Speedrunning Thought and Updates (9/3/18)

I am entering a new era in my life.

When I started this whole speedrunning/streaming thing on a whim I was going into my senior year of university. It was tough and I had to cancel some streams to make it work, and streaming made me lose sleep quite a bit, but that was all fine because I enjoyed it and generally had the time to do it.

Now I am about to start working full time in a job that's going to require a lot of extra hours and I'm starting to realize something: time is passing.

That's a dumb statement so let me unpack it. Speedrunning at school was something that helped keep me in the moment, kept me sane in a lot of ways because it allowed time to stop for a bit. No matter how frustrating the runs got and how angry I went to bed, it provided those moments both within the community and in the games themselves that made me forget about life as a whole for a while. Now, whenever I speedrun run or watch a speedrun, or hang out within the community, I'm noticing the time passing. I'm starting to notice the hours fly by that I should spend working on my health, my other creative outlets I've let to dry for too long, or even making sure I'm as prepared as I need to be for work the next day. The hobby does not feel like escapism to me anymore, it's starting to feel like stalling.

I think a lot of that is just down to me getting busier and older and a lot of it is a change in mindset. I've been lucky in terms of my speedrunning career. I found a game I was passionate about and could contribute to, I found a community that accepted me and I got to know incredibly well, and I've had the honor of pushing a couple world records further than most other people would have dared. It's been an unbelievable and unforgettable year of my life and I wouldn't change it for anything. And I'm not planning to stop either.

But, and here's the kicker, I'm done going to bed frustrated. I'm done spending time frustrated over a video game when time is something I am starting to become so conscious of. I'm done feeling my thumb and side of my hand yell at me every time I touch a button because I keep pushing when I should be taking a break like a normal, somewhat intelligent, human being. This recent All Stories push made me realize how fun speedrunning is when you can just use it to enjoy a video game. And it also made me realize how much I've been hurting myself physically and emotionally doing this with basically all my free time.

I am not done speedrunning, I am not doing streaming. I'm probably not even done going for world record times, but I'm done with this speedrunning mentality of wanting perfection, pushing myself harder and longer than I should, and spending my free time getting angry that I am, indeed, human.

All this to say I want my streams to be different. I want them to be less frequent, to be more laid back. To be more fun. Maybe it'll be less competitive in the process, but that's ok. I don't want to force myself to stream even though I need to sleep anymore. Or eat. Or work. Or workout. Or whatever it may be. I hope you can support me in that. And I hope we can continue to have some fun, heck maybe even have more fun not taking everything so seriously.

Best,
Pessilist