#PastebinMonday 09/18/2023 When Interactions are Transactions Edition

'Sup, doods!

In the end, it was all for 3rd place, not bad for someone having to produce the tournament broadcast at the same time. The play is about to get very real from here on out. I anticipate the possibility of having to play and manage the broadcast at the same time once again. I wonder how much of a problem that will end up being when the difficulty ramps up.

I have been efforting in recent years to make things easier on myself, but one thing I should have made a greater effort with is getting other people to help me.

… That is an incredibly transactional statement. And that might be an overly irrational reaction.

When it comes to dealing with people, I've spent as long as I can remember trying to avoid people as much as I can. It may have started as shyness. It has evolved into a disinterest in dealing with more people than required to function as well as in making friends. I am broken in that regard. I have approached every interaction in my adult life as a transaction. In an effort to be considerate, I have also tried to not obligate people involved with my life and interests as much as I can. Naturally, this has led to me wanting to accomplish things with my own effort. This has led to me believing that anything that I can do by myself is best done by myself and not by relying on others.

This is starting to wear on me. The act of dealing with people physically wears me out. The act of trying to accomplish things on my own mentally wears me out. I am now in a place that requires me to get away from things in order to set myself right. There are a few weeks left to the tournament that requires my effort to push through. After that, I will need time to myself to figure out how to get to where I want to be.

It's one thing to JUST DO IT *insert Shia LaBeouf here*, but there are still parts of what “IT” is meant to be in terms of the general flow of the life I want to live that I don't know what they are yet. Streaming is still a big part of it. Playing games is still a big part of it. Striving for self-improvement is still a big part of it. Growing an online presence is still a pipe dream goal. The balance befuddles me and I HATE not being able to figure out something. That might wear on me most of all in life.

I'm approaching the point in my life where I need help getting to the place I want to be. For my own sake, I need to not treat the seeking of help as a transaction.

Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals:

Goal #4: edit my personal best runs. My own projects are really low priority compared to the tournament. Fortunately, there isn't much administrative work to do for the tournament.
Goal #5: script and record footage for my Puzzle League tutorial series. I have some scripts left to touch up before feeling comfortable with moving on to recording gameplay. Then I will need to record my talking points and edit it all together. This will need to be saved for after the tournament.
Goal #6: clean up my own stream layout. I am brainstorming how I want the final theming to be. I probably want to give people multiple options, maybe allow spending bits to change the look. I don't have anything written down yet. I don't expect to get to this anytime soon.
Goal #7: maybe make a universal LPS broadcast layout. I have a base, but perhaps I should stylize one for the LPS brand. Let's just say I have plans. Hopefully I wouldn't over-homogenize it like SpeedGaming did.
Goal #8: release the Puzzle League tutorial series YouTube shorts once a day until they're all done. I really do think I need to time the release of the series with a ramping up of my streaming schedule so that I can take advantage of whatever there is to gain from releasing the shorts.

This week's schedule:

(All broadcasts begin at 7pm CT unless otherwise stated)

Friday – Friday Night Salt Mines (community speedrun races) – First Round of !ppl2023 Bracket Tomorrow, Doods!


That’s my life story for the week. Later, doods!

--Cards