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Successfully Failing

Ahoy! Today I'd like to talk to you about my recent experience with a challenging video game. It does come back to music though, I promise, so hear me out.

I set a pretty high goal for myself this year. I'm going to finish all three Dark Souls video games. For many of you this may seem like an odd goal but I'm a gamer and I've long heard about how difficult this game is and have never played through them. I'd seen a couple reviews lately for the remastered release of the original game and decided it was finally time. I got a copy and began to play.

This game is punishingly difficult. For anyone who doesn't know, the ad campaign ran the slogan "Prepare to Die" and within just a few minutes of starting the game I was already dead. Several times over in fact. The game gives you no directions, no hints, no clues, no sense of how the mechanics work except for a very minimal tutorial. All this to say that the game lived up to its reputation as being difficult.

During my first play through I ended up somewhere extremely challenging and for several reasons realized I wasn't going to make it very far and decided to start fresh. It took another failed attempt and on my third time starting the game finally begin making real progress. Today I finally finished the slow trudge through the game and beat the final boss. The journey was a grind, often not fun, but in the end very rewarding.

So, now the question is, "How does this relate to music, or life?" For me it's simple. For a long time I've struggled pushing through big barriers and learning demanding pieces, especially through transcription. Not that I haven't completed many musical endeavors but I've seldom enjoyed the amount of work involved. The process has always felt like an unending grind with little motivation.

Dark Souls has helped me see the artistry in the grind. Successfully failing in Dark Souls means that your deaths aren't meaningless. Every time you die you learn more about the world and the enemies and thus can adapt your strategies and plot your course more accurately. The grind is always made worth it when those big bright yellow letters "Victory Achieved" flash across the screen. You don't get the same overly apparent sign in real life but a successful gig, recording session, or nailing that transcription is always worth it. Obviously in life it's not deaths that mark our progress but failed attempts. Successes are more meaningful when you go through the grind and can say "A month ago I couldn't do "that" but now I can." We shouldn't be actively trying to fail but if you aren't encountering any obstacles ask yourself, what are you really doing? Perseverance is the key to successfully failing and it's reward is deep.

Until next time,
Heard

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