
Speaker
my Again, at that point, undiagnosed anxiety, social anxiety specifically, kind of was making that tough. And there were nothing major, but just a few...
00:10:15
Speaker
is situations where I just didn't feel good. People who were you know really the the the corner edge case people who would intentionally misplay things until you call them on it. And then they go, oh, yeah, yeah. And like multiple times, and it just was made it very hard for me to to want to play the game like that.
Therapy and Re-engagement with Magic
00:10:35
Speaker
And so I but quit playing in the game. I kind of hung out with that group a little bit, but then a number of them left the company I work for and went to somewhere else and just kind of fell out of contact with most of them. And so I, at that point, kind of stopped playing Magic. and and and
00:10:54
Speaker
Going back kind of fast forwarding another couple of years, this was this point in time where I was my world was starting to narrow and I was feeling a little more trapped and then woke up one day and felt like I was struggling to breathe. I went to urgent care. I sat there but through a few hours worth of tests and there was nothing physically wrong that the doctors could find with me and that It was at that point where it kind of, I finally admitted to myself that I had an anxiety disorder that I, which I kind of knew about. I had read a little bit trying to like, I don't know. I, I feel like I found, was done some internet rabbit hole with TV tropes somehow and was reading about anxiety disorders and thought that kind of sounded like me. And ultimately then after this anxiety attack, I went and.
00:11:44
Speaker
Found a therapist. This was, I finally kind of admitted to myself. I hit a point where it was like, I need to, I need help. I need to reach out to someone. I need to and need to talk to someone. And so i that's that's what I did. I actually went back to work that day after after scheduling an appointment, um even though my boss was, it's just that I could stay home. i say I love the company I work for and and all the the people I've worked with and and that manager who,
00:12:12
Speaker
It's no longer my manager now. i've I've moved positions, but even then he was was super supportive, but it was just like, I needed to just, I needed. to be back at work I needed to take my mind off of this, but um having having going and talking to someone, and like i was I was very, very fortunate. The first therapist that I found, who honestly was a was convenience, it was a person who whose practice was open on Saturdays that I could go to, so I didn't have to take time off of work, was located in downtown Minneapolis, so it was easy for me to get to by bus anywhere in the city.
00:12:46
Speaker
Minneapolis has has a pretty good public transit system, but the the cities are sprawling. It can take a long time to get anywhere. um But part of how they're set up is everything goes into, there's a lot of routes that run into downtown and then routes that run out. and so Being able to just take a quick bus in, go to my therapy session, take a quick bus out unless I wanted to hang out in downtown and do some shopping or something was was also an option. but So that that convenience was how I found this person and I was really fortunate to find someone who worked very well with me. um
00:13:21
Speaker
which I know is is not always the case for folks, and but that was cute for me. I spent a year and a half talking, having having regular sessions, mostly, I think it was weekly for a little while and kind of biweekly. like We found a good cadence that that worked, um but it was regularly for for about a year and a half. um And then ah around that time, some somewhere in that year and a half or so was when Return to Grabnica came out.
00:13:49
Speaker
so kind of point magic back into the this storyline, that the the original Ravnica set came out when I was doing the playing with friends, going to Standard, that whole thing. It was it was the original Ravnica and then Time Spiral Block. And those two, i for various many various reasons, I talk about the Time Spiral Block a lot, just from a male and male folk standpoint that I really appreciate.
00:14:15
Speaker
But that standard set was was a lot of fun, and I really loved also the structure of the original Ravnica block. um And so this was the first time, when when Return to Ravnica came out, this was the first time the game was going back there. An old friend of mine from high school was one who even told me about it. I was just so checked out of Magic, I didn't know. um And I bought a few cards, but then when Gatecrash was coming out, when the pre-release was coming up,
00:14:41
Speaker
well Actually, i had it wasn't pre-release. I didn't know about pre-releases at the time, but when the set was coming up, I...
