Things are alright :)

I finally made it out to Teance Fine Teas and oh...it really warms my heart being here, haha.  The atmosphere and vibe is actually not quite what I expected, it was much warmer and more tranquil than I thought it would be.  Soft light filtering in through the skylights as I sit here quietly, a steady presence in the corner as a handful of people come by and leave.  Most importantly, the white teas!!!  I'm looking forward to trying them all, but already I've quite enjoyed the two that I've tried.  A familiar base and a comforting energy, but with a touch of different complexity in their flavor.  The perfect way for a creature of comfort like me to try something new...

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The ALTTPR mentor tourney has been going...quite well actually.  Somehow my mentored races have gone....8 and 1 in favor of me and my mentees.  I mean, most of the credit there is not mine, but you have to admit, an 88% win rate is certainly nothing to scoff at!!!

Partly thanks to some kind works from some of my mentees, but mostly due to practice and self-reflection, I've noticed that I'm starting to shed a little of the internal impostor syndrome that I've (either consciously or unconsciously) held around ALTTPR.  I've always felt that I'm in an interesting "involved yet not involved" spot when it comes to the rando community due to being invested and interested enough to study a lot about the game (in my own ways), yet also remaining uninterested in most community events and competitions and staying largely in the outskirts of things as an introverted loner.  (...although I'm starting to think lately that maybe I just have a false impression of how involved everyone else is)

Last year was interesting because I knew from having won the Mentor Tournament in 2022 that I was certainly skilled and knowledgeable about the game to a good extent, but at the same time felt almost underqualified to be a Mentor (not that there is any sort of objective "qualification" that demands being met besides a willingness to contribute toward the growth of others) given my lack of competitive experience (and how I stopped practicing nearly as much, thus always feeling like "eh, I'm not really in top form like I used to be").

That carried over a bit into the start of this year; when I was asked to host one of the "Boots Camp" intro sessions to kick off this year's tournament, my initial reaction was "oh...really, I'm qualified for this?"  But of course after thinking about that again I realized that was nonsense; I had already done plenty of polished instructional videos on YouTube; this would be slightly different but really not that much different at the end of the day (I ended up being quite happy with my preparation and the information that I presented).

But really I think it was over the course of my mentoring practice sessions, and even my on-the-side casual plays that I realized that I've really gotten =quite= a lot more refined in all aspects of my play (execution, knowledge, and decision-making) since two years ago despite largely having "self-studied", so to speak.

My efforts in creating all of my 30+ "Bite-Sized Rando" videos on YouTube have also felt really validated recently...not just in how I've been able to point to them when sharing knowledge with my mentees, but honestly just realizing how much I've learned myself through the process of creating them (and how useful they are to refer back to when I inevitably forget something or other, lol).  As usual, I'm appreciating my past steady and diligent efforts...

I almost hate to think it out loud, but honestly there's a part of this new confidence that has also stemmed from simply listening and watching to other mentors and realizing that there are, in fact, times (maybe more than I would have thought) when I have knowledge about the game that they actually don't.  And that volume of knowledge has been slowly accumulating as I do more and more work to unravel what "good play" should look like.

Admittedly, it is a strange feeling though; like, why is it me of all people that would be the one doing this work to time out routes and calculate EVs and produce content about it, when I've always considered myself to be a hermit on the outskirts of the community that doesn't really get involved?  Shouldn't other people have done this work already?

Well, maybe it's not super surprising if I really think about it (and let's not pretend that I'm literally THE ONLY ONE, that is certainly tooting my own horn more than would be legitimate; there are certainly others who have done a bunch of good work, though perhaps not organized in the same way).  I think I've got that interesting mix where I play the game enough to have the skill and base knowledge, but also have the technical know-how and setup to be able to record emulator inputs, play them back, and then synthesize the side-by-side timings in avisynth, plus (and let's not underestimate this) the diligence to actually want to do it and put it up in a nice format.  I guess it's really for the same/similar reasons that my social dance events have ran so successfully in the past -- I've got that sort of unique blend of being both dancer and musician, but more importantly someone who has the know-how to precisely edit music, and also know =how= the music should be edited and sequenced for people to enjoy, because I've been around enough to know...

Perhaps part of this is also simply the nature of how information sharing just tends to be more ephemeral; you just get questions and answers buried deep in the message history of one of a million different Discord channels (because of course there are dozens of decentralized ones floating around).  Even in those cases where someone puts in the effort to time something out or come up with the detailed answer, it just gets posted somewhere and then vaguely remembered as "oh yeah, according to ___ you should do this here because they timed it out and it was fastest".  And that just ends up getting mixed in with all of the off-the-cuff "well, you should do this because it's better" that people say based purely on their intuition and all of a sudden you have very legitimate facts being mixed in with the equivalent of old wives' tales.  The end result is that you can't really believe anything until you do the science to test it out yourself, or until you've seen the video evidence (which is why I started my YouTube series in the first place...).  There IS certainly a lot of room in rando for differences of opinion on how you should tackle/play various situations, but raw timing comparisons and EV calculations ought to not be an area where you have to go with subjective opinions.

AAAAnyways, all that is to say, I've been really enjoying/appreciating this opportunity, probably more so than last year, and it's been good to have that around in my life to keep me busy / interested / excited about things.

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Work on Rhythm Quest continues slowly, as always...I got just a little sad (as always) thinking about not only how long the project has taken but also how much income I've lost from only being part-time...but hey, you know, it's all relative -- I'm making infinitely more than I was when I had been full-time on Rhythm Quest without a primary job, haha, and having coverage for therapy sessions and dental work and all that jazz is certainly not to be taken for granted.  I've been doing my best to just get as many good little bursts of productivity in where I can, and try to make the work feel less intimidating.  When all is said and done, I'm probably doing exceedingly well given the challenge of it all...

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It's a good feeling, to be able to count those small blessings in life.  To have those moments where you truly feel alive.