I used to hate the word productive

 I used to hate the word "productive"

It always felt overly capitalistic. Maybe it was poisoned by the millennial blogs and self help tutorials that I shovel into my eyeballs every time I feel lost - but it never occurred to me that productivity was a path towards happiness. It always felt like an impediment.

Ironically enough, it was the name I chose for my blog. I complained about that fact every chance I got, making sure to distance myself from the dirty word most associate with money. Funny thing that happens when you disassociate from a word, you begin to drift towards its opposite. Especially when being unproductive is already a path of least resistance.

 The last time I wrote in here was February of 2020. If I had to guess, it's the longest stretch I've gone since starting. Not a huge deal, since this is hardly a money printer, but it's still a good indicator of how I've been. I've been, for lack of a better word, lazy. And it hasn't been great.

Maybe distracted is a better word. Or procrastinating. Or on an endless loop of inspiration and apathy, picking up new ventures or projects and allowing them to crumble just as quickly as they started. With an outsiders eye, there's no doubt a justification to this . "You're in your 20's! You're supposed to try things! This is the time to figure yourself out!" Often enough I've been able to accept that, to forgive my long streaks of undisciplined creative work or, sadly, my day job. But after a certain point excuses don't feel good. I lack a steady stream of inspiration, a way to foster and regenerate my internal passion. All of this staying at home, consuming videos upon videos, one tv show after the next, more ice cream and veggie straws (a sneaky way to make potato chips) than I ever had before - It's just not a life. It feels more like an endless cope than a journey to discover myself.

 My latest kick has been venturing into personal finance. Budgeting, investing, saving goals, early retirement plans. I feel a minor identity crisis from this sudden joy, since I've never been one to think about my future in such a fiscally minded way. There's a trickiness to what I'm about to write. One, because I don't even know how I feel about this. And two, I'm starting to realize a part of myself that might be different than what I tell myself. How do I explain this...

I've always been a very safe kid. When I was between the ages of 5 and 9, all of my friends were climbing trees and skateboarding, I was looking for quiet hobbies like video games or comedy albums that I would recite as accurately as possible. I liked pitching in baseball, I liked catching grapes in my mouth from long distances. I learned to juggle as a teen, something I try again every few months just to make sure I "still got it". 

Certain skills I learned far too late. Riding my bike when I was nine. My nephews can do it now, and they're 2 and 3. I tied my own shoes starting at age 9 as well. I guess around that time my parents realized how weird of a child they had on their hands. 

I was good at school, I asked a girl out in 4th(?) grade, I wrote my own jokes, I did standup for the first time at age 17, smoked weed at age 15 (sorry parents), graduated high school and went on to college, lost a lot of friends in 7th grade because they were smoking pot too early, had a girlfriend in 8th grade, quit sports to join theater, became a top smash bros player in town. I don't know when my childhood ended and my adult life began to take shape. I'm not sure where to look to guidance on my current life, to take a guess on my true identity, to start dedicating time and resources towards projects that I can actually stick to in the long run. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to build a cannon. Something that, when finished, I can use to launch myself into the life I dreamed of. The problem is that I keep changing my mind on the direction, so I keep making different calculations on the wind and direction and angle. Eventually I stop building the cannon altogether, and I just end up in the grass with a bunch of useless numbers and papers, before giving up and watching a minecraft tutorial on Youtube. 

It's hard to stay focused on these things. It's hard to build discipline when I'm still figuring out my direction. It's impossible to predict headwinds when I'm not even in the air yet. And it's even harder when I have extroverted needs that have been completely suffocated by this pandemic. 

So maybe I should stop hating the word "productive" I like being productive. Writing this felt productive, and it feels good. I should start hating the word "directionless." It's not that I don't have directions, I just haven't chosen one quite yet. I'm not lost, I'm looking for a place to launch.

Screw you, Saturday.

 I haven't posted in my blog in about 4 months. I have been writing, though, and I figured this time I could just share what I've been journaling.


