On Tilt: My Story

For the next couple posts, I want to explore the concept of tilt. Last time, I discussed the origin of the term tilt and how it moved from pinball to Poker to Magic the Gathering. Today, I want to explore some of my own experiences with tilt.

This series of tweets from a couple of years ago encapsulates my experience of tilt fairly well:

To say that I was frustrated was putting it mildly. It seemed every time I sat down to play Magic I left feeling angry, frustrated, out-of-control, and hopeless that I could ever get back to playing well, writing articles, and videocasting. In fact, I actually got so tilted after a poor match that I literally quit hosting in the middle of a tournament. Granted, I came to my senses minutes later and logged back in and apologized. But that's how bad things had gotten.

I wish I could say that I learned something from that experience and all was well from that point forward. But sadly that wasn't the case. In fact, just this year, I ended up taking a 40 day hiatus from Magic, realizing that my frustration had built up to the point where time away was the only solution.

But here's the thing: every time that I reach that level of frustration, I realize that I don't want to just give up and walk away. Not only would I be walking away from what has become my favorite hobby, but I would also be losing a wonderful creative outlet and letting down the community that has developed around the Standard Pauper format.

So what should I do? What's the solution? As with most things, the key is changing my pattern of thinking. What I need is to readjust my thoughts to a different perspective. Next time, I want to talk about what that perspective is.