Urgh

Another practice session, more mixed feelings.

I honestly can't make heads or tails of my tech-skill difficulties.  I have to be honest with myself about some of my shortcomings and things that I need to work around in order to solve this problem: I have essential tremors, which basically means that my muscles are *always* jumping and twitching even when I'm really relaxed.  It's not major (unless I'm really nervous or hungry), and I don't really have a problem doing any day to day activities, but it makes fine muscle control really difficult.  It certainly doesn't help when I try to play piano in front of people, or Smash in competitive environments.

I also have to accept the fact that I'm horrendously ADD and that makes it hard to focus.  I'll be playing matches, even important tournament ones, and not even be thinking about them at all.  I can get a bit of a boost in concentration by drinking a crap-load of caffiene in the form of soda or an energy drink, or I can take Adderall, but unfortunately stimulants directly and negatively impact my tremors.

I've sorted out a lot of my mood issues, I think.  I get frustrated but I've found ways to shortcircuit both my angry and depressive spells.

The question is, where do I go from here?

Last night I played about 7 hours worth of friendlies with DoH, and as usual I was all over the place.  I would go one match nailing everything, feeling really good, and feel like I really understood how to interact with the game.  Then the next game I would miss my jump button, randomly double jump with my joystick a few times, wavedash straight up (which doesn't actually work in case you were wondering) or accidentally overshoot my B button while recovering and brush the c-stick instead.  Usually games were somewhere in between, but it's really hard to understand how I'm supposed to play when I can't actually interact with the game.

This is something I've struggled to explain to people many times.  I honestly have times, entire matches, where I just can't do *anything*.  I will try to dash and jump instead, I will screw up five wavedashes in a row by airdodging horizontally, I'll miss every L-cancel, I'll try to do a basic grab combo with ICs and just whiff my c-stick completely.  I will be the first to admit that I make some really DUMB decisions when I'm under pressure, but at the same time many things that appear to be bad decisions are the result of me being incapable of doing things I want with the controller.

My recorded friendlies at APEX with Armada, for instance, showcase him absolutely raping me.  And that outcome was not entirely unexpected, truth be told.  But when I walked away from the TV and projector frustrated and people tried to calm me down by telling me "dude, it's Peach vs ICs, and it's Armada, relax," I wanted to tell them that they probably don't know what it's like to try and full jump an aerial and roll, then want to bring up their shield and jump out of it because they're spazzing on the joystick, then get raped while a bunch of people are watching and have no idea what my hands are even doing.  At that point it barely matters who my opponent even is, I just don't know what the hell is going on.

Later Armada and I played more friendlies and they were significantly closer; I never actually won, but I was actually executing combos and moving more how I wanted to, and the end result is a bit more of what I expected/hoped for--him beating me 15/15 games, but me managing to bring him down to 1 and 2 stock in most of them.  Against such a smart and consistent player, who is so skilled with a character I've always struggled against, that was a huge achievement and it made me feel much better about the tournament.

The real kick in the pants though, was my set of friendlies with Chu Dat.  I went through a similar experience to my very personally memorable set with Axe, where I just wasn't screwing up tech stuff, I was thinking clearly, and I was relaxed but energized.  I think at that time during those IC dittos I may have played my absolute best Melee ever, period, from a mental and technical perspective.

What frustrates me about experiences like those is that, while they are truly amazing in themselves, they make all my other experiences damaging to my confidence.  Why is that maybe, once in an entire year, I can just zone in and play the way I really want to?  Where I'm thinking straight and having fun even in the games I'm losing, where my hands and I aren't at odds with one another, where the game just makes sense to me? And then every other time I sit down to play, it's an exercise in inconsistency and frustration?

For the longest time I've been of the opinion that if a feat or mindset can be achieved once, then it can be duplicated.  Back when I was a Fox player and I wanted really badly to learn how to SHDL, and I saw videos of Thunder from Japan just busting them out left and right across the level, I was convinced that I simply could not do it.  That I never would be able to.  Then randomly, while messing around, I did it (just with my thumb, without using two fingers to jump and fire, just my normal configuration).  I stared at the screen and started jumping up and down all excitedly, and then I just tried to do it again for an hour and couldn't even get one and got dejected again.