This blog was always to keep me writing, to keep me "Productive", and I've realized how much I hate what that phrase does to me. This is about that. 



Day 30 (2/8/20)


Saturday mornings are liars. They have no agenda, no ideology, just tricks up their sleeves. They’ll kick your legs out and spit in your hair, all before you wake up, then when 9 o’clock hits they drag the sun up into your unwilling eyes. Those unprepared for the sadistic Saturday will struggle to understand what to do with themselves, and will resort to habits of media consumption or hangover survival. Anyone looking to make the most of this treacherous time-off will undoubtedly be tempted with taking it easy, why work when your week is full of wok anyway? Can’t I just have one day where I don’t need to try? And thus, Saturday wins.


It would be fine if it just took responsibility. For some reason Saturday is viewed as this unbeatable triumph, the inevitable light at the end of ever tunnel. You get the day off and you can stay up late. The only day with a proper intro and outro, it’s impact is eclipsed only by holidays and snow storms. This is the day for teenagers, giving them room to live according to their completely fucked up circadian rhythms to wake up at 2pm and go to sleep at 3 in the morning. Turns out we’re teenagers for quite a while, even into college when we learn to love the day even more, as it gives us the opportunity to both cure a hangover and prepare the next one. At 24, I feel beholden to the habits I formed just a few years back, and now I’m living with the consequences. I need to study Saturday’s moves, learn to defend and deftly counterattack, avoid the traps and make it do my bidding. For me, journaling is the first step.


Most days I don’t get to write. I mean, I could, but I don’t get to sit by myself and write the way I like. It’s being a little picky, and I really should learn how to get over my insecurities and write on the bus or during lunch, even though I think it’s still fair to want my own time to express my thoughts properly. Most of my mornings now are dedicated to smash, either editing one of my three projects a week (Regular podcast, new road to top 100 series, 1v1 podcast) or practicing the game, usually in tandem since podcast editing is just listening to my voice and cutting out the weird breathing. Usually I find some time in there to write with the occasional journal, but lately I’ve been using that time to write the top 100 scripts. It sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not, at least not really. Maybe I am, in a way. I want to figure out how I feel at this juncture, and now that I’ve gotten my water, coffee, and blue light lamp going on a Saturday I get to really dive into it. ALSO a new kitchen table, so I don’t need to hole myself away in my room or sit on a weird chair with my laptop on my lap. Even though it’s in the name, it doesn’t feel right. It’s just too big, and I like my balls to remain active, thank you.


The trickiest part of Saturdays for me is just how open ended they feel. I like going up to Rockland on the weekends, even though there’s a car ride involved and my 2009 Toyota is on death’s door. It feels good to lower all expectations, to allow the most productive activity to be doing laundry, and to forget about how much cleaning I should do in my apartment with my time off. It also takes me from the temptation of the computer, where (in not so recent history) I’ve spend dozens of hours in mere weeks getting back into games like World of Warcraft or League of Legends. I’m truly a gaming addict, and oftentimes it just takes one taste to put me swirling back into those worlds. Saturdays create a vacuum that can easily be filled with these travesties.


Even writing, the one activity I’ve sworn to protect, the ancient and sacred act of creating language, my most practiced art form, a pragmatic wrangling with my own identity and attempt to reach to my soul, feels like a waste of time when inside of Saturday’s hug of despair. It feels like I should be cleaning or exercising, but really that’s more my fault than Saturday’s. I’ve already tamed the beast by waking up before noon, I can stop blaming it now for every inconvenience in my life.


Plus, what kind of asshole gets mad at a day off? Seriously, I should be so lucky to even get this opportunity, this type of luxurious schedule, working only 40 hours a week and allowing two days in a row to do practically anything I want. Would a farmer look at a full acre of land and say “Shit, now I have to plant and grow crops, and I even have to choose which ones?” Fuck out of here, man.


