My future as a speedrunner

On April 15, I made the conscious decision to not attend grad school for the academic year of 2017-2018. I did this solely for financial reasons, since the school I was set to attend did not give me enough financial aid, even after personally writing staff members to explain my low income situation. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, because it gives me time to continue pursuing my goals of being a successful twitch streamer and speedrunner.

The long and the short of this pastebin is that, at the very least, I've been given another year of consistent streaming before my opera career takes off. I plan on using this year to the fullest. My short term goal is to prepare for SGDQ as best as I possibly can. I want to achieve sub 1:08 in All Gold Bolts, if not sub 1:07 by the time I get on stage. This should be very doable.

After SGDQ, I intend on riding the wave of GDQ followers and continuing to push AGB as far as I possibly can. Once I get a time I'm satisfied with, I'll probably move on to rac1 any%, considering I'd like to spend 1.5-2 months after SGDQ running Ratchet games.

At this point, I'll hit a crossroads. My intention was to get top 10 in SMS any% by the end of 2017. To be completely honest, the more I practiced over the month I came back, the more doable this goal seemed. I went from the starting point of a 1:35 to a 1:26 in a month of spotty, inconsistent practice, and I saw a clear path to 1:22 before I started grinding AGB again.

But here's the kicker

I don't know if I enjoy grinding SMS as much as I want to enjoy it. The reasons for me running SMS aren't really strong: I wanted to win a bet I made with a bunch of other people, prove I'm one of the best speedrunners in the world, and expand my audience to new places.

I don't know if the payoff is gonna be worth it tbh. I have a lot of uncertainty regarding SMS, mostly because I get about 1/3rd of my usual audience when I run SMS, as opposed to Ratchet.

Not sure what the best course of action is, but I can tell you my future plans will be one of two things.

Either continuing SMS, or going forward on the Ratchet bop project

What's the bop project, you might ask?

Getting all my WRs back that I've lost over the course of the last 5 months (UYA any%, rac1 NG+, rac1 AGB, rac2 NG+ no IMG, rac2 APB), as well as getting WR in all other main OG trilogy categories (rac1 any% and rac2 any% [I don't count rac2 PBSPI because that category is stupid]). I'd be the first runner to ever achieve something of that magnitude in the rac community, and it would also be a spectacular project for viewers to follow.

Again, not sure of anything at this point in my life because I need to start focusing more and more on my career as an opera singer, but I value the time I have in front of me, even if it's just one more year, and I plan on doing great things with that time no matter what.

Thank you all for the continued support <3

-Xem