#PastebinMonday 08/28/2023 Excuses Edition

'Sup, doods!

I am not getting any better at mental focus. I know that I want to prepare things for the tournament. I load up my OBS layout to make the updates that I want to make and... nothing. My brain does not want to do the boring things I've committed myself to do to get to the things I enjoy. At the moment, the primary distraction outside of YouTube videos is HoloCure. I should give Vampire Survivors a try. What do you mean it's free on mobile? I don't actually need that temptation right now.

I swear, I've read so many accounts of people with positive ADHD diagnoses having to engage in mental gymnastics to trick their brains into focusing on the task at hand. I feel the same struggle. I know that I need a doctor's assistance to manage this. I also know that I have no budget for a doctor considering that I just paid off my student loans.

...

Alright doods, be real with me. Scale of 1 to 10. How pathetic are my constant excuses sounding? My brain is constantly giving me reasons to NOT do things. I am hoping that writing these excuses down will confront me with them in a way that will ask myself “Am I really letting this stop me?” So far, I haven't tried to answer this question. I've tried to take inspiration from Ironmouse because, I mean, what HASN'T tried to stop her from doing her thing? However, I've let the day-to-day grind take me off my game. I am so glad that I am taking next week off from work. It should give me what I need to fix my headspace. Here's to hoping I can remove the desire to make excuses.

Before I go, I should give an update on what happened at the end of Friday's show. It was brought to my attention that a speedrun verified for one of the Puzzle League series games, Panel de Pon, was possibly not performed by a human, aka a “TAS.” The case was made and posted in the Speedrun.com leaderboard for review: https://www.speedrun.com/panel_de_pon/forums/blcav

I, for one, am not one to make unilateral decisions that affect others without an opportunity for input. I have been less active in series moderation than I should be. I did not verify the speedrun in question. Had I looked at this speedrun, I would have tried to ring all of the alarm bells. If you look at the run in the posted forum thread, you may get the same impression that I did that the run looked unnatural. I laid out my case for the typical behavior and play you would see in an Endless run that the questioned run did not show. It wasn't just the Max Score Hard level run that looked off. Their Easy level run also exhibits many of the same strange tendencies, leading me to suggest a removal of all of their runs and a ban on future submissions as a repeat offender.

If you've done Endless runs, feel free to go to the forum thread and sound off your thoughts. Absent real evidence to the contrary, I will assume that the runs in question are TASes and remove the entire user/account from the leaderboards by the end of the month.

Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals:

Goal #2: update the LPS Pokémon Puzzle League broadcast layout to be better automated like the Tetris Attack layout. Part of the reason for the step back is to give myself enough time to ready this for the tournament.
Goal #3: edit my personal best runs. This is more like #4 now because of how low priority my own projects are.
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 probably 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) – !ppl2023 Starts Next Week, Doods!


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

--Cards