I think my problem with Saturdays is just me breaking free of the old mold, the one I created when I was 14, using it as my day to really goof off, play the games I always wanted, sleep until whenever, then sleep some more. Eat like shit and don’t go outside and fuck the government (At this stage, the government was my parents and the school system.) I remember these days vividly, but not with any sort of fondness. I’ve always hated Saturdays, I think, and really I spent them playing video games because I didn’t really know what else to do. Even when I had a game, soccer or baseball depending on the season, I dreaded waking up to play them, so it wasn’t just that I was unbooked that I was miserable. I just didn’t like what I was doing, and I liked video games. 8 hours straight of video games.


Then in college came my fraternity years. Saturdays were, as the old saying goes, for the boys. Drinking, chilling, pissing the time away as young men often do. My favorite days were spend traveling to some sort of Smash tournament, leaving behind one set of paid friends for a set of earned ones. Those are still my favorite Saturdays, unbeatable in any measure, checking all the boxes of what makes a perfect weekend. Anticipation, aspiration, friendship, excitement, opportunity, drinking, making memories, the list goes on. There’s a reason I’ve stayed with this game for so long, and part of it was finally getting a counter to the shittiness of weekends. I could feel like I spent the weekend well, improving as a player while having a great time doing it, still partying and forming lasting memories.


Now it’s not so simple. I still have those weekends available, and I slot them out into my schedule, but I can’t do it every week, even if the events were available. Also, attending tournaments isn’t my way out anymore, at least not where I’m standing. Smash still is, but not in the same ways as college. It’s a lot more practical now, I guess. I don’t know. I told you it’s not simple.


A book I read from Aubry Marcus, the CEO of onnit, filled me in on the idea of “acute stress”, something I think about from time to time and is relevant here. In the book he talks about turning the shower completely cold right before getting out, shocking your system and giving it a small dose of this stress. It flushed out endorphins or adrenaline or something else that gives us a reset, honestly I don’t know, I tried it out a lot and actually like doing it, but it’s hardly the point.


What’s valuable to me was the separation of generalized and acute stress, and how that feeds into my Saturday problem. A full day off is not an acute warning, it’s a wide-eyed, deer in headlights, overwhelming-responsibility type of anxiety. When I introduced my “Road to Top 100” series, it started to give these days a little bit of a shape, with some real specific anxiety attached to it, something actionable and firm, which shows me exactly what I can do to get out of it. This is one of those rare times where I can actually remember setting a goal for myself like this, centered around a project, aiming for self-improvement. I wanted to make my Saturdays better, and I did.


This might have taken me an hour to write, with a small poop break in the middle, but it’s not about speed here. I’ve wrangled the beast, but I can’t let go now, not unless I want it to run away. This leads me into my real problem, something that clearly took a bit of journaling to actually get to, and that I’ve clearly written about before. Becoming complacent.


Complacency and productivity seem like brother and sister to me. Complacency is the brother, lazy and fun but never leaves the couch if he doesn’t have to. Productivity is the Type-A older sister, doing her full morning routine before most sane people have their first coffee. The struggle for me is figuring out who I want to hang out with. They both seem shitty, but also kind of great. Lately, I’ve wanted to get to know the ladder. She seems like she can help me get to where I need to go.


This feels hard to write about. I’m not sure why. I’ve always had a difficult relationship with productivity, and it turns out that personifying it and capitalizing the ‘P’ didn’t make it that much easier to understand. My attempts to keep myself productive usually end up somewhat successful but ultimately confusing, and when the time comes where I inevitably fall off the horse, I turn highly introspective and try to figure out what the hell happened.


Good sign though, I don’t feel anxious. I just want to learn about this. Why do I hate that word so much?


There’s a lot of baggage to productivity. Part of it is personal, my parents both wanted me to be more “productive”, albeit in their own ways. I never knew how to process it, and the mixed messaging meant none of it really went through, but I’m starting to think that it’s a blessing that I wasn’t too influenced by it. The word became more of a ringing in my ear than a soul-binding treatise, so dealing with it feels more like getting a bird out of my kitchen than ripping my heart out of my chest.