But then I thought, "if my hands are capable of moving quickly enough to do that ONE time, then there's no reason they aren't capable of doing it again."  So I practiced and just studied my hands and fingers while I did so, trying to figure out what I did that made it work, and then I got another one.  And another and another and another.  And soon I could do it over and over again, bolstered by that confidence that one time could equal a million times if I wanted.

Right now, I'm in that same state.  Where I will have a moment thinking that this game makes sense, that I am a good player and I can do what I need to do to win, that if I went to a major tournament right now and played like this I would shatter my pools and make top three easily, even with the unbelievably difficult competition facing me.  Then the next game I'll wonder how I've ever won any money at all, even at the smallest of tournaments.

When it comes to mindset and playing well, I've mostly achieved what I've wanted to achieve, and felt like I've wanted to feel.  It's happened a select few times over the course of my entire career.  So the question that I have been asking myself, over and over again, is why are those feelings so elusive?  And why is it, that no matter how much I seem to practice and study and think and meditate and work, the only thing remaining consistent is my overwhelming inconsistency?

I dunno.  That's what's on my mind right now.  I know most people read this thing for my thoughts on the game but I guess today I'm just kinda whining.  My apologies.

Peace.

*

Oh, also, I think I won't be doing any more of the Vlogs.  Almost nobody's watching them and I'm kind of at a stage where I feel like my opinion on most stuff really isn't going to help people.  I guess in the future if I really just feel like doing one I will, but for now I'm just going to abandon the idea.  It was kind of fun though.

Mindset, preparation, and bracing.

In Part 1 of my most recent video log (view it here), I discussed getting into the right mindset.

There's something I'd like to add to it, something I've touched on before, which is an element of mental preparation that I call "bracing."  Bracing as in bracing for impact, for instance.  The idea here is that, when you are mentally ready and accepting of a negative experience, its effect on you is lessened if not negated entirely.

For instance, you are a relatively new player about to go to your first big tournament.  You hear that 3 of the top 5 players in the world are going to be there.  Wow.  You also realize that, as an unseeded player, your odds of running into them early are pretty high.  But you decide you're going to go anyways, because you can see what it's like playing them.

Or you go to a smashfest with some really really good players that you rarely ever beat, and you lose maybe 95% of the games you play that night.  But you have a lot of respect for these players and going into that evening, you know they outclass you and that you're going to be learning from them rather than winning.

So in either case, going to your tournament or smashfest, you are mentally prepared to lose, to be eliminated quickly, to have very few victories.  Prepared as you are, the losses don't feel all that bad.

Better players could learn from this.  There's an element of ego involved as you improve, where you start separating and classifying players by skill based on observation and past experience, and you decide that you rank above certain people and beneath others, and you're really good at X matchup and you never lose on Y level and so on.  If they lose when they expect to, even pretty good players tend not to get upset.  I mean, they knew it was going to happen and they played anyhow, so it's not like there's any mystery, right?  However, when somebody is convinced they will win or do well and they don't, that's when self-destructive attitudes set in and people begin to crumble.

So here's the idea: if you aren't ready to lose, you aren't ready to play.  If you're only going to enter the tournament because you think you'll get first, then mentally speaking you are not prepared.  You are setting yourself up to make mistakes, get sidetracked, and lose your cool at important moments.  You're creating the perfect environment to lose all the games you "shouldn't."

I'm not saying you should expect to lose, or you should *want* to lose or screw up.  I think that defeats the point of competition, self-improvement, and striving to be better than your opponents.  But I think it drastically improves your outlook and your ability to recover from negative situations when you understand that these things are in the realm of possibility, and that you are ready to play and have a good time regardless.

So here's a question: if I told you that at the next smashfest, or the next time you play, you would lose 20 matches and win zero, would you still be willing to go?

I've come to believe that if your answer isn't "yes," then you aren't mentally prepared to play your best.

Lemme know what you think.  Peace.

Progress?

So I have a few thoughts.

My blog is partially about the game and my thoughts on it, but also my journey towards becoming the kind of player I want to be.  As most of you know, I struggle with a lot of different aspects of it; even though I've reached a decently high level, I still want to get better.  But in truth, my real goal is this: I've had some amazingly positive mental and emotional experiences in this game that I want to recreate.  States of focus and calm that made me feel... tranquil, yet energetic.  Very focused but still relaxed.  Basically it's "the zone" magnified.