Magic as a Social Tool
00:14:47
Speaker
because we decided that I wanted to try playing magic again. This wasn't specifically connected to my therapy, though I realized later it kind of was and it and get into that a little bit and in a little bit. But I went, I released day for Gatecrash, remember I bought box, bunch of product, always love cracking packs. So it cracked a bunch of packs, built some built a standard deck or two that were
00:15:13
Speaker
just not good, but it was based on stuff that had come out and and returned to Ravnica. And I started going to Fragonite Magic. That was sort of a, I wanted to play magic. I still kept up with with several of my friends who used to play magic, but none of us really did anymore. None of them really had interest in playing regularly, but kind of because of that time, that experience I'd had with my, my that other friend group,
00:15:42
Speaker
i I knew about Friday Night Magic and I knew that that was a thing I could do and go to a store and and play Magic with just randoms if I wanted to. And so that's what I did. I started going to Friday Night Magic. I learned very quickly.
00:16:03
Speaker
the a yeah The Innistrad block had some good cards. I learned very quickly that a lot of the cards I thought were good were not good, because I just was never really done card valuations for 1v1 formats before. It was all weirdo giant group formats that we used to play, by and large. um But I had a lot of fun with that. I did that for a while. I played that whole...
00:16:31
Speaker
the The RTR, I played a lot of that standard set, the next standard. like I started going to stores regularly that that really got me into the Magic community. I will sometimes say on the show that Magic taught me how to talk to people, and I'll say that in conversations and stuff too. and Usually I'll say it in the cadence of a joke, but it it is serious. and Kind of a joke, and but it's it's maybe it's a pithy way to say something that's very serious. I really did learn how to talk to people again through magic um after after starting to isolate myself to the point that I was. um and And getting to a point where literally before um I would had my social anxiety diagnosed, like I would feel sick to my stomach if someone started talking to me at a bus stop.
00:17:23
Speaker
and like Thing and not like random conversation when does this bus come what route is this and where does it go would make me feel sick to my stomach because well social anxiety so that having this environment i of course the the yeah the the therapy that I'd gone through talking to someone.
Friendships and Social Growth
00:17:44
Speaker
working on different tools of introspection that I still use to this day was all important, but then going into an environment where I got to use those things, but where there was also this structure. So you go and play a Friday Night Magic, you go and play a pre-release, which I started to get into. I went to the Dragon's Maze pre-release,
00:18:04
Speaker
I think I played every pre-release for like three years or four years or something like that became one of the big outlets for me. Even when I stopped playing Standard and I kind of moved into Commander, finding a fun casual group format like I used to play with my my dad as a kid, Commander really, really spoke to me there. But even while I was kind of done with the serious formats, quote unquote, serious formats, like pre-release has still spoke to me, but um these are like, ultimately, you're only gonna have to interact if you really, really don't wanna talk to a lot of people. You only have to interact with a handful of people that whole night. You got three, maybe four opponents, depending on how how it how that works, to however many rounds you you stay for or the event runs for. um You talk to you know one or two people at the store maybe, and that that can be it.
00:18:56
Speaker
and you talk to them during the game and you do there's the structure of how you play the game are you going to you know you roll the dice you're going to play or draw you go through all of those interactions and then you can just leave and no one cares and my big part of my social anxiety is not so much even that i'm afraid of talking to somebody and saying the wrong thing, but well there's there's a whole layers. There's weird layers that I don't need to get into, but part of it just, i this gave me a structure that allowed me to talk to people, but then also if I was comfortable, but i could and then just leave if I needed to, and no one would be mad about it. And I knew that no one would be upset about it.
00:19:36
Speaker
um But it also gave me an opportunity to interact with people I'd never interacted with. And if I was feeling comfortable or we were in a good spot, we could just talk during the game, after the game. you know After everything was over, that's how I met a good friend of mine to den like who actually ah a roommate of mine. for I lived with him for for a number of years. We were both regulars at this commander event. we you know We started playing, being paired up by the random groupings or nights where it was just kind of free play. We'd end up playing games together.
00:20:06
Speaker
We chat during the games that turned, you know, into eventually there were nights where we were spending hours, even after the story was closed, standing out front and just talking because we would just like hanging out. And so this this whole thing, like I had said, I hadn't really planned it to be.
00:20:28
Speaker
some way to learn how to talk. I hadn't planned it to be some outlet for me. I hadn't planned it that way, but it the timing was serendipitous, you you could say.