What I’ve discovered so far is that productivity is the secondary goal, not the motivating force. It doesn’t work for me to get up and say “Time to be productive!” then get up and start clanking dishes around and mopping the walls. The sentence itself is nonsense, what does that word even mean? There is no positivity to it at all, even though it pretends to be nice and inspiring. Now it’s used more as a tool of self flagellation, “I need to be productive today” just sets us up for failure, it’s generalized stress, it bugs us out, gives us zero clarity, helps us achieve nothing. I hate the word so much.


I also try to not get too caught up on it for too long. At the end of the day, I can say “wow, productive day” as a way to reward myself, to look into the eyes of the beast and laugh, “Hah! I’ve conquered you. Today, I’ve won.” But even then, what am I really saying? That today was a win? All other days, those were bad. Tonight I can celebrate, because I finally put one up on the board. If I hadn’t, well, I would be miserable. That kinda sucks too, no? Putting that sort of pressure on yourself for the next day off? I don’t like it, either.


Productivity is just a word of judgement, either way you slice it. It’s either looking forward or looking back, it’s not a word of being present, it just can’t be. Even if you’re saying “Wow, I’m currently being very productive!” then you’re just patting yourself on the back, rather than doing that for which you are reveling. There’s no winning with this word! Do you see why it sucks? I think it sucks.


Yet, it’s everywhere, and doesn’t seem to be leaving our zeitgeist. That’s fine, what’s it to me to change it, I just don’t want to weaponize it. I hope I never say to my kid “Don’t you want to be productive?” It’s pretty much the same as saying “Don’t you know you’re going to die?” Fuck that shit.


Acute stress. Actionable goals. Those are helping me, right now. I feel it already, looking at my messy kitchen and wanting to clean it. That’s stress. Not anxiety. I found a small difference. I can get up now, I’m allowed to let this journal sit. It’s done its job. Screw you, Saturday.

Lotta energy for 6:30 PM

I have vanquished the day off

I used to be scared and overwhelmed of these days, and there's plenty of proof of that in this very blog. I still have bouts of anxiety whenever I have a day where I'm all alone, with nothing but my own ego to hold me accountable. I'm actually quite good at forgiving myself for the days where I do nothing, where I wake up late, potentially hung over, and do the bare minimum so that I don't completely hate myself.

I'll be honest, I just came off a week of that. Ashley and I took the week to go on two mini vacations, on which I did anything but crush it. The only thing I did crush was the wine or beers we kept having. Maybe it was the vacation that gave me the urgency that I felt today.

If I'm being even more honest, I didn't even have that incredible of a day. I woke up at 9am, showered and went to the gym, did laundry, went food shopping, and cooked dinner. The laundry I had is lying in my living room, unfolded, yet the feeling of accomplishment is still washing over me. I still have more to do, for sure. Then again, I'll always have more to do. I guess the game becomes having the energy to do those things, as well as actually enjoying the chores in real time. I'm starting to get glimpses of all of this, with moments like this of self reflection and honestly saying "It feels good to live this way."

But this is a day off, and I'm inspired to admit to myself that I want every day to be like this. An obvious goal, a dream shared by plenty of people I'm sure.

Maybe not every day though, shit, I don't know.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how inconsistent I feel about any of this. Currently I feel pretty great, let's just set that in stone. I think any day with exercise and healthy eating, plus making my own meal, is a day ought to be replicated.

There's good and bad to that inconsistency, though, like it's good how I'm slowly starting to increase the 'floor' of what makes a productive day, or how I change up my morning habits for the better because a random book told me to. Then the bad inconsistencies, the scary ones, where I seemingly change my career goals every month or so. Or that, for some reason out of my control, tomorrow might end up being a total crap shoot because hey, I had a good day on Monday!

Maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself, but that doesn't sound quite right. It took a little bit of pressure (or willpower) to turn today into what it was, and now I'm happily typing along without a shred of stress nagging at me. Maybe I just don't fully understand all of the factors that motivate me at one given time, and so when the pieces come together and form a "productive" afternoon I can only look to a decision or two that lead to that outcome, and that means I give those decisions too much credit.

