Light my Fire

No, not doing another nekkid belf page. Yet. /wink

No, sorry Dark/Soth, not posting about the 3.3.3 changes to the fire tree.

(And total tangent, but we “downed” Dreamwalker last night and are 10/12 in ICC 10!)

I’m talking about fire starters.

No, not Stephen King characters.

The people that light a fire under your ass to get something done.

Love them or hate them, you encounter these people all the time.

These are the people that somehow inspire you to think critically about yourself and possibly change what it is that you are doing.

Without people like this, ours would be a very commonplace world where people were content to be mediocre and “just good enough.”

The problem is that these people are often seen as aggressive, abrasive, rude, etc. when in reality, they’re just telling it like it is. Their biggest fault is one of being honest. They don’t sugar coat things and having failures pointed out without that candy layer can be a tough pill to swallow. Tact may not be their strong suit, but they are genuinely interested in helping. And to be honest, sometimes tactful suggestions get ignored. Sometimes a bucket of cold water being thrown in the face is what’s needed to shake things up.

I am blessed in my WoW life to have 2 fire starters.

My relationships with them tend to run in the following pattern:

FS: Hey, you’re fucking up. Why don’t you try this instead?

Me: ZOMG I HATE YOU AND I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE YOU ELITIST DOODOOHEAD!!!11!!!1

FS: You’re being illogical.

Me: I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA LA LA

FS: OK, I’m here if you need me.

Me: FS has a point. I could be doing better. GRUMBLE. Maybe I could look into what they said. BITCH. MOAN. Hmmm… maybe they’re on to something. WHINE. CRY. COMPLAIN. Research. Think. Examine. SIGH.

Any time either of these two challenge what I’m doing, I blow a fuse. Often several of them.

After I calm down and realize that it’s not them I’m angry at, it’s myself, I can make progress.

Do I always agree with what they say?

Hell no.

Do I always end up doing what they say?

Hell no. (Yes, sometimes I’m spiteful and won’t do something just because I’m told to. ANARCHY!)

But at least I can defend my position when I’m done with all my sniffling and sniveling.

How often are we in scenarios where we or people dear to us aren’t happy? Not really sure why we’re not happy, but we’re not happy and we can’t put our finger on it.

We know we don’t like the current state of affairs, but we don’t know how to fix it.

Often times, we don’t know how to fix it because we don’t know what we want.

Fire starters provide baptism by fire.

It hurts.

But it burns away the frivolous crap clouding our minds when we don’t know what we want.

Sometimes being forced to defend your position helps pin down the minutia of what it is you are looking for.

When you know what it is that you want, you can make that a goal. Goal in mind, you can create a plan. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t really complain about where you end up.

Back in November/December I had a fire lit under me regarding raiding.

I had been just following along, doing it the way we had always done it, trying to keep the guild together as an officer. I was miserable. I was stressed, I was angry. Raid nights would often find me bawling before and after the raid, barely pulling myself together to lead the kittens.

A fire starter told me it didn’t have to be that way.

It burned.

I blew up. I ranted. I raved. Mostly at the fire starter that instigated this.

I was comfortable in my misery and someone came along and told me I could be doing something else. How dare they!

Eventually I got tired of the ranting and arm waving and screaming and got to thinking.

If I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing, why was I doing it?

What did I have to lose by doing something different? There wasn’t a whole lot of room for things to go down, odds were it would be better.

I left a very painful post in the officer forums on the guild site.

I told them that I was tired and frustrated and needed to take a break.

I considered leaving the guild. I started looking at recruitment from other guilds, even on other servers.

The other officers sat up and took notice.

We started having real communication about what we wanted/needed from the guild and what we could each realistically provide in return.

Ultimately, we agreed that we wanted most of the same things and didn’t want most of the same things. The fuzzy areas were small enough that they could be compromised on, just like any good relationship

Then the bastards went and promoted me. =P

Without that fire being lit under me, I don’t know that I would still be raiding.

I probably would have just given up, thrown my hands in the air and whored myself out in trade chat to whatever pug raid would take me.

I certainly would not be where I am today.

I have an incredible guild.

Yes, the kittens still frustrate me to no end, but they are my kittens and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. (Although I would really appreciate it if they would quit standing in the bad.)

I have a fire starter to thank for this.

I have my fire starters to thank for making me constantly push to be better, for making me question if I’m doing “just good enough” or if I can do more.

I know that I’m not always immediately appreciative of the help that you give so I wanted to say thank you when I wasn’t currently pissed at either of you.

Thanks.

…

How many of you have your own fire starters?