Connecting through Podcasts and Events
00:20:42
Speaker
And i honestly, I didn't even realize what was... I didn't realize that this was happening um until an old friend of mine, a friend I've known,
00:20:57
Speaker
very, very long time, um who who was kind of getting back, getting into magic, I think for the first time at that time, if I remember correctly, um came and did a draft with me at the same store that I played, because at this point I was a regular there. um And afterwards, like, we were talking and he made a comment about how I just seemed to know everybody, and I was chatting with everybody, and talking with employees and the other regular customers and just being really outgoing in a way that he honestly at that point probably never seen in by his entire life or all of our time together because I for so long had I very social with a very with when in in small groups or at least really it's it's it's a factor of my social anxiety I think and
00:21:48
Speaker
a very outgoing nature. I am a fairly introverted person, and large groups can exhaust me, but I love to talk as I'm standing and sitting in front of a mic 21 minutes into this ah recording, and I've got a lot left to go. So i pretty clear, I love to talk and so being social, but I'd never really felt comfortable in larger groups being that way. Within smaller groups, bo had seen my my friend had seen me like this, but this... He'd never seen that in a at a store or 50 or some people sitting in the building and I'm talking to all of these different people. He'd never seen that before and and that would really help to illustrate to me kind of this this journey that I was on and and this place that I had been to. um Because often in in journeys like this and things it can be easy to miss
00:22:42
Speaker
um miss the little, sometimes a little, sometimes big, but it can be easy to miss those steps that happen along the way. And so now, I guess, um time to kind of weave in here this third story, want to talk about magic content creation. And so I'll say, by this point in time, I i was i was into magic. this This had been a year, two years of playing the game. um And so going to kind of see what else can I do? like i can
00:23:13
Speaker
I can't play magic while I'm at work, but then I discovered podcasts. So now I'm at work, I'm listening to magic podcasts. um It allows me to kind of keep my head in this space and I found a number of shows that I loved and I went through their backlogs and was listening to limited shows and design shows with Mark Rosewater and listening to various commander things as I kind of... and as I went through my journey, even within magic of of kind of what I was playing and what I was focusing on. um And kind of through these podcasts, I found i thought a connection to the Greater Magic community. Again, kind of in a way I'd never really expected. I love the community at my shop. There was a lot of people there who I loved spending time with and many but I became for friends with. But the
00:24:00
Speaker
there are so many people who play magic. The way they play magic and the stories they tell are all so different. And so these podcasts kind of gave me this picture of this the greater community, these different groups. Obviously even that is is just a slice, but it it opened my eyes to how many more people were part of this game and how I had some idea that there was all these other people in the world, and many of them played this game, but this gave me an idea of how different everybody can be within the game, and how these little communities and different places are so different, um which really had me wanting to go to, at the time, Grand Prix, the big magic events.
Grand Prix and Community Integration
00:24:44
Speaker
the convention-like events that they had at the time, which were a little less convention-like than they are now. um You go far enough back in our backlog, there's at least one episode where we talk about what a magic convention would look like, and now in the the year of 2024, we've seen that for a couple of years now, actually.
00:25:04
Speaker
But so these were big these were big things I wanted to do. um There was tournaments and small events firing off and vendors and artists and just random magic people you can just sit down at a table and play games with sometimes. um It sounded really cool, something I'd love to do. and And I was a little bit terrified because I had never done something like that.
00:25:28
Speaker
again, kind of going back to the to my social anxieties that for many years had been undiagnosed. um I was aware not of magic events at the time, but of of large game conventions and fan conventions like Comic Cons, E3, which of course was kind of an industry thing. that's ah That was a weird one. And and the PAX conventions, like all of these that I kind of knew existed, but somehow just in the back of my head knew that that's something I can't do.
00:25:57
Speaker
never really fully let those thoughts form. I think if I had really examined why I felt that way that might have helped me. go talk to a therapist and get a diagnosis earlier in life, but that is just how the events sort of played out. But now, having kind of become a part of this community, having gone through ah some time of therapy, i this it was kind of time for me to start doing this. And honestly, magic events were not the first I went to. I actually went to some smaller conventions in Minneapolis, including Fourth Street Fantasy, the the writing one I talk about every so often on the show.
00:26:33
Speaker
and and also Otacon, which is a big anime convention at the time in Baltimore. Now it's in Washington, D.C. Also talk about that in the cast every so often, too. And so like i kind I went to those, and and that was like i need to to see one of these I need to go to one of these magic events. Depending on how the timing had been out, a magic one might have been my first, but it was... Minneapolis didn't really have ones and I wasn't super plugged into the, despite listening to a lot of podcasts because of Apple podcasts on my iPhone, iPod at the time. Honestly, it was probably an iPod at the time. um I wasn't super aware of.
