AGDQ18 Wrap-up and Plans for Things.

No idea how to really start all of this, guess I'll just start rambling as usual and see where this all ends up. AGDQ18 didn't quite go how I hoped/expected, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's always plans and whatnot, and rarely do many of them come to fruition, but at the same time there's always usually fun surprises that you weren't expecting to happen that pop up, so it usually balances out.

Travel in was fairly uneventful, had a long layover in MSP, but all flights were on time and I didn't have any issues.

I think the fact that I had almost nothing planned all week helped and hurt me. Other than the poker tournament on Friday afternoon, my schedule was essentially wide open. This was different than the first couple SGDQs where I volunteered and MASSIVELY different than SGDQ17 where I was constantly working on relay prep. Now while I admittedly spent far too much time worried about the relay at SGDQ17, the fact that I had nothing on my plate this go around put me in a bit of a weird spot where I still felt that feeling of "I should be doing something," but I couldn't just say "OK, I guess I'll practice for a bit." Spent a lot of time chilling in the practice room with people, which was fun, but felt like I maybe should have just sought out people instead of heading in there and seeing what was going on. Did get a couple of "fun" races of SMB3, (probably the biggest SMB3 races held since 2014 lol) and also had one race of LttP where I PB'd by a few minutes which was fun, but other than that and the co-op 100% run I did with Chuk, I didn't play a ton of games myself. The opportunities were certainly there, I guess I should have just been more direct with trying to set stuff up. Definitely played more board games this time around though, which was nice. Lots of laughs during all that. Watched a decent amount of the stuff I was looking to watch in the stream room, by this point I knew I wasn't going to catch absolutely everything I wanted to, but I think overall I did alright in that regard.

The biggest thing that kind of irked me with hanging out with people was having to bail on stuff and the playful ribbing about it went a little further than I would have liked. Being constantly around twitch and enjoying a lot of different speedruns and communities meant that there was just not enough time to spend with everybody as much as I would have liked, especially when I feel like I kinda hang on the fringe of a lot of them. Not really anybody's fault but my own, but know that I would have loved to spend more time with literally everybody and I'm bummed I couldn't.

I did have a chance to head into DC proper on Thursday, which was an adventure lol. After taking the wrong shuttle, our group hopped on a bus, got off at the VERY wrong spot (shoutouts to the bus driver for not leaving us there), and finally got off at the right spot and rode the train in. It unfortunately cut into a lot of the day, but honestly even if we had gotten there when we initially planned there was just soooo much to see that it was impossible to fit it all in. Saw a lot of the stuff at the National Mall (pictures on Twitter) and ended up in a bar where "1 more drink" turned into 3-4 more :P My brief time in the city was fairly enjoyable, wouldn't mind someday making another trip just to look at stuff, as there's a lot to look at it.

The last day was kinda rough for me. I knew I was leaving early Sunday, so I tried find people to say goodbye and all that, but it was hard to do when you aren't actually "leaving". Definitely said goodbye to a couple people that I saw again in a couple of hours, and some people I figured I'd run into again I didn't, so it kind of made the ending different than previous events. Also had some stuff outside of speedrunning pop up that made things tough, not gonna talk about it, but if it seemed like I was in a funk toward the end, I was. All that coupled with anxiety building over stuff that I missed and the event ending put me in kind of a sour mood, so I'm sorry I wasn't the person I would have liked to be at the end of things.

Travel back had the only real hiccup, which was just my final plane getting de-iced for 20 minutes causing a little of a delay. Honestly not that big of a deal, still got home at a reasonable time to start resting up. I really enjoyed flying again for the first time in over a decade, might make me look toward other opportunities to travel places, as long as it's worth it for the cost. Not 100% positive, but I think I'm going to make it 4/4 on avoiding the GDQ Plague, jury is still out on whether or not the sore throat I got early this morning is leading to anything worse yet.

I guess all in all, AGDQ18 was still a lot of fun, it just had the unfortunate timing of being the next event after SGDQ17. Due to the relay and all that, it's unlikely any event will ever top that one. I think the biggest takeaway is I need to just plan more things and be more involved. I went in thinking that not having stuff going on would be nice, but a few times I felt like I was wasting time or not hanging out with people enough, and with no volunteering or running to do I definitely felt like I wasn't "doing my part" in terms of the marathon itself. Lesson learned, though, even if it was a hard one. SGDQ18 is pretty up in the air for me honestly. I've heard a ton of people saying "I don't think I'm gonna go," or "I'll only go if I get a run in," but with it still within a couple hours driving for me, I feel like I'd be kinda dumb to not go, at least if it's just for a couple days. I'll probably submit something SMB3 related as usual, then based on the status of that and who is all gonna be there decide how long I'll go. I don't have a ton of vacation time, and I'd basically be using it all if I go all week, so we'll just see how that all shakes out.

In other stream stuff, gonna be continuing to work on SMB1 and LttP as both those tournies approach. Might put up another strawpoll for next casual thing, even though I know if I put one option on there that I'm considering it'll win easily, so gotta decide if I wanna leave that out or just start that option.

TL;DR: AGDQ18 was good, just a couple things that could have been better, but can't complain. SGDQ18 unsure atm, but probably will at least go for a little bit. Gonna keep playing video games as video games are pretty ok.