#PastebinMonday 04/15/2024 What Am I Doing Here? Edition

'Sup, doods!

The question in the title can be two-fold. First off, what am I doing in the Grand Finals of the Tetris Attack tournament? I was supposed to lose to FFR Pro like I have been in recent years—and I almost did. Seriously, you've gotta go to the Puzzle Speedrun Twitch and see how that match ended. It's an instant classic, dood. I always expect my play to fall off whenever I'm also having to manage the restream broadcast in the middle of it. Perhaps I've taken a consistency hit (he says as he makes it to the final match for the second major tournament in a row). Who knows what I will be able to bring for the final match in two weeks?

I've also gotten a bit existential, as of late, because I'm not exactly certain how deep my disdain for hanging out with people goes. I was hoping that doing this streaming thing would get more interesting people interested in being near me and make me more tolerant of being near people by introducing me to more people I would like. Honestly, doods, if there's any measurable downside from what my 2020 experience was like (which was better than most), it's that it slowed my desire to be physically near people. I like listening to real people being real. I hate having to interact with them when I have nothing to talk about. I don't watch TV. I don't watch movies. I don't like the new video games that come out and seek to leech every cent away from you at the cost of a good gameplay experience. The more I look at people from a distance, the more I realize that I do not relate to the people that I see and do not have enough things in common to hold a decent conversation. I suppose I'm hating the idea that I need people to obligate their time to me to help me achieve my personal goals, just as I hate the idea of obligating myself to others to help them achieve their goals.

But that's how people survive. That's how people live, dood.

I suppose a part of me also hates how much I am venting in these updates about my situation. #FirstWorldProblems, am I right, doods? However, not surrounding myself with people is also not giving me a safe space to bounce off these ideas in and provide input on how I can change my outlook for the better. At this point, I'm just writing all of these notes down to account for my terrible long-term memory and show to my future therapist. I do not want to keep trauma dumping in a public forum.

Combined with how creatively bankrupt I have been in recent months, all this begs the question posed at the beginning, doods: what am I doing here?


Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals (actual priority is in constant flux):

Goal #1: prepare a few things for the Stage Clear tournament this weekend, though not as many as last week.
Goal #2: schedule LPS videos for the rest of the month.
Goal #3: clip personal shorts from the last stream.
Goal #4: gather clips for the credits sequence at the end of the LPS tournament.
Goal #6: 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 wait until after the Tetris Attack tournament is done.
Goal #7: clean up my own stream layout. Most of the framework necessary for a semi-proper stream is done now thanks to streaming the process. Next objective is to make transitions and alerts.
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:
Friday @ 9pm-1am EST – Friday Night Salt Mines – The Actual Final Match is Next Week Edition, Doods!
Saturday is the Stage Clear tournament at twitch.tv/puzzlespeedrun. Sunday is personal prep for the end of the tournament on the next Saturday.


That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, be decent to each other. Later, doods!

--Cards