00:27:15
Speaker
things like the Wizards website that had a lot more event information and stuff. And so I wound up missing kind of the Minneapolis events that happened around the time. I think there was one in 2014 that I didn't go to. But then I went to GP Orlando in 2014 was the first GP that I really went to.
00:27:38
Speaker
in part because they have had an amazing playmat. The was kind of a a map of a fictional ah Dominaria theme park that was modeled kind of after a Disney park map and with references to magic cards and as I talked about for A lot with the future site set that sort of all of those references were a lot of fun to me. So I decided I needed to go to this event. I needed to get one of these play mats. And I convinced my friend, Chris, the one who who got me, who who told me about Return to Ravnica and kind of
00:28:13
Speaker
precipitated me coming back to the game. I got convinced him to come out to Orlando with me to do the Grand Prix. And I'm really glad he came out. it was It was a lot of fun to experience this with someone I played the game with so long. We both were kind of discovering these events on our own. He had never really gone to one, maybe booked his head in something at the convention center here gone to vendors and gone home i don't think he i know he'd never played in a main event as i hadn't um and and it was it was a lot of fun but he uh he left sunday morning he uh and we both ended up not getting very far in the main event on saturday and had a lot of fun but ultimately the the big thing for me that really
00:28:56
Speaker
maybe realize I wanted to spend more time with the Magic community as a whole, was this Ice Age Sealed event they did on Sunday morning.
Content Creation and Independence
00:29:05
Speaker
It was two packs of the original Ice Age set, four packs of Cold Snap, and it was it was so much fun. There were 17 people playing in the event, and we had one judge who was assigned to the group,
00:29:17
Speaker
And I don't even remember my record. It doesn't matter. I i assume there were prizes or prize tickets or whatever they were giving at the time, but we just, it was so fun to play magic, build some janky decks and just kind of hang out with a group of people I had never met before, but all of whom, except the judge, I think, but maybe the judge too, all of whom had really been been playing magic about as long as I had.
00:29:41
Speaker
Ice Age came out within a year of when I started. And so it was it was so fun and so relaxing. the for It was the first games of the weekend that I probably relaxed during because I was so high strung during the just a good high level of anxiety sitting there during the the Grand Prix, trying to play it competitive. and Making mistakes and and going on tilt kind of myself Just being frustrated with myself making a mistake about tapping mana and a judge getting cold which was totally fair by my opponent that's what it was a whole thing, but it just it rattled me and this ice age event was just the exact opposite so it was so much fun and
00:30:29
Speaker
that really kind of set the tone for me. I never actually played this. I've not played a ah main event at a at a Grand Prix or magic event since then. i've've I was signed up for one or two and and actually dropped before.
00:30:46
Speaker
good and getting to the game part. um but So this was just that really lit the fire for me. In 2015, there wasn't actually a um Grand Prix in Minneapolis, so I wasn't able to kind of replete that in Minneapolis, but I wound up doing a whole lot more than that. But to kind of go...
00:31:09
Speaker
to pull back a little bit to try to keep this a little chronological, to keep myself, at least, from meandering too much. um Beginning of of the next year, beginning of 2015, I started writing for ah for a magic website that doesn't exist anymore. um But at the time, the the content editor threw out a message with somebody I had followed on podcasts and things. And I just i decided, I'm going to give this a shot. I'm going to send them a message and just see what happens.
00:31:37
Speaker
ah And I said, sure, why don't you write for our website? um And so I started writing um for i wrote for what most of that year. the The site doesn't exist anymore, but it was it got me writing. It got me in that headspace of magic content creation and me realizing it's kind of always new. Magic content creators are just people who happen to create content.
00:32:04
Speaker
But it it was a lot of fun to to get to do that and to work with some of the people on that website. And then later that year, the was the return of Vegas. So GP Vegas in 2013 was this big thing with Modern Masters, and I'd heard about it. It was this legendary event I heard about in all the podcasts, but I wasn't really.
