March 4, 2021
denouement – noun : the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved
Unsurprisingly, my last article discussing my struggles with anxiety (as it pertains to Magic) has been significantly delayed due to (wait for it)…anxiety. The last few weeks have largely revolved around moving my father to a smaller home just five minutes from me. The move was…difficult, and depressing. My father is struggling to get unpacked and acclimated. Mentally he’s deteriorating faster than I expected, which lead to him insisting on bringing far too much stuff to his new place. The house looks more like a hoarder’s den than a downsized home for a senior citizen approaching the end of independent living.
I had the bulk of this post written the day after I posted the previous one, but getting it online and edited just…didn’t happen. It wasn’t in me. It’s not really in me now, but I want to get this posted and move on to lighter topics. My apologies to anyone who might have been checking the blog for updates. I really (REALLY) hope to get back to near-weekly musings.
Though I presented holding onto a booster pack as a third option beyond opening it or selling it, in truth holding a booster is just a delayed version of one of the other two options. You either hold a booster to eventually open it or to eventually sell it. I think almost everyone holding onto a sealed product has earmarked it for a specific purpose.
Not me.
I hold product because I can’t bring myself to do anything with it. Too scared to open it, too scared to sell it…convinced that whatever option I choose I’ll regret. And so the dust builds up and my indecision begets anxiety.
About a month ago I spent an entire Saturday morning and early afternoon in nervous (but delighted) anticipation. UPS was going to be bringing me two packages filled with pre-ordered Kaldheim products. I was genuinely looking forward to their arrival.
When they came, I opened the packages and spread the haul across my desk to take it all in. A set booster box, a collector booster box, a bundle, the KHM Commander decks, even a couple loose collector boosters that I’d bought before fatherly generosity made the purchase of a full collector box attainable. I was excited! New set, new products, and a determination to open some packs and see what I got. I’d been enjoying the set on Arena and was looking forward to seeing what paper packs begot.
By Sunday evening, as I went to bed, my stomach was sour and I was maudlin. I’d been unable to bring myself to open any of that Kaldheim product, and had instead already found places to stack it amongst all my other sealed products I have no intention of opening anytime soon.
A month later I still haven’t touched what I preordered. I didn’t buy it to make money from it, but alarming reports of horrendous EV (expected value) for the set makes cracking packs…less desirable. And whispers of the strong likelihood of a glut of dirt cheap collector boxes on the horizon make the notion of selling any of this stuff, even 10 years into the future, appear laughable. As cool as much of the set looks, it appears many have already written it off as a veritable Dragon’s Maze – a virtually worthless set doomed to failure and likely to be available for a pittance for years to come.
Other people’s opinions shouldn’t, of course, have any outsized influence on me. A set’s value extends far beyond the financial red and black. If the set has fun/interesting/beautiful cards, why not just ignore the naysayers? Why not just open some packs and enjoy the experience?
And there’s the rub: how would I enjoy any of the packs I open? My kid talked like he was interested in trying out cards from the set and building some new decks, but weeks have flitted by and he’s made no effort to do that (despite periodic prodding from me.) FOMO did get the best of me prerelease weekend, and $60 for two KHM prerelease kits netted me 3 actual games and about an hour of the kid’s time at the kitchen table.
Why open any more boosters when I can actually play with KHM cards on Arena?
And so, Kaldheim joins the Ranks of the Unopened. Excitement for the new set spirals into cynicism about the uselessness of all those packs I bought. A deeply buried seed of hope cannot best my anxiety.
So I’ll hold onto my KHM packs, just as I hold onto those 28 original Innistrad boosters. Not because I want to hold them – not because I have any semblance of a plan or purpose for them – but because my other options feel like colossal mistakes waiting to haunt me.
Doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing.
With each passing day, though, the indecision of doing nothing with all these packs bothers me more and more. I argue with myself:
“The money is already spent. Open them.”
“There’s nothing of value in your packs, or the set. Hold the sealed boxes to sell someday.”
“As sealed boxes from a set with a giant print run, they’ll never be worth all that much. Open them.”
“Even the worst sets with the lowest EV will someday be hard to find as sealed product. Hold them to sell.”
“You love the showcase cards and will love adding them to your collection. Open them.”
“Collector boosters have guaranteed you’ll never pay much to buy the showcase cards you want. Hold the boxes to sell someday, and buy singles.”
“The set has lots of cool cards for Commander. You might finally be inspired to start building Commander decks. Open them.”
“Every pack you open will be one less you have in the future, when you might have a playgroup that would enjoy using them. Hold them to sell.”
It’s absurd. I know it’s absurd. I’ve created Schrödinger’s packs – held in some bizarre limbo between opened and sold. The realization that I can’t even decide what I’m holding them for gnaws at my mind.
Returning to the Innistrad packs that inspired these last three posts, the only surety I feel about them is that anything I do with them will be a mistake. If I open them, the cards they contain will be all but worthless and the packs forever lost. If I sell them, the value of individual Innistrad packs will assuredly rocket well past what I got for them at the time of sale, and the money I did get for them will be spent on groceries or the electric bill – or more packs I’ll be unable to open. If I hold them, there will come a day when I realize I should have done something with them years earlier, if only to be rid of them and what they represent.
Anxiety manifests differently for everyone who fights it, but I believe most people with it feel trapped. They’re faced with choices that seem impossible, or all feel doomed to be wrong. They’re unable to see a way out of their predicament. They’re lost, and the map that should lead them home instead points them to a dragon’s lair.
If Magic was the only facet of my life that anxiety influenced, it would be easy to dismiss all of this is a ridiculous first-world problem. “Oh, that poor man who can’t decide what to do with the luxury goods he purposely spent his own money acquiring.”
How I face Magic is just a microcosm of how anxiety weighs on my daily life. I take medication that lessens the brunt of that anxiety, but also deadens the joy I might otherwise find in life. Some days that feels like a deal with the devil; others – a saving grace.
These last three posts, as flippant as they may appear, are an attempt to battle my anxiety by looking at one facet of how it controls me. I’m fully aware that these posts may have come across as the absurd whining of a privileged manchild that can’t figure out how to play with his toys. And if that’s how you’ve read them – so be it.
In the end, my intention’s with this mini-series have been entirely selfish. If you’ve read along, though, I appreciate it. If you don’t suffer from anxiety, I hope what I’ve written gives you a small glimpse of what it can be like. I hope you understand that as idiotic as it may sound to not be able to decide what to do with a pack of Magic cards, that small struggle is emblematic of much deeper issues that can warp daily life.
If you are battling some form of anxiety yourself, I hope you may see a little of your own conflict in my words and understand. Feel free to reach out (casualmagicking@gmail.com) and say hi. I’d welcome the connection.
Next time: it’s a milestone: post #50! I’ll take a whimsical (and, I promise, a much less dreary) look at my Magical journey to rediscover the joy of the game. Despite what the last few posts may imply, there’s much to celebrate.
Casual Magicking 