Persona 4

This is going to be a long pastebin and it’s going to jump around a lot, so buckle your seatbelts. I also don’t plan on putting together a TL:DR, because it’s a bit hard to summarize my thoughts on everything, so if you read the whole thing, that’s pretty rad. This write up will  probably be the most I’ve ever opened up about my personal life, so I’m sorry of some of these details bore you, but It’s pretty important to how my life has been changing the past few months, and how Persona 4 + SGDQ were big gamer changers for me. The actual thoughts on Persona 4 will be later on in the write up, because there’s a lot of backstory on why this game is so important to me, so stick around for a bit, I promise I’ll talk about the game a ton.

To start off, 2017 has been a really weird year for me. I wouldn’t say weird as in bad, but I’ve just a lot of life experiences that I wasn’t planning on that made me have to really think about what I was doing with my life, and where I was going. 2016 was an incredible year for the work side of my life, and 2017 seems to be shaping up to be great for the personal side of my life, even it’s been one full of big ups and downs.  I’m thankful that I have an amazing job in streaming, because  a lot of the positives that have come internally/personally stem from a lot of self-reflection after streaming Persona 4 + 999/VLR.

Alright So Here Goes

For those that don’t know, I’m a bit of a workaholic when it comes to things I care about. I’ve been that way since I was very young. When it’s a project that I’m super passionate about, I invest a lot of time into it to make sure that it turns out right. On the flip side, when I lose that passion, or am forced to do something that I don’t enjoy, I can be incredibly lazy. If you’ve ever seen my room when I stream, it tends to be a bit, dirty. A lot of times, I avoid cleaning it because in my mind, that time could be better spent on putting that energy towards something I’m passionate about. It’s an area of my life I’m working toward improving, and I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better about it in recent history.

The workaholic part of me started all the way back in high school at the age of 16. Growing up, my parents didn’t have a lot of money, but they always did their best to bless me with things that I wanted. I always had the latest Nintendo system that was out, and at least a few games for each system. I’ve always known my parents wanted to do more for me, and I really can see that now that I’m old enough to appreciate the little things. With what my parents lacked in money, they made up for in encouragement and pushing me to be the best. My dad always told me at a young age that I would be incredibly successful. He always expected the best from me when it came to school and always encouraged me to work hard in school and in any job I had. So when I was old enough to get a job, I immediately got one.

So what does being a workaholic have to do with anything about Persona 4? Well for most of High School I just worked. I loved my days at High School, and although I wasn’t incredibly popular, I knew a lot of people and was able to have decent relationships with a lot of different groups of people. I always felt like a floater when it came to High School because I knew a lot of people, but had very few super close connections. A lot of my good friends ended up being people that went to the other High School, and I spent most of my free time with them. (Fun Fact, I met 2dos in High School through a friend in Tennis from another school, and he’s probably one of my closest friends from High School that I keep in touch with.) When you combine the fact that I spent most of my free time doing homework + working, I didn’t really have much time for meeting new people or making close relationships with friends. Every Friday Night when there was a football game, I spent it working till the late hours at the restaurant that I bussed tables at. In my mind, having money to get a car, pay for college, and just buy things that I wanted was way more important than going to a high school football game. This continued to happen throughout the year when it came to basketball games, high school dances, and just overall hang outs with friends. I wasn’t really around enough, so I just never really got super close to people outside of school.

 The only time I put hanging out with people over working happened when I joined the tennis team. It was really my opportunity to hang out with people and get away from work. I’m a super competitive person, so sometimes I could get a little bit too into it and become an asshole which didn’t help things. Because I wasn’t around much, most people only saw me with my competitive nature, which further hurt my chances at forming close bonds. If you ever see me get too cocky and run my mouth, a lot of it usually comes from a good place; I just get overly competitive about small things. Tennis was my one escape in High School, and the one time I made decent relationships with friends, but it wasn’t ever close to being enough.

High School ended, and I ended up going to a close college that I could commute to save money. I basically did the same routine in College.  I went to very few parties, focused mostly on grades and since I wasn’t able to get much financial help from my parents, I worked  a ton to help pay for school expenses. The sooner I could graduate and start focusing on the future, the sooner I could get a job and finally reach the goal of being “successful.” I graduated in four years, had a job lined up after graduation and thought that this was finally it. I had finally got through the nothingness that was my education and was ready for the real world of being a grown up.  The only problem was I was 100% miserable and incredibly unhappy. I was stuck doing a job that I felt like was holding me back, and I saw the rest of my friends growing up without me. I wasn’t there for a lot of my friends’ parties, hangouts, and even weddings. I felt incredibly detached and far away and it was during this time I found streaming and speed running.
Streaming was finally a chance for me to actually be myself, while focusing on something I was passionate about. I love being able to make people laugh and make someone’s day. The feeling knowing that there are hundreds of people that are looking forward to me turning on the stream is incredibly humbling and I didn’t take it lightly.