00:32:27
Speaker
paying attention to those types of things when that set came out. And so I didn't go. I didn't even know it was happening. But then when they went back to Vegas in 2015, I knew I needed to to be there, need maybe be a strong word there, but I knew I definitely wanted it to be there. um And that was a huge event for me. That was incredible. That was the first time I had flown to a thing. i I'd flown to a number of conventions, but really the first time i I'd flown by myself to an event where I didn't already know people.
00:32:57
Speaker
So I wasn't meeting up with anybody. I wasn't flying with anybody. I went there by myself, went to the event, did the event and then flew home with meeting up with no one I knew. And it was it was ah it was awesome. it it It was it was a good time. The Vegas events are big. They kind of blow that out. But also I just I had it. I had such a good time meeting the community, being part of this community. I went to a An event on Thursday night, big podcast, had a listener gathering and I went there and and played with a bunch of folks, played some commander. No, we drafted. We drafted conspiracy. That's right. um That was a lot of fun, I believe, from talking to Hobbs. He was in the same room and we didn't know it. I never actually ran into him that at that event.
00:33:45
Speaker
um But that that was a lot of fun. And then I, that weekend, continued to run into some of those people that I hung out with at that event. And I cubed for the first time with some folks, with with one of the guys that I drafted conspiracy with Thursday night.
00:34:02
Speaker
Saw me Sunday kind of sitting by myself watching the the main event just because I was like, I wanted to be on the floor. I wasn't sure what else to do. it So I was just on my phone watching the stream of the main event and someone walked up and asked if I wanted to do a cube draft. And again, it's a thing I'd heard about. Never did it. And I got to do a cube draft for the first time, which which I loved. And that was so much fun. and so That was a great um experience for me, getting to just be, again, kind of be part of the community and to realize that I am part of this bigger community that then I can be interact with and go to these events
Formation of Goblin Lore Podcast
00:34:40
Speaker
and see. And then within a couple of weeks, I think it was two weeks later, i I wound up going to a second Grand Prix that year. I went to Charlotte because most of the the writers for the website that I was at were going.
00:34:55
Speaker
Some people were local and some people weren't, but most of them were converging there. And despite how, excuse me, how difficult it was, how expensive it was going to be to turn around and do that right after Vegas. And this is a this is one of those cases, as Hobbs talked about in in his, how he How I Sparked.
00:35:19
Speaker
right place, right time. um For me, maybe less right place, right time. And this specific note, though I say a few of these things have been like that, this is more just being fortunate. my my Parents gave me, i was I was looking at taking a bus out there because I didn't really have the money to fly. And that was going to be a 48 hour ordeal with two transfers, I believe, um to take a Greyhound from here to Charlotte. and And they said, don't do that. We'll just pay you the difference. We'll give you the money that's the difference between the bus ticket and the plane ticket. Just take a plane. And so I i flew out there. Also,
00:35:57
Speaker
That was an event where a friend of mine at the local store, he was going to go out and as part of a birthday present for him, his parents just said that they would pay for half of the travel, half of the event, half of the hotel room. And so he and I split and I wound up paying a quarter of the price because they were like, yeah, we'll pay the whole half anyway. And then YouTube can split the other half. So they didn't mind.
00:36:19
Speaker
And so I wound up getting a very cheap hotel room and and a good portion of the plane ticket paid for as well, which was, again, just a very fortunate thing for me. And I'm i'm so glad I did, because that was, at that point, I'd only been writing for the site for a few months. But it was my first opportunity to meet other people in the content sphere, kind of as as peers, and to kind of start to contend with that idea that I am a content creator, that I'm that this is just another group, another community. and um hey And it was just nice to meet some of these folks. and And ultimately one of the people who I met there, who again was sort of a chance thing, I just decided to go grab lunch with a couple people and and wound up hanging out with them for for a lot of the day. And and and Jeff, one of the the people there,
00:37:10
Speaker
became friends with him, kept up with him online and and then um the following year um when but there was a a Grand Prix Minneapolis, the Jeff came into town and wound up introducing me to a whole lot of people who are in Minneapolis anyway, and it's another one of that. That very much is a right place, right time thing somehow, because I went to Charlotte, met someone who lived elsewhere on the the Eastern seaboard of the US. Then this person comes to my city and introduces me to people who are in the my city, the same city I've lived in my entire life and had never met before.
00:37:53
Speaker
um And two of those people were Hobbs and Joe. like So this sort of weird chain of events is what led me to the people who founded Goblin, or Joe kind of who's whose initial idea this was.
00:38:10
Speaker
um And then Hobbs and I, who were the other two co-hosts to found this, all sort of stemmed out of me going to this event that I wasn't planning to, that it would have been very, very easy and sensible, quite honestly, for me to just say, no, it's a little close to this other event. Honestly, if and and another thing, i at this point, I'd been going to a lot of conventions, and had I been used to that, I probably would have paid more attention to my my schedule because I wound up going to
00:38:46
Speaker
I believe it was five events in the span of like eight or 10 weeks. And so it's like I went to Vegas, I went to Charlotte, I went to Fourth Street locally here in Minneapolis, I went to Convergence locally here in Minneapolis, and I went to Otacon. Those were all within about two months of each other within a two, sorry, within a two month span total, um which was a lot that it that That also taught me that there was a limit to how much um I could people, even if that was just being in the middle of a crowd. like i i At Convergence, which is a local con, I went to one panel, and it which i love I love panels at conventions. They're a great way for me to be like passively socializing, if that makes any sense. But then like i as soon as I left the the panel room in the hallway, it was full of people. I was like, I can't do this anymore. So there was another case where I ended up in this. they had a little
00:39:42
Speaker
a bunch of board game rooms and I was in a magic room with like eight or ten people for most of that that weekend which was a lot of fun but so this was all sort of just chance to kind of led me to this and now started Goblin Lore um about six years ago. And did that with Joe. Joe left about ah a little over a year into the cast. I can't remember exactly when, somewhere in that that that range, between one and two years. And that was another sort of inflection point where Hobbs and I had to decide what we were going to do. And ultimately, we decided to continue to show, obviously, this is why I'm sitting here talking to a mic.
00:40:24
Speaker
um and that We continue to you know kind of have kind of continue to do that even as my um me my magic journey has sort of petered down a little bit. I don't play nearly as much as I as i used to and obviously with 2020 kind of stopped going to events entirely for a long time. and kind of been a little slow about getting back into going to events, but the the podcast has also become a large part of how i how I interact with this community now, the podcast also, and and our Discord.
Mental Health Advocacy
00:40:55
Speaker
We have a goblin mode Discord that, by the way, is open, invites to anyone who wants to join.
00:41:01
Speaker
Those have become really important outlets to me, or connections for me to to magic, even as sort of my my balance of hobbies has shifted away from magic toward other things. This happens to me through through life. This has kind of kept me connected. Taya joined the show, which has been hugely helpful and and awesome. We've had so many great guests and things, and this has allowed us to Have conversations and has led me to meet lots of lots of folks both at events and real life and through bringing folks on the show and occasionally myself going on on other other places to talk to folks. um But also one of the things that that has sort of led me through with my mental health journey is kind of realizing that
00:41:45
Speaker
Through the show, we we talk a lot about mental health. Mental health advocacy is a really important thing to all of us. All all three of us current hosts, for you know Joe who's also on the show at but some point, mental health advocacy was important for all of us. And that's been a continuing thread. And I kind of realized that that was a thing that I could take out of the show as well. That was a thing I could do outside of sitting in front of this microphone and talking to y'all.
00:42:13
Speaker
And that is a thing I have done to some degree. it It's something I feel like I need to do more, but that's, there's things I need to work on with myself and I am never, I am always a pretty harsh critic of myself. As as we say a lot, brains can be awfully mean sometimes, but I have on a number of occasions um advocated, talked but openly about mental health. this And this is a big thing for us too is not just, I'm not,
00:42:42
Speaker
all professional or anything, but just having these conversations is important. There's a lot of stigma about having these conversations, and that stigma kind of self-reinforces an environment where folks don't understand these struggles that they're having and they never get better, then they are they will generally just get worse. If they're not understanding this, if they're not having these conversations and things, then that's the thing I can say for myself. Ultimately, I believe if this had been our society as a whole you know might have been um having conversations like this more. If there was more of an awareness in my life, at least, I believe I would have
00:43:23
Speaker
been diagnosed earlier, I don't believe it would have taken an anxiety attack sending me to urgent care. i've And this is why i like to I want to have these conversations. And so even outside of being a pra you know professional in this, just being a person who has benefited from um these conversations, I feel that it is important for myself to be open about these things. I talk about this at work ah a lot. that's That's one place where I have done this some advocacy and and advocacy might even be a strong term I think there's a little bit but even just talking about this I have spoken and I'm just there there are environments where this itself can can be a risk but at my work I'm fortunate enough to to work somewhere and have
00:44:10
Speaker
all of the the managers that I've had, um I feel very safe having these open conversations with them, which is part of why I do it, to to make sure that this is there's this awareness there. um I have then also spoken about this to my whole, we have we have whole departments, so 30, 40 people.
00:44:29
Speaker
um meetings and whiteboards where we do these like talk about you things and especially during during the lockdowns when we weren't seeing any spent two or three years without seeing some of us in person did a lot of those types of things to try to keep the sort of the community and the camaraderie together in our group and I very openly taught, whenever I was talking about myself, I talked about this podcast and and our a mental health advocacy and my own struggles with social anxiety and how important it is to have these conversations. In addition to that, um I have given that feedback to my work. They do a big annual survey and I've given that feedback that it's not just that that my work has a lot has a very good
00:45:14
Speaker
vacation policies and work-life balance policies, and those can be very helpful for folks who have mental health struggles, but it's not the same or not, in I want to say it's not enough, but it is not as beneficial as doing that and having these conversations. And and I explained that it's so important to have these conversations because of that stigma.
00:45:38
Speaker
And having so just having the conversations pushes back against that. It tells the people in this space that it is safe to have these conversations. It is safe to talk about this stuff. It is safe to think about, is this me? Is this something that I might want to talk to a professional to to maybe um to work through?
Reflecting on Life's Inflection Points
00:45:57
Speaker
And it also tells people that it is safe to be open about these things for myself, someone who has gone through some of that journey. I can be open about this with my manager and tell them I need a mental health day. i'm not I don't have to come up with some random BS about why I need this day off. If I just say I need a mental health day, my manager says, go for it. Cool. Take the day off. um Honestly, I don't even need to say that. but they are at that level of support and having those conversations is super helpful both for signaling and for helping people to realize kind of what's going on and so
00:46:35
Speaker
I've been going on a lot longer than I thought I would actually. Let me try to wrap this up. I want to say that I know when Hobbs was talking, he kind of he wrapped up his episode talking about kind of that moment um where it was his sparking moment. And I think by the end of his Sort of talking through his his journey. um He talked about that there were kind of a couple moments. There was a few different moments where he's like, we could kind of call this my spark. You could kind of call this my spark. And I think he he sort of got to the same point that I want to talk about to where.
00:47:11
Speaker
um In a lot of ways, there's a lot of inflection points. I've got to be making a list as I talk about this. I've got seven or eight, of course, my anxiety attack where I first ah went to urgent care and then ultimately that kind of got me on my my mental health track, which is what helped lead me back to magic, which is what helped lead me in content creation. um Me taking the chance to go to this first event, me taking the chance to to just put my hand up and say, hey, I'd like to to write some magic articles going to this next event and meeting everybody who who I wrote with.
00:47:43
Speaker
talking to Joe, meeting Joe, having Joe start the show. like There's lots of different inflection points for me where I can say that this is where I spark. But, because life is, I love fiction and I will talk about story structure because I love stories. And I think stories are very important to, just us as people, just as humans. Stories are are so important to how we see ourselves and both individually and societally. um But,
00:48:13
Speaker
Stories only have so much bandwidth. um It is hard, unless the story is about a journey, it is hard to show, or difficult I should say, it it it is difficult to show what that journey actually looks like in the real world for for people most of the time.
00:48:32
Speaker
I think as ah as an aside to the recent anime topics Tae and I have been covering, this is one of the reasons I love the show Freeride Beyond Journey's Ed, because in that show and the very first episode there is that quote-unquote spark moment, that inflection point where the character decides I want to live my life differently than I have been, I want to make this change, but then she spends the rest of the show working on it.
00:48:58
Speaker
And there are times where she fails to to do what she was trying to do. And then there are times where she she succeeds. And that's kind of life works. um There's points where we hit, you know, where we don't live up to what we're trying to do. There's times where we, you know, backslide into, depending on what it is we're trying to do, we're backsliding into old behavior, or old habits. I know certainly I do that a lot after nearly three decades.