Or maybe it's much simpler than I make it all out to be, and that healthy diet and exercise really do give you more energy, and when I make the small yet significant decision to go to the gym and have salad for lunch that the rest of the day is much easier to pull off. That sounds right. It's a thesis, I guess.

The scary part is when that isn't enough, when the momentum wears off or some cosmic alignment doesn't work in my favor, and I realize that there's a limit to our willpower and sometimes we gotta eat shit from time to time. Realistically, when I'm reading the words as they're coming out, that's not that scary. But it certainly is confusing.

I think the really shitty part, when I try my absolute best to be as self-critical as possible, is realizing that there's still not much that's really produced. Like yes, I wrote this blog, and I'm about to record an episode of "The Wannabes", but there's still something that I need to work on without knowing exactly what it is. That might be the next step for me. I need to write something real, something that can be made, something that will actually fulfill me creatively. That is the work that will advance my life, not just burn off vacation calories, clean my clothes, or prepare food for the week.

So, fuck, I scared myself. I didn't know there was anything to be scared of going into this. I genuinely thought I would sit here and marvel at my massively successful Monday... but, no, I guess that's not where I'm at. I need to find a project, something that will convert the energy from the gym and salad and turn it into real, creative fulfillment.

That's when I can have a 'perfect day.' Anything less might as well be a waste of time.

This really matters

Just had a big tourmament. Feels nice. Ive done this before, written down my thoughts after a big win. This is fresher, though. Im still in the phase where i get to enjoy it, where the tweet i sent out picks up buzz and friends reach out with their "good shit dudes" and various positive emojis. Its all.. great. It warms me up all over, despite my rain-soaked socks and general dampness. 

Its not profoundly emotional, at least not anymore. Immediately after each set, yea. Beating leighton felt great, since he's been on a tear these last few months. Slox was a surprise, and what really stood out was how i grasped the win. 2 stock each game, executed with discipline and a clarity that i havnt felt in a while, maybe ever. Im not sure if ive ever felt so confident, and somehow i was able to access it again 10-15 minutes later against smuckers. 3-1 Against him, one 3 stock. I played strong. I deserved it.

Ive matured as a competitor enough to know how much this actually matters. Rankings wise, not at all. HNC is in the early stages, still, and not counting towards any PR. Maybe this helped me remain comfortable. In any case, im not too broken up about it. The wins still matter.

Its important to be validated in melee. Its not a cool thing to say, but we all seek it as players. I want the glory. Its taken a long time to accept that, to allow myself to seek the glorious victory and bask in the after glow. A healthy dose of that juice isnt just good for you, it's critical. Without it, where is the drive? What makes up the eternal fountain from which all competitors drink if not for the thrill of the win?

The tough part is, these goal posts are always moving. Playing the same people and getting the same "good wins" has diminishing returns, and context is everything. Im lucky to have had moments like this come with a sort of seasonal frequency, enough to where i never forget the taste but not so much as to have it be expected of me. Ive had bad tournaments too, of course. Brackets that knock the wind out of me, leaving me dazed and sending me out of the venue to walk and recover. Without these failures, of course, this current moment is almost nothing. 

Even without ever bustering out, playing to your seed starts to wear a person down. These wins prove to me that im capable, my gameplay proves that im better, this feeling proves that this is all worth it. 

Kind like "Oh yea. That's what this feels like. This is the best feeling in the world."

I wont project where this takes my ambition, how i continue on my training, my lifestyle or habits, who knows how it will play out. Now is not the time to set those plans. 

Im home now. Time to change these socks and knock the FUCK out.

Thanks for reading <3

I'm still not a better person

I cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription.

Note: If you're unfamiliar with the controversy surrounding Blizzard and Hong Kong, I suggest reading into it here

It's the first "political" action I've ever taken, besides voting. And I did it selfishly, not because I feel like it will really make any difference. I read a comment, something off-hand on Reddit, that said it's ok to take a stand on something like this just because it feels good. And so I cancelled it, and I'm sure my short-term productivity gains will prove this was a good decision.

