Lessening the Anxiety

I have to say, things have been a lot better in the Botch Building since we got some proper management techniques for…everything.

By the way, it’s not really an entirely Over-Botch apartment block, although the professional players do take up a good chunk of the middle with apartments. It’s close to the Over-Botch stadium, so it works. But I feel like lately we’d been bringing down the vibe of the whole place, what with all the intense pressure we were under. The league is new, and there just isn’t the infrastructure to deal with every little, tiny detail, so a few players getting really down flew under the radar.

Stress management…not something you get taught in school, which seems very silly in retrospect, seeing as it’s something that everyone deals with. Some offices are just boiling hot-pots with people waiting to throw things. It’s why stress management courses exist.

But we weren’t getting any of it. There was that one day when we had two extra matches, one of them was the boat repair match that went on forever, and I was wrecked just watching it. Nerves are frayed, and you just start thinking things. Bad things, and pretty stressful things as well. With no way to cope, people like us tend to bury ourselves in the game and not tackle issues.

It’s just a healthier atmosphere now, though. Pretty amazing what a bit of stress management training can do. Just yesterday there was a set of games that might have been a trigger in the past: Saw_Master vs QueenOak, in a carpentry duel that went right down to the wire. But now we know not to bottle all that stuff up, thanks to stress management lessons. You don’t come home and brood on letting down your fans: you speak out, don’t give things a chance to fester.

I mean it’s not perfect, but it’s so very much better.

-Ratchet