The problem with streaming was that I continued to carry the workaholic mindset into it as well. Streaming has always been incredibly fun for me, but I’ve tended to push myself to work harder/ stream longer to stay ahead of the curve and keep my stream relevant. I always wanted to come up with the next big idea with streaming that would help me continue to do what I love.  I know a lot of people think that I’m a “sellout” sometimes, but it comes from a place of staying financially stable so that I can do what I love.
The problem with this mindset is that while the stream has done well, my personal life has been greatly affected.  I’ve done a very bad job of staying connected to a lot of my close stream friends over the years. I was making all these friends through streaming, and then disappearing on them once I turned off my stream. I felt like I couldn’t be myself with my friends, and tended to be more reserved unless I got really close to someone. I started to hold back things that had been bothering me, and instead of addressing them as they came up, a lot of times I’d blow up all at once on people who I cared about. I was shutting myself off more and more and it was beginning to take its toll on me.  I remember when Andy and Trogdor moved in, and thinking to myself that the addition of stream friends living with me would magically change my mindset. I was super excited about spending time with my new friends, and would make promises of doing a ton of cool things, only to blow them off because I would get caught up on working on streaming things. Things came to a breaking point in February when a really crappy life situation blindsided me and I just completely disappeared from my friends for a month. I was still streaming and putting on a face because I had told myself that I needed to financially take care of myself, but on the inside I was in a really bad mental place.

I had a good conversation with a close friend who started to show me I was starting to slip away, and that although the stream was a good outlet, it shouldn’t be the only way for me to cope with what I was going through. I wrote about it a while back, but it was that moment I started to make small changes of getting out and meeting people which led to some great results. But as much as those small things felt good, I still wasn’t where I wanted to be mentally, and that’s where Persona 4 really changed things.

PERSONA 4

I’m not going to lie, I had written off persona 4 as some Anime garbage game for a long time. I’m going to be 100% real right now. Up until a few months ago, I really despised the term “anime.” I’ve been friends with people who were into anime for a long long time, and the culture and extreme fandom was a huge turn off for me. I started seeing anime through a very skewed and stereotypical way, and joked a ton about it as a way to continue to write it off. It didn’t help that my chat started to get wind of how much I egged them on, so they loved getting in on the joke. So when people kept suggesting Persona 4, I was very much against the idea of playing “anime trash.” ( I DON’T THINK THIS WAY ANYMORE, PLEASE FORGIVE ME.) I started talking to a few friends who said I should give the game a chance, so I just threw it at the end of MOMAM2 incentives thinking it had 0 chance to get met and moved on with my life.
When Persona 4 got met, I’m not going to lie, I was very very concerned. I knew it was going to be a really long play through, and I was convinced I wasn’t going to enjoy it. I was always willing to give it a shot, but I figured the game would drag on and it would be a miserable set of streams where I trudged with a smile on my face to make everyone happy, only to never touch the game again. Holy Moly was I so wrong. (THANK GOD)

The moment I booted up Persona 4 Golden, I was immediately drawn in by the intro music. Seeing these characters who I had never met, who I had no idea what they were like; dancing to some weird song was actually pretty entertaining. The catchy tune helped ease my concerns right from the get go, and I felt I was ready to play this game, and that feeling never stopped. From that goofy intro song, I was hooked to the game. The story was incredible, the music was incredible, the characters were incredible, and the battle system was incredible. I can’t think of a JRPG that actually made me want to grind battles over and over again. I hadn’t played a game where I felt like I was standing right next to each of these characters and wanting to help them find their true selves. I felt like I was transported right back to high school again, and this time I had a chance to right the wrongs that I made when I was younger. I felt so connected to this group of high school friends, that it almost felt like it was real.  I identified with so many of the characters on a personal level. I was the most similar to Yoskue as kid, as I was always coming up with stupid ideas that never panned out, or constantly making a fool of myself in front of my friends and being “that” guy. I totally understood the struggle that Yukiko dealt with of the pressure of managing a job while balancing time with her friends. Rise was probably the one that hit the hardest though. I was super close with a girl towards the end of High School + Beginning of college that reminded me exactly of Rise. I made mistakes in the relationship that I still regret to this day. As silly as it sounds, I found a sense of peace and closure progressing through the game and building upon the relationship with Rise. (I feel like a freaking weeb right now, but this really has helped me move on.) Even the relationship with Nanako was super touching. I’m the youngest of four siblings and the closest in age being almost 10 years older than me. I always told my parents I wanted a little sister, and to a certain degree the fact I could help Nanako do all these small things gave me a ton of happiness and made me realize that I still have  opportunities to help younger kids in a brotherly role (I teach Sunday school at my church.) Each relationship that I made with these characters helped me realize what I was capable of in my own life, and that it was not too late to change.