I'm much more influenced by outside influence than I'm comfortable admitting. I take compliments to heart and insults to the gut. I follow closely the engagements on my Tweets and downloads on my podcast. Sometimes I'll look to my bank account for validation, not because I have a lot of money by any means, but because I had no money when I started working full time and it feels good seeing progress. I'd be lying if I said it's a priority to change this about myself, but some part of me is always aware that it's not healthy to lean on these things for any sort of happiness or stability. There is no magic number that will fulfill me completely, no viral tweet that will launch an amazing career. This part is just to remind myself of that.

This feels different, though. Like anyone else, I've been loosely following the Hong Kong protests in these months(?) for which they've been going on. I cheer for their tenacity, and even though there's virtually little I can do, this one action feels like solidarity. That even though I understand it's entirely for my own well being and conscious-soothing purposes, I can say without hesitation that I did something. I also know that every time I would pay that monthly payment, I was supporting a company that bent over backwards to satisfy China's brutal regime. I'm sure I do 100 things that contradict this, and I'm not trying to piss off any of my family in writing this, but I'm just here telling the story of the day. I quit something I enjoyed because my politics urged me to do so. I believe I acted truthfully. I do, indeed, feel better.

So now I'm thinking of what leads me to do anything, what constitutes "duty" or other such similar buzzwords. Is it enough to simply pay attention and react with honesty? Is it our duty to completely understand the days' topics, trusting the media with a grain of salt, finding the absolute truth before doing anything? How much of that is actually finding validation for doing the things we just want to do anyway?

How much soul searching is appropriate in simple consumption decisions, and at what point is it crippling? We of course need to take action eventually, we need to eat and shower and stay mentally sane. How can I tell when I'm being driven by Id or Ego, and when my willpower is low, how much self-criticism do I hammer into my head? These thoughts orbit me like dynamically-sized moons, mysteriously fluctuating in power, affecting my tides on a whim and causing blind spots at inopportune times. Sometimes they serendipitously align, leading me into a day of expression and love and confidence, bellowing positive waves for days to come and enchanting my mood with a faint golden hue. As though a sign from God, there's just now a beautiful sunrise coming through my window, angled just right so as to bless my hands but avoid my eyes.

I don't want to sound pompous or pretentious, since this is all just a basic action that many people would consider easy anyway. But I enjoyed my time with WoW Classic very much so, and have done a great deal of mental work to justify and accept how I played it. In the two months it's been out, I've accumulated more than 80 hours of play time. I can judge that number all I want, and I invite you to do so to your heart's content.

I now look to Hong Kong with a selfish and vain gratitude, as their actions and commitment to justice simply let me become more productive with my mornings. How fucked up is that? It's the best I can do, though. At least for now.

I walk away from this not with pride, not with a better understanding of honor or duty, but really just a good morning under my belt. A cold slap in the face to remind myself of what I value, and a short battle between my Id and Ego where the Ego emerges victorious. Maybe this is a first step to a capital G Good life, or maybe just a one-off virtue signalling content-seeking ploy for attention, or a simple way to satiate my growing fears and insecurities about the world.

 It's not as fun as Warcraft though, I'll tell you that much.

Make Money off Melee

Welp, it's that time of the Melee community's conversation life-cycle when we all despair on our game's financial opportunity. Or lack thereof.

Time to crack my knuckles and cautiously enter the fray yet again, and yes, I'm overtly aware of my position in all of this. Not as invested as top players, not as visible as top commentators, not nearly as committed as the top TO's. But I have opinions dammit, and I've covered/thought about the topic enough to at least give some insight.

So what's the problem here?

Melee is a difficult game to love, sometimes. We all know its intrinsic value, everyone inside the community has no trouble understanding why we love it so much, and what draws us to competition and large events. The game, the community, the energy, all of it. It's engaging and big and feels important, and the bonds I made within its borders are some of the strongest I've felt in my entire life.