Playing recently, my entire goal is to coax my mind into that state as often and consistently as possible.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to maintain it for more than a short period of time, and afterwards I feel incredibly drained.  I know I have an "official" (and I'm sure that means something worthwhile) diagnosis of ADHD-Inattentive, which is very frustrating to deal with, but what confuses me is if I do have such a condition, why I'm still capable of entering this state at times.  The first time I ever experienced it, it lasted for hours; how does that jive with what I think I already know about myself and this mental state?

Playing for a long while yesterday I managed to get into that zone for maybe a few games out of a hundred.  So on the one hand, I've been reaching it more often than I had before, even though it's still very infrequent.  On the other, it's such a brief experience, and parting with that feeling is so bittersweet, that it's almost more upsetting to get it and then lose it than to play all day without feeling it at all.

Without a doubt I play my best while in that state of mind, so the upshot of reaching that mental state a lot will be improved play, and maybe I'll have a decent performance and my next out of state event.  But it's unlikely I'll go to one in the future, and it's pretty unlikely that mindset will sync up with any major matches I get, so I wouldn't be expecting too much from me.

This isn't really about winning or losing anymore.  This is more about trying to understand my own mind and what it takes to hone it.  I think I might be getting closer, but I can't really know for sure.

Oh well.  I should be doing my next installment of the video log soon, maybe tomorrow after work.  Take care everybody.

VLog is live!

The first VLog is now up!  It has been named Eskimo Brother because I suck at names.

You can go here to enjoy it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg-M0HA0zx0

If you want a question answered in a future vlog, ask it in the comments or in the IC Blog thread on Smashboards.  Thanks for sticking with me folks!

And sorry its quality is kinda lame.  The video and sound, not what I say.  That part's awesome.  F'realz.

...

I just watched the movie Waiting For Bobby Fischer, and it made me think about a few things regarding winning, losing, what competitive games do to you, and what we do to them.

Let me start by saying this: the more you add to a game, the more you take away from it.  Not the game itself, but the event, the playing.  Say you add sponsorships, crowds, tickets, merchandise.  You add titles.  You add a crowd.  You add hype.  You add rivalries and spectators.  You add ego.

Adding these--not always, but often--subtracts from focusing on the game itself.  The reason most people play a game, and devote themselves to its rules and intricacies and advancement, is for a single reason; they like the game.  Sometimes the initial interest turns into a passion, an obsession.  These people can't quit no matter how bad they think they want to.  You think you quit, you'll be minding your own business, and then somehow somebody reminds you that the game exists and you are drawn back into it.  You can't resist it.  The only way to leave is if the fire dies down on its own.  It's a trick candle of the heart.

Because to you, thanks to whatever weird genetic/cultural combination that crafted you, the game is just beautiful.  Some games are fast paced, some are slow.  Some require twitch reflexes and some require snail-paced planning.  Some are intuitive and some are analytical, though just about all are really a mixture of both.  Different games call to different people, and most of the time we can't help ourselves.  We're weak to those games.

And it's kind of stupid, even.  You started off playing for fun, and then you'll go off by yourself to practice for hours and you won't have even a smidgeon of fun, just so you can be a little bit better the next time you play.  And sometimes the game drives you up the damn wall for whatever reason, and you can't help it.  It's a habit.  An addiction to play, because something in there is just too beautiful for you to let go of it.

Most of us want to be better for no reason beyond a simple inexplicable want.  At least, initially.

This is where it gets weird and a little sad to me.  You have the game, and you have the players, and it's pretty awesome all in all.  But the moment you add things like hype, spectators, tournaments, championships, and titles, something both amazing and terrible happens.  The spectators develop a sense of entitlement.  They make demands on the players.  They start dictating the shoulds and shouldn'ts of the game for the people who are actually playing it.  They add foreign elements of pride and ego and territory into these events that, as far as the game is concerned, don't exist.

Players begin to worry about who is watching, and by the mere act of observation, the game is changed.  Players act more aggressive or defensive.  They become afraid to lose, in some cases afraid to win, or even to play at all.  And then people start telling the players what to do.  You have to play man.  You have to win.  Show them what you're made of, you're the best, prove it.  No, don't play like that, give us what we want to see.  You have to.

