Monday Morning

[ninja_coder]

 
Tomo and I have both been inventing new Jōgesen kata (and refinements to the sansetsukon itself), and of course, we have now come up with incompatible moves. I got to the castle this morning and found a message from Tomo to all the warriors, saying he had devised some upgrades to our sansetsukon. (Now the chain links move a bit more smoothly, which is good.) I took a new one from the armory, and promptly discovered that it makes hash of the latest moves I'd been developing on Friday.

*sigh* This is one of the perils of having more than one warrior using the same armory. (Of course, the drawbacks of having only one warrior are far, far worse.) Still, I must now spend part of my morning adjusting my new kata.

And I do not know what to do about Jīya, the new Nichiren abbess. I can tell that she is simply trying to motivate the warriors, and lift our spirits...

But.

It is rarely necessary to tell a good warrior when he has been doing a good job. We know already. Perhaps priests and monks need such constant encouragement, but as a warrior, I know that if my enemies are dying and I am surviving, I am doing well. By telling me that I am doing well, Jīya merely makes me wonder if she thought I had any doubt about it.

Perhaps this annoys me so much because, deep in my heart, I almost always do have doubt. Couldn't I be killing them faster, or more silently? Am I retaining enough awareness of the clan's larger plans? Could I be using better tactics and strategy if I had studied with a respected warriors' school? Am I still "the junior one" on our team? These are all the distractions of maya, but they still plague me.

I wish she would simply leave me in peace, and let me go kill enemies. I have seen her telling Jimon similar things, and he seemed no more comfortable than I.

Comments

[colubra.livejournal.com]

Saw this and thought of you (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/6/4/).

[ivy]

I actually respond pretty well to a well-timed "atta girl". The thing that makes it valuable is when it's in response to something difficult that I actually did. It's nice to know that someone noticed and appreciates it. Being praised for just anything negates the value of praise, or being praised inappropriately. ("Way to open that file!" "Uh. Thanks?") But if I feel that no one ever notices or appreciates how hard I'm working, I will become discouraged and like my job less.

[y2kdragon.livejournal.com]

I think "well-timed" is the key word here. I got one yesterday (compliment, that is). It was a bit surprising, but my tech lead / manager made note of how much I was working on recently and that I was doing a good job staying up on it all. A little while later, someone else was commenting about "all the extra work" that was going to be dumped on me, and the same manager said how hard I was working and that he, who missed a meeting he should have attended, needed to focus on his own work. It did make me a little uncomfortable, but only because I'm horrible about accepting praise for my work. It's my job, it's what I do. But it is nice to be noticed once in a while.