There has been a common understanding that the finances are hard to pull off, damn near impossible for 99.9% of players. And, opinion time, that's kinda where most Esports are right now. We all see the big Fortnite and Dota 2 prize pools hitting the news, breaking records and confusing our relatives, and every time those winners hold up their seven figure checks the Melee world breathes a collective sigh into their bowl of Captain Crunch. "Why can't Nintendo support us like that?" we ask ourselves, before slurping down the remains of our dinner.

It's true, our developers don't support us. There are paths to this changing, feasible business strategies that rely on Nintendo fundamentally changing their views on Esports and 'Gambling', but most of these outcomes are a Pipe-dream. We know this. Most conversations, then, don't become about finding a million dollar meal ticket, but rather about survival. How do we keep our game alive, as we wander through the desert in the fruitless search of a promised land?

When players like Fiction and iBDW are pushing the game to it's limits, taking sets off of the absolute elite, yet can't seem to find a sponsor, what does that tell us? If players of that caliber are struggling to find stability, hell, even a stipend, then that's as much of a canary in a coalmine as I can imagine.

Financially speaking, our community is in the wilderness. Personally, I'm happy that I've never became a top player, since their struggle exceeds that of a local PR. To reach the top echelon of play requires sacrifice, both time and money, and when there are bills to pay it starts to become a question of "is this worth it?" Right now, we don't really have the answers.

 As I've said in a previous post, aimed at Moky and iBDW, the best bet is for our rising stars to buckle down on brand and do everything in their power to market themselves. Slime puts it simply in a tweet, saying "Your job is to ultimately sell doritos, by being a god gamer, that's how the ecosystem works. any time you do something online or appear [sic] ask yourself "how will this help sell doritos"

Melee won't bring in money, but attention will. Our most important KPI is not exactly viewership, which is great for big tournaments, but rather our returning viewers. We have a strong following, a committed community, and that is 100% marketable. Maybe Doritos isn't elbowing through Bugals and Lays for a spot on our stream, but there are absolutely opportunities out there. The question is, how do we get them in on the action? Smashers in the marketing world, this is your time to shine.

There's an incredibly important point that always gets lost in these arguments, and that's the TO's and other people working in the background for these events. They are the liver of the melee community, misunderstood, critical to life,  and constantly dealing with problems caused by alcohol. The TO's are running a thankless gig, and frankly I don't have the capacity to speak their truth right now. I reached out on Twitter to hopefully find someone that can shed light on their side of all of this, but from what I understand, they aren't exactly rolling in dough themselves. The Tournament Organizers might be the most important part of this solution, because guess what, if Taco Bell approaches us with a million dollar deal, It'll be Juggleguy handling negotiations before Mang0 does.

Let me end off with my personal experience, with my fledgling melee podcast and a short history of traveling. The greatest thing financial opportunities in Melee are likely outside of the game itself. Networking is brought up a lot, and although there might be some semantic satiation that renders the word meaningless, it's undoubtedly true that a wider network will help you find a good job. A job you don't hate, and one that can support your melee endeavors as we wander endlessly through the desert. Getting a part-time gig is not losing, it's called making a living. Every artist, comedian, singer, etc. has supported themselves this way. It needs to be considered.

For the top players, building a stream if of course important, but I'll stress that distribution is much more so. Look at Ludwig, he doesn't just stream, he has a YT channel and twitter accounts that puts his content out frequently. He gets commercials and sells merch. His commitment to content has gotten him to where he is today. Brand yourself. Marketing is the way out. Sell those Doritos.

 "cool ranch will lead you to the promised land" - Slime

Sorry. I've been Playing WoW

I really shouldn't have to apologize.

There's a sinus like pressure building up in my.. well, i don't know exactly where to place it. My soul? Too dramatic. My ego, maybe. Somewhere in my brain, where my responsibilities reach my ambitions, I have a gnawing feeling that I'm doing something terribly wrong. I'm talking about, of course, world of warcraft classic being released and me playing it nearly as much as possible.