00:49:28
Speaker
maybe not living the whole time with social anxiety, but living with undiagnosed social anxiety as long as I did, there are probably physical ways that my brain shaped around. my anxiety and I find them years and years later, sometimes even without anxiety responses tied to them. But I find, ah, ticks in my behavior that I realized were based on me trying to avoid anxiety. And this is how my brain has decided these situations need to be navigated. And I have to rework through some of that. And it's easy to fall into some of these things and often without realizing. it
00:50:06
Speaker
But each of these, and and then there are also these very specific action moments where we decide to make this choice, where we decide to follow this path. um and And like I said for myself, you know, there was the moment right aside it too.
00:50:22
Speaker
ah see a therapist make that appointment. There was the time where I decided to to start writing magic articles, the time I decided to start a podcast and and commit to that. And any of those could be my sparking moment that has kind of led me to to where I am now. But the the truth is that they all are.
Conclusion: Self-care and Community
00:50:41
Speaker
They all are part of this journey. And well, in in magic, we will often have that spark.
00:50:46
Speaker
um is it even the way that that they tell stories now folk characters growth happens over time at these inflection points and so I think to to kind of leave with this it is it's fun it honestly it it is fun and and it can be a good exercise to think about that moment where you you made this change that moment where you see if I can find this quote sorry I'm doing this loud I didn't prepare this piece um where you
00:51:15
Speaker
Hobbes, he talks about a spark as something that causes you to change directions or commit, and I love that sort of thought. a Something in life that causes you to change directions or to commit to the direction you're in, and those that's where, at least for me, i'm I'm using the term inflection point because that's kind of that that same sort of thing. if There's going to be moments where you decide to follow up this path, or that this moments where you decide to commit to the path that you are already following, that you were thinking about, but now this is the point where you commit to it.
00:51:49
Speaker
and those are Those can be important, but sometimes they're small and sometimes they're things you don't realize, like going back and playing magic for the first time after um getting therapy. I never would have thought of that as an inflection point. I never would have thought about that as a moment I sparked, but that was a moment that led me to this. That is a moment that got me back into magic. That is a moment that then got me eventually into magic content creation and brought me to the chair that I'm sitting in right now.
00:52:20
Speaker
And I don't know. I don't think I have a big ah big revelation at the end, but just ah a thing to be cognizant of, a thing to be aware of, um at least for me, I think that's what have been one of my biggest um discoveries through through my journey, particularly through my mental health journey, is that it's not so much necessary to have big revelations all the time, but the the important thing for me has just been to try to be aware of things. There's so much that we do and even think that it's just automatic sometimes. so But to just try to be aware of yourself as much as you can and try to make these choices as consciously as you can. Because at the very least, if you aren't aware, it's hard
00:53:06
Speaker
to make that choice. You're not really making that anymore. But if you can try to be aware of these things as they're as they're happening, or be introspective to retrospective, perhaps, to think to think about things that can help you make choices going forward.
00:53:21
Speaker
um And I guess I'll just leave with another note that self-care is very important. We talk about it a lot. I meant to talk about it at the beginning. um Hobbs recently has taken a break from the podcast for a while. He you recorded an episode last week, which is great.
00:53:40
Speaker
um But then there's stuff going on and so he he decided to take a break this week as well Okay has also got some things going on and so I just I want to use that kind of as a nice reminder for me to remind all of y'all to also help remind me because sometimes I need the reminders I'm giving everybody but it's just self-care is really important right now. um It's a really hard time It's been a very hard time particularly recently and just um You know, you you are important. I guess maybe I'll share one one random thought, you know, the the the old thing that lives rent-free in your head, and this is one that I definitely don't mind living rent-free in my head, but some number of years ago.
00:54:18
Speaker
um I saw on Twitter, and I only regret that I i have no idea who who said this, so I can't attribute it to them. But they they said, i whoever you are out there who's reading this, or in this case, whoever's listening to this, just know that I love you. And you may think it odd that a person who doesn't know you can love you.
00:54:40
Speaker
But there are people who don't know there are people who hate others that they don't know. And so if they can do that, I can love people I don't know. And that that thought has been with me for a long time, and I want to leave that with all of y'all.