Says who?  Who says anybody has to do a damn thing?  The passion didn't start with somebody saying "you have to be amazing at this."  It came from within.  That passion is what got you up there, and then somebody else just encroaches on it.  Who the hell are they to tell you what the game is about, and what you have to do when you play it?

But truthfully, I can't hate on the crowd because when you love the game, both playing *and* watching, then you can enjoy it no matter what you're doing.  I love watching high-level play of most competitive events just because it's kind of awesome to see craft at its finest.  To share the experience with other people who feel the same, to have somebody to talk about it with, just amplifies the experience of seeing players who are good and amazing weave magic with their chosen game.

And being good, being amazing, that really was kind of the root of the game at first, wasn't it?  You loved the game and you wanted to understand it, and with understanding came more skill and with more skill came a new way to appreciate an old pastime.  And some people just want to watch and enjoy it and sometimes it's not any kind of act of malice or spite or bias but it simply *happens* that the game changes.

But let's say you add a title.  Suddenly you aren't thinking about the game anymore.  You aren't playing for the sake of the game or yourself but because somebody put something else on the line.  And while some people are immune to these kinds of pressures, most aren't.

You really can't account for how these things affect everybody.  Some people like winning just because it makes them feel superior.  Some people just want to be flashy, or some people just want to relax and have a good time.  And the best part is that the game doesn't care what your intention is, so there is room for you to play how you want and for the reason that you want.  And some people only play their best with those external pressures egging them on.  Sometimes the game can only advance because people, in the desire to win and be better, use those pressures to push themselves to the next level.  So who even knows.

What's the point of all this?  Well, I tricked you, because you read all this way only to realize there really isn't one.  I like crowds and hype and spectators and tournaments and championships and big games where everybody says "this is for all the cookies," and everybody screams and it comes down to the wire and the crowd is going nuts and you end up telling the story five times to the same person who doesn't even give a shit because you can't get it out of your head, it was that amazing.

But in some ways I also kind of lament it.  Because there's something utterly fantastic about playing without a purpose or a target or a title or a crowd, where we aren't inflicting needless expectations on the players of the game.  Where you can just explore the gamespace and go crazy playing how you want to play, constantly chasing that element of the game that set you on fire in the first place.  And the irony is that when you combine the first and the second, when the players up on the big stage forget about the crowd and play like nobody's there, is usually when everybody in the room ends up winning.

Happy New Year, everybody!

I'm not really good at doing the whole ball-drop timing thing.  But happy new years to the people who still read this thing (:

Also, I was thinking about maybe doing vlog stuff in addition to this so you can all laugh at my silly face while I say things.  And I can emphasize my points and posts with meaningless hand gestures.  We could do Q&A type stuff, I could just rant, and I would save this writing section for more analytical stuff.

Anyhow, to reiterate:

Happy New Year!

Two thoughts in a row!

Cons of living in Dallas, TX:

Only two people to smash with on a regular basis.

Pros:

Those two players are DoH and Darkrain.

So I spent the evening practicing with Darkrain, and I've come to a few conclusions.  The first is that I'm not very good with Sheik.

The second is that the moment I start wanting to really win, I start playing awfully.  And unfortunately, my strategy of trying to convince myself that "I'm going to lose, I will make mistakes, it's inevitable" and using that to keep my nerves down, doesn't work.  I still get way too upset over my errors and my mistakes.

I think I was in a much better place years ago when my focus was exclusively on maintaining the right attitude while I play.  I had a string of matches tonight where I was completely in the zone, and except for the occasional chuckle or "wtf was that" when something weird happened, I pretty much felt... blank.  It was kind of nice.  There was a moment where I thought, "I'm not really angry or happy," even though during those matches I was actually playing unbelievably well.  I just KNEW the right thing to do in--it seemed like--90% of the situations.  After about four or five games of this, I started thinking, "wow I've got it I'm doing really good heck yeah" and then it promptly faded and I went back to air-dodging off the level like normal.

I guess I'm going to try and stop thinking about anything except being calm and empty.  Before I even play, work myself into a state of as little emotion as possible, and focus on staying in that place.