I actually wrote about this a few weeks back, but never felt the need to put it out on facebook the way I usually do. Maybe it was the shame. Actually yea, that's all it was. A bit of proof that this isn't a new feeling, that I was hesitant from the start, and that I can't shake the feeling that I'm not going about this the right way.

Right now, I don't feel guilt. I love playing this game again, especially at a time where I'm actually old enough to understand what to do. It's immersive as hell, it's fun and challenging, and it's filled with nostalgia. Like, that's it. That literally should be it.

The sad truth is, WoW isn't a game, it's a lifestyle. I'm not saying that I'm hardcore about it by any stretch, just in case my gamer friends think I'm flexing over here. All I know is that there's no other Video game like it. No Youtube channel, TV show, Streaming platform... Hell, even getting into TikTok didn't put such a dent into my free-time. WoW has, over the passed few weeks, stolen my free hours away from anything that wasn't pinned down. It has given me a new reason to wake up early for work, shit man, I even downloaded it on my office computer so I have a chance to play it when I'm not home. I am in there bros and brahs, and I have feelings about it.

And before I let anybody down, let me say that I don't have a take on this. Not yet, at least. All I can do is put words into existence and see how they feel reading back to me. I'm in strange territory here, since my ego is still too big to admit how easily I fell into the same routines that I had at age 14. I don't know if I'm ashamed of myself, and I don't know if I'm having a great time. All I do know is that I have gotten this far listening to my gut, and going against it has gotten me in trouble before. All I know is that today, for no particular reason, I felt more inclined to scribble down my madness instead of leap into the enticingly violent grasp of a gaming masterpiece. That's why I'm here instead of there. My gut says there's something wrong.

Now, I'm not going to quit. No way. I think I'm comfortable enough in saying that this game is insanely fun. Different than any gaming experience I've had in my entire life, even compared to playing this same exact thing as a kid. Somehow, it has exceeded every expectation that I had placed onto it, since I'm not only living in the nostalgia of a (seemingly) long-lost youth, but I'm correcting my mistakes in real time. I'm succeeding where I had once failed. blistering passed progress that would have taken me thrice the game-time as a dumb-ass kid.

Not only that, but I haven't sacrificed anything that's truly detrimental to my life...

Well, hold on a second.

Maybe I don't mean "truly." I most likely mean "immediately." I don't **Think** that I'm screwing myself over, doing something wrong, acting in a way that I may regret down the line. Figuring that our is an impossible task. I guess where I'm at, and what my real struggle might be, is trying to gain perspective on that voice in the back of my head. Is this just a mild warning, like a yellow check engine light that acts more as a distraction than a function? Or is it a loud trumpet that I'm just covering with one of those cones that they gave the weakest musicians in marching band?

How am I to react to my own self doubts, and can they be useful in any way? I'm lucky enough to have reached a point where I'm not in despair, and stable enough to know that it will take a lot of mistakes in order to really screw up my life. I want so badly to remain on a stable pathway up, to give myself quarterly reports as a human that satisfies my inner critic.

-------------------------------------Dinner Break-------------------------------------

Man, I need to stop complaining about this. It's not fair to give this self doubt so much credence. It's not wrong to find joy and to seek more of it when given the opportunity, and it's not short sighted to enjoy playing video games. I don't know where this fear comes from, or this lingering, pestering feeling that it's not okay to have fun.

If I'm being honest, though, is that I'm struggling to reconcile my desire to play games with my desire to create and produce and achieve. Maybe a little willpower is exactly what I need right now, some self-discipline in the face of the well-crafted, undeniably strong, behemoth dopamine factory that is World of Warcraft. I shouldn't deny myself it's glorious adventure, but I can't delude myself into believing it is true glory. I need to realize that the parental warnings given to me in my adolescence were not for their amusement, but rather an understanding that their loved one might make some tragic mistakes. 

So whatever this noise is, whether it's the remnant of loving parents' misguided advice, my own ambition trying to steer the ship, or simply the newest form of my anxiety just trying to fuck my shit up, there's something to listen to. 

But for now, the grind continues.