Happy to!
Okay, so here's the thing, and I will try not to make this tooo long. But this is something that I think affects anybody who runs a character for a very long time, at least on some level because of sunk cost fallacy. There is nothing in the WORLD that stings worse than putting everything you have into a huge match, pouring heart, soul, losing sleep, and even if people applaud you, being the guy eating that pinfall on the main event of a pay-per-view.
Especially when you have real world obligations, even more so if you put aside something ("I missed my brother's birthday party to get this roleplay done") in real life that was important to you.
Because the thing I notice is that people tend to save things (and this is a good practice) for the big matches. Imagine for example that you've been saving a moment where your character's father is in a car accident, and on their deathbed, as your character is holding their dying parent's hand, the father slowly croaks out his last breath "I believe in you". Powerful stuff, but also something that you have been building up to for a long time, something you've been saving, something that you've been wanting to use as a payoff. You get done with that Roleplay and you look at yourself in the mirror and you know, you KNOW that you nailed it.
...And then you lose.
It's not just that you lost the match, it's not just that you know you could have done better, it's that feeling you get when you had a good idea, you put in the legwork, you lost the sleep, and you still couldn't break through that ceiling, you couldn't win your first world title, you just went up against that guy that always had your number (for me it was Dune lol).
To me, those are the moments of self-doubt when you just feel like you can't go on. NOT because you lost this match, although that's part of it, but because you lost THE match when you know, you KNOW you were at your best.
That is the mindset I tell people to watch out for. I can own up to the fact that around early 2018 I was very very burned out, and it finding motivation was harder and harder because it felt like there was nowhere to take the Teo character. At that point I'd been playing him since 2015 essentially non-stop. It felt like I had hit his ceiling and I was just spinning my wheels from that point forward.
But here's the thing, and if I could tell anyone who is feeling these exact same things just one piece of advice, this is what I would say, because this is what I learned from going to that bad place and staying there for way too long.
You don't know what your ceiling is.
You think you do, you think that you know what the best roleplay you've ever written is, and you will never top it. Hell, I have two roleplays that I STILL honestly believe are some of the best work I've ever done creatively, and I would be willing to bet that most people don't even remember them (since they're years old at this point).
But to mix a metaphor, a flower can't grow at the top of a mountain. I think we have this imaginary idea of progress, that if I just keep grinding away, just keep telling my story, then I'll be a "main event" writer, then I'll be the one to finally grab the world title. I can say without a doubt that I am blessed that I had the opportunity to win a World Championship before the doors closed. But I will also say that just one year prior, I would have told you point blank to your face that it was impossible to do that with Teo.
Because you don't know what you're capable of. You can't know what you're capable of, because you haven't sat down yet.
No matter what you think, no matter how good your last roleplay was, you CAN do better. You can evolve, you can grow, you can be that person you want to be.
But you gotta be a little zen about it sometimes. If you continue to put in that hard work, if you truly do your best to improve each week, you WILL get what you want.
...just not necessarily the way you thought you would get it.
I thought I would beat John Rabid at WAR and win the world title, but he got me clean.
I thought I would beat Dune at XIII for the world title, but he got me too.
I knew I wanted to win the world title, but I was getting too greedy in HOW I wanted to win it. If you had told me after either of those matches that "Hey, not only will you be World Champion, you're going to be the last f*cking champion of all time" I would have said "Stop trying to make me feel better. THIS IS THE BEST I'LL EVER BE" before going and staring at a wall.
Then one day I just said to myself "I need to stop worrying about things working out the way I want. I need to just be in the moment. Focus on winning every match and switching up Teo a little bit. Maybe the problem isn't my writing skills, maybe I'm drilling a dry well. I need to stop trying to put the mask back on and work with what I have". Always be moving forward, always be looking to evolve.
Kind of got a little ramble-y here, but that is the advice I would give for anyone feeling that. You don't know how good you can be, but I promise it's better than you think.