2021 in review and 2022 goals

Gonna be honest, 2021 was a pretty awful year for me. I started the year dead-set on majoring in computer science right after a pretty awful breakup, and I'm ending it three changes of my major and one college transfer later in the middle of a gap year with severe depression, and I'm still unsure of what I want to do with my life.

Right now my tentative plan of action is to work hard through the winter and spring, saving up money to go to college and getting a degree in art with an emphasis on illustration. I really hate the idea of going back to college for multiple reasons, but right now I feel as if it's my only option. If going to college what it takes for me to have a fulfilling career doing something I love, then that's what I'll have to do.

Right now I'm working DoorDash full-time, which I've been doing for the past year and a half after my arthritis made it impossible for me to keep my previous job. It's been going very well actually, and I've been making decent money. I like driving a lot and it gives me something to do. I have applied for a couple other jobs, including a part-time middle school piano accompanist, but they never got back to me. As much as DoorDash is working out, I would much rather find something to do that I am passionate about, possibly something art- or music