Katie took part in the West Virginia Dance Dance Revolution Championship this weekend. WSAZ ran a brief piece about it on Saturday night, as did WVAH — and there was an article about the contest in the Gazette-Mail this morning. This is the regional level of the championship, and Katie ended up taking second place in her grade division while her friend Audrey took third. They both went home with trophies. Up next... the state level being held June 17, and a shot at a $2500 scholarship. Awesome!
For those of you who've never played DDR before (and this includes me, but I've
seen it enough times to be a virtual expert), you have a big mat in the floor
divided into nine sections. The north, east, south, and west sections are arrows
pointing in those directions — the others are game controls. On the screen,
you have arrows moving toward the top to the beat of a song playing. When the
arrows reach the top, you step on the mat in the direction indicated. Sometimes
they come simultaneously, and the speed varies with the beat of the song.
Basically the goal is to keep moving to what you see on the screen and try to hit
the correct arrow(s) as many times as possible. You score points for getting
certain difficult combinations correct, for getting so many moves in a row without
missing, and so on. It's been introduced into the schools and it's a pretty
innovative way to get kids active and moving.
An interesting thing I noticed about this competition was how the last round was administered. Based on how DDR works, some songs give better scoring opportunities than others. For all the rounds except the last one, the songs were predetermined by the event coordinators. In the last round, though, the competitors could choose their own songs. This seemed odd to me and I felt it could skew the results a little, but I didn't say anything.
Katie picked a song with a slightly less frenetic pace than the one her rivals chose. After it was over, I asked Katie why she picked the song she did, pointing out that she could have picked one which was faster and squeezed a few more points out of her effort. She said, "I don't really care about that. I'm having so much fun!" And upon winning second place, she said, "I can't believe I got second. I think Audrey is way better than me." And she went over to congratulate the winner, who was — shall we say — less than receptive to the nicety. But at least she tried.
It was a proud moment for me — she did well, and she was gracious toward the winner and toward Audrey. From her perspective, she had a very successful finish with second place and she was satisfied with how she did. I wouldn't dare take that away from her by pushing her to try harder.
On Friday evening before the DDR contest, Martha and I met and had dinner with Becky Robinson (who was in town for business) and John Sellards. Becky was very much herself and I'm glad for that. I feel like she was more herself than at our last meetup, or at least, she was more the self I remember her being back when we used to run around together.
She was fretting about certain aspects of her career as a freelancer, and she expressed some doubts about whether or not she was being successful at it. We've had similar discussions in the distant past (before either of us dreamed there were things called careers), so since this was old ground for me, I was mostly listening. John was mostly offering his perspective, as he has certain insights into her career I never could. Things seemed to come to a head when I said these two words: "Define success." John stopped and just looked at her, as did I. I asked if she was happy with what she was doing and how it was going — she said she was. I then asked if the money she received for her services increased proportionally with her responsibilities — she said it did (to which John agreed vehemently).
Despite it sounding simplistic, I told her that was probably enough. It is, in fact, far better than many people get out of their careers.
At my last job, one of the questions asked of me at the interview was to define success. At the time, I thought and stalled a bit, and finally said it was wanting what you have. There is a lot of truth to that. But I've since changed my mind. I think ultimately it comes down to something much much simpler. Success — to me — is whatever I decide to call it. And for you, it should be whatever you decide to call it. That has such an Occam's razor feel to it that I believe it's the correct answer.
Submitting to others' definitions of success is a recipe for struggle, dissatisfaction, and never really attaining it. Only you can decide when you're there, and what you're willing to give up to get there. Letting someone else define those things for you means you've basically given them control of your success — and at that point, it's no longer your success.
Sometimes — and for some people — second place is just fine.