11.15.2020

Here are some thoughts about my experiences. Nothing dramatic or anything like that, just ideas I have about me & the world around me.

Generally I try to stay productive. But it's been tough lately, and for me it's not solely epidemic related in the sense of the shutdown and isolation - my life is pretty much unaffected by the epidemic. I still go to the gym like usual, the grocery store like usual, work as a remote employee, etc. For me, it's more that I spent most of my 20s grinding out work. I bought a house by 30, and I finally took a gigantic breath of air for the last year or so by moving out of a major metropolitan area and honestly chilled out emotionally. And it's been great, but at the same time I'm a fairly goal oriented person, and part of what I need to do is set the target correctly again for what's next.

There's some professional development for my career to be done, but honestly a lot of it comes down to deciding how I want to spend my non-online-community time doing via creative or learning outlets. I dabble in a lot of things - programming & scripting, music, learning Japanese, pixel art, etc., but I need to do a better job coming up with a gameplan. For the last few years or so, I've done a ton of random learning segments to accomplish something. Build a bot for a Discord channel. Learn about orchestral instruments and add to a notebook I keep. Make a programming improvement to my trivia bot or the FFV randomizer. Spend a few days looking at pixel art and learn more about shading and coloring techniques. All these random little things that I legitimately try to keep up are great and all, but they also amount to a lot of time spent doing random things that don't seem to add up to a grand design. And that's both good and bad I think - the issue is that I don't really have a perspective on what I want to accomplish, and I need to. Especially because winter is usually my most productive time, I need to do some real thinking on what's happening this one & into the future.

Productive is a very subjective word. To me it's the idea of using your time wisely, whether its for enjoyment or goals. Some might say streaming or playing games isn't a productive activity, but I definitely disagree - I genuinely have a great time almost all times I boot up stream and I don't think twice about it being worth the time. And sometimes chilling out, letting your mind relax by hanging out in a stream, talking to some people, or just taking a nap, whatever, those are all necessary as a human. Unproductive to me is not coming up with gameplan as to how to approach spending your time and letting it slip away. It doesn't happen all that often to me, but there are definitely days where I'm just like "man, what did I actually do today" and I don't really have an answer, and that's what bothers me. You only live once and letting time slip away like that is not good.

Sometimes I think everyone needs a break from people online. After awhile even very minor things bother me in small ways that seem to add up. For example, when I'm around either chats, channels or Twitter, and someone says something that's like, either wrong or misinformed or just unnecessary to say, I feel like there's two ways about it: say something or don't. And I'm talking about anything from a very minor "yeah ok, I doubt that" or "dude why are you pretending to know things you don't", to more serious issues. On one hand, by speaking up you invariably invite a sense of uncomfortability to the chat medium, especially in streams. But on the other hand by not speaking up (like in my experience a lot of people do), you're keeping the peace but simultaneously being a passive participant that just lets things go unchecked. Me personally, I don't want to be a chore, but I also really friggin hate reading/listening to people say things they don't mean or some idea or approach they half=ass, so I find myself in between a lot. "Calling people out" can be simultaneously noble and obnoxious. I find this literally everywhere from friend groups to people I barely know. Again this is the sort of thing that isn't a huge deal in short bursts, but after awhile the layers start to pile on and if it goes unaddressed mentally or you don't take a break, I think it starts to cloud your judgment and enjoyment. Also it's sort of a weird time specifically now- sometimes it feels like you can foresee what people are going to talk (complain) about, and I just sorta don't want to be part of this wave of it. All this recent post-election, epidemic, Twitch DMCA stuff, people complaining about PS5 (for whatever privileged reason), ugh.

I also sometimes get caught up in the community aspect of things, just being a guy who's been around. Sincerely no one is doing anything wrong, but small things like getting asked some debugging question for a game, or me trying to be a good sport by hanging out on a race call instead of bailing as soon as I'm done, little things like these add up to a lot of time. I try to engage with people meaningfully if they reach out or I'm doing something with them. I don't really watch too many streams, but when I do I try to actually engage. And sometimes all this feeling of needing to be present is probably a bit too much and unnecessary. I really try not to blow people off if they're asking for something from me and to not be the person who says routinely "everything sucks sorry I don't respond" (because candidly I loathe that person), but it comes at a time & energy cost. I feel that I need to break away from a bit and perhaps come back with a better perspective on it.

When I try to "figure things out personally" I try to take it seriously. I see some people I know, friends and people I don't know all that well alike, say things like "I need to figure out some personal stuff" then I see them take no steps and often go backwards, and I really try not to be that person. This time around, I don't feel so much like I need to figure things out for making me happy or whatever, moreso about what is realistic to accomplish for the future in my free time. I'd love to say that I'm going to do all these things like say, create a game demo, properly create an album and collaborate with people, commit to speedrunning to get some goal, commit to learning the Japanese language, but the reality (and the hard part) is that likely all these things aren't getting done all together if at all, especially without significantly working on each and every one of them. So I have to take the red ink and strike out what's just not happening, and I feel like this is the right time to do it. I have to think about what becoming older looks like, and what's actually fitting into an older lifestyle. Not in a limiting way- because anyone can do what they please as long as they like - but more in a thriving way. If you can focus your energy concisely towards a few outlets you genuinely want to (or decide to) pursue, I feel like the other stuff will feel less important to you and the focus on the good stuff feels more rewarding. Some of this has to do with epidemic downtime for sure, even if my day to day isn't very much impacted. It's been great having tons of flexibility. I spent the last few months pretty heavily getting the streaming bug out of my system, and there will definitely be more to come later. But with the downtime and flexibility comes some internal desire to make it more worthwhile, because the freedom is not going to be around forever.

Streaming & speedgaming's been good. In the short term there's a whole bunch of stuff related to speedgaming and games that I need to wrap up. I'm 45 pages deep into a Dragon Quest III speedrun guide that I need to solidify & finish, pretty-fy and proofread. I want to clean up my website, clean up my old notes and document things better, organize scripts I've written, etc. I'll probably spend a bunch of time doing some offline runs and practice too, but we'll see. I kick around the idea of making another open world randomizer for a RPG, because I think it'd be pretty fun & achievable to do again, but of course with quite a bit of time investment, and that time could definitely be spent elsewhere. I've got some goals for speedrunning still remaining, but I tend not to be too strict on them compared to other goals I set for myself, because having a good time is important and let's face it, when it comes to things like some Japanese-only speedgames there's only a select few people who actually care about my progress, haha. It's mostly that the motivation to improve in something like speedgaming is for me and what I think I can do. Casual streams for me have been really good & enjoyable lately, especially the morning time slots. Also respect to Melty Blood and how fun it's been learning a fighting game with a weekly crew. Some of these things really do take time and I think the bunker-down-and-just-do-it style is the best way to knock them out or strike them from the list.

If anyone's this far into the paste, I've got one ask - during these times please do what you can to engage even slightly and be human, whether its on Twitter, in streams or wherever. For example, there's one particular chatter who always comes in to my stream and simply asks "how are you doing?" every time, and although some other people might eye roll or write it off, things like this don't go unnoticed to me if they're sincere and (importantly) concise. Even just saying hi or showing appreciation for something someone's done in a small way is so important. It's so easy to scroll past something on Twitter, pull up a stream and lurk, etc., and although that's fine some of the time, some of the time people could use the lizard-brain boost of engagement to show that even though the world is blowing up outside, at least there's some place where you can get some humanity.

I'll be back 100%. Thanks for reading