Persona 4 is a game that literally became life changing for me. I know that sounds incredibly cheesy to say about a video game, but it truly kept me up at night thinking about my past and the decisions that I made in High School. Playing through Persona 4 and seeing the connections you make with these characters seemed all too real to me. I felt like the game was giving me a second chance in terms of fixing a lot of the areas that I repressed in High School. It was also making me realize that these close relationships that I yearned for could still happen with the friends that I have now.

I started having a ton of regrets on all the opportunities that I missed, and I got to a bit of a dark place, because I felt like I had no more chances. You see, streaming is a huge outlet for me, but the problem was that it was my only outlet, which is not healthy. Streaming has for so long been a way for me to show who I am as a person and get immediate satisfaction. On stream I’m super talkative and excited. When I turn the stream off, I tend to not be as charismatic, way more reserved, and extremely quiet. I’ve kind of taken on this super quiet/shy persona when I’m not around my super close friends, and it’s been happening for many many years. And for a long time, I’ve known this isn’t who I am or wanted to be.

But then something happened while playing Persona 4, and I realized that it was not too late to change things. While I had closed myself off to a lot of people off stream, I still was having a huge impact on so many people during my stream. It really hit me how blessed I am with the amount of people that tune in everyday to watch my latest adventures in gaming. I realized I was helping more people than I could possibly know. I’ve always been me on stream, and it was time to stop repressing that part of me in real life. It was time to start being there for people that I now know on a personal level, and to be able to help those people as well. I’ve felt like for the past couple of years that I’ve been too intimidating, too closed off and it kept people from approaching me. It was time to change and I was ready.

This is where things started to turn towards a more positive light. SGDQ was coming up, and I knew it was time to start fixing some of these bad habits and get out of my comfort zone, and back to where I wanted to be from when I was younger. My goal was to make as many new “social links” as I could, as well as strengthen the ones I already had. If you saw me roaming around saying “hi” to a ton of old/new people at SGDQ, Persona 4 was a big part of that.  The reality is, I’m only 26 and I still have so much time to create amazing moments with friends old and new alike. It was an incredible wake up call, and I just feel like a completely different person. I feel like I’ve finally come to terms with who I am as a person, and there’s no need to hide it. I’m a goofy/fun guy who likes to joke around have a good time, I don’t need to try and hide that part of me in real life. While I can’t go back to High School and change the past, I can start now with the friends I’ve made in streaming and reconnect with my local friends. While I’ll never be able to be a big brother to a sibling, I can start impacting the young kids I work with at my church that need someone to look up to a role model, like Nanako looked up to Yu in P4G.

I never thought when I started playing Persona 4 Golden, that the game would have such an impact on my life. I never thought a game could do so much to break something off that had been there clinging to me for many many years. Life is too short to live in regret, and although I could have done things differently in my past, I have so much time to change and become the person I want to be for many years to come. I’m incredibly thankful for realizing this now, and I hope if you’re reading this, you realize it’s never too late to break free from that thought process that cuts you off from those you love.

I am the happiest I’ve ever been and I feel like life will only get better from this point on. I know I still have a ways to go, and still mental blocks that I have to overcome to getting to where I want to be with my old self, but I know that I have a group of friends that are there for me, and I have a stream that understands when I need to slow down on my stream. If you read this whole thing, thank you so much. Thanks for coming a long with me on this journey. I look forward to playing more games that challenge my thought process on life and make me into a better person. I look forward to being a better friend whose there with a listening ear. While I expected 2017 to be the year of Mario, it ended up being the Year of anime, and I’m okay with that  The future is bright, I’m ready to make some great memories and help a ton of people along the way 

BONUS:

I put together my top 25 games list last night to see where I stand on games. Was fun to do, and I thought it would be fun to add to pastebin.

1. Persona 4 Golden
2. Breath of the Wild
3. Xenoblade Cronicles
4. Ocarina of Time
5. Super Mario RPG
6. Super Smash Brothers Melee
7. Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations/AA6

POWER GAP


8. SM64
9. 999/VLR
10. FF7
11. Ghost Trick
12. The Walking Dead Season 1
13. Paper Mario
14. Donkey Kong Country 2
15. Super Metroid
16. Dark Souls

POWER GAP


17. Link's Awakening
18. Advance Wars: Black Hole Rising
19. Super Mario Brothers 3
20. Rogue Squadron 2 : Rogue Leader
21. Undertale

POWER GAP

22. Golden Eye
23. Fire Emblem 7
24. Final Fantasy 6
25. Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds