Your Real-Life Character Sheet – What’s Your Level?
It’s funny to think how much time we nerds spend on character sheets for imaginary RPG characters, online or offline, but don’t really think that much about our own “character sheet.” But really, the most important character sheet in your life should be your own, not some imaginary one that you’ve put way too much of your free time into. So here’s a fun exercise to do one night when you’re feeling adventurous but in a self-improvement mood — take inventory of yourself, and start it off with your skills.
Taking your Skill Inventory
In my previous post about real-life RPG, I noted that by default, we learn a lot of skills as part of growing up in a society. We have a core curriculum we learn in school that levels us up in things like Math, Literacy, Problem-Solving, History, and even Physical Education, like sports. But more importantly, there are a host of other skills we learn outside of school that allow us to do other things in life. Some of them are serious, like self-defense or driving — some are more fun-oriented, like table tennis or console-game playing. Believe me, there are people out there who are level 40 at playing GTA or Counterstrike.
So what other skills are there? There are skills like Archery — Real life archery, I mean. Why not go out and try to learn it yourself? There are skills like trainspotting or plane recognition, Engineering, coding, programming, database administration — these are skills that bring joy to our lives, or put food on our plates. Ever take Karate or Tae Kwon Do as a kid? Consider yourself to have a +2 bonus in combat. Think of the time you spent wrestling around when you were a kid, play-fighting — you were leveling up your combat skills.
And it’s not just physical skills, or academic ones — certain guys have skills in the arts of love and romance. A guy who can easily bed any girl he wants certainly has a certain skill, or can even pull off a “feat” of achieving something great. Know what really builds experience points? Getting laid! Every woman you are with, every relationship you make work — Heck, even the ones that don’t work out, the times you get rejected, you are leveling up, just more slowly than if you had won, sometimes. Every experience is a lesson, every experience in life gets you points, especially if you survive!
Leveling Up Your Skills
Here’s a real-world example — As a kid, like most boys, I wanted to learn how to shoot, but aside from some shooting at Boy Scout Camp (where I also learned archery), I didn’t grow up in an area that gave me a lot of shooting experience. If I had grown up in the South or on a farm in the Midwest, I probably would have had a lot more experience to firearms, but having grown up in cosmopolitan, anti-gun Los Angeles, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to them, and my family was not into firearm ownership at all.
At some point as an adult, I realized that I now had both the time and money to level up my shooting skills, something I had always wanted to do. I didn’t let excuses or fear get in my way – I did research on the web, shopped around, got educated, and learned to shoot. While it probably would have been smart to hire a teacher for this, I did it myself, and soon got pretty proficient with shooting .22′s and shoguns. Now, I didn’t do it all myself — I made friends (using the Charisma skill), made contacts, and got more social with folks that were doing what I did. And I made strategic purchases, and used my money effectively. Most importantly, I did what was the crucial step for increasing your level in a skill — PRACTICE!
I walked my talk, and increased my skills in something I was interested in. I could have sat on my ass and played first-person shooters the rest of my life, and not gotten to fire the real thing, but instead I took action, and as of today I have fired most of the kinds of guns that I used to pretend to shoot on games like MW2 or Counterstrike, including several .50 cals. I’m a happier person for it, and now I know my way around a gun. Was it hard? Sure. Did it take time? Sure! But does anything you want to level up in take time? Yes, even WoW or Everquest.
So take my advice, and think about what skills you have now, what skills you want to have, and what you are willing to do to make it happen. What kind of life do you want to live, for real? I think between this and some major life events, including my marriage, turbulence in my relationship, things I got done on my “bucket list,” and the birth of my child, I’m another couple of notches up on my character’s level. I got tons of experience points in the past 5 years — what have you done, and what are you willing to do about it?