free time is a meme

it's an inside joke on my discord server that I have a life and no free time and all that other shit so today I feel like explaining why that's the case

ok so if you only know me from speedrunning you might not be as familiar with my smash bros life. i've been in that community since 2011. i've been organizing tournaments since 2014. i dedicated most of my time to the games with smaller playerbases (brawl and 64). this has included stuff like: founding a tournament series which was the base for one of the first offline 64 communities, helping make info about homebrew wifi servers more accessible to brawl players when nintendo WFC shut down, helping developers create a codeset for dolphin emulator that vastly improved the quality of brawl netplay, assisting with grassroots fundraisers to help 64 players attend important events, but most importantly, TOing brawl and 64 at any major event that doesn't already have someone from those communities TOing it, or assisting at those which do. examples: super smash con 2015 and 2016, GOML 2016, apex 2016, and most recently CEO Dreamland. most of these are hella far from me so I spend a lot of time traveling.

also another little known fact about me, i've been attending anime north since 2004, and helping run things in some capacity since 2011. recently I was appointed as the head of all the smash bros stuff that goes on there, so that's all the tournament planning and facilitation. AN gets about 20,000 attendees so it's pretty intense.

here's what my schedule has looked like for a few months

mar 11 weekend: gfa and snes superstars marathons
mar 18 weekend: pearathon
apr 8 weekend: pearathon
apr 15 weekend: CEO Dreamland in Orlando
apr 22 weekend: visiting TheBlacktastic and MegamasterX in Ohio
apr 29 weekend: anime north planning meeting
may 6 weekend: friends' bday in east ontario
may 13-20: rpg limit break
may 20 weekend: NASA marathon
may 27 weekend: anime north
june 3 weekend: degen dash, S2CTW, and (possibly) Rollin Deep marathons
june 10 weekend: buckeye speed bash in columbus

i also work full time mon-friday. I dont watch streams at work anymore because the shit im working on is pushing my brain to its limits and I have to think a lot about it cuz it's hard as fuck. I intermittently check discord when I need a break from doing crazy math but dont have anything that could be an ongoing distraction. plus my data plan isnt that great anyway.

because my weekends are so stacked, this is why I stream tuesday-thursday after work instead. I try to dedicate these days to keeping my stream schedule intact or at least practicing for the bajillion marathons i'm participating in!

i dedicated monday nights to watching anime with my friends on my discord server bc I need 1 night a week to not think about anything.

so pretty much, fridays where im not traveling or the occasional weekend im home is when my free time is. and whenever I have a spare hour or something I use it for event planning for stuff like AN or CEODL.

and even then... have y'all seen my github lately? I got a fuckton of projects to finish that ppl are waiting on. that's where the rest of my free time goes when I have it.

friday night my computer and video games were all in the main room of my apartment and my bf was having a party that night so I was like, yo, a night of free time! and it was nuts!!!

and I feel bad bc when are sean and I ever gonna finish our ff6 file or play xenogears? when am I gonna practice street fighter? (after BSB probably!)

now here's the thing... im not saying any of this to complain. I love traveling, I love meeting ppl thru event organization, I love helping facilitate stuff that ppl enjoy, and I love the fact that 100 people upvoted a comment telling me that CEO Dreamland changed their opinion of Brawl forever. i'm _exceptionally_ grateful and honoured that so many marathon runners have decided that I and my speedruns are worth including in their events. I really like coding, it's one of the only things i'm actually somewhat good at and it's my primary creative outlet. my boyfriend's schedule is already too busy and conflicting with mine anyway, so booking myself solid like this helps make things feel easier and less lonely. it really sucks living with someone you love and still never seeing them. I need some way to keep my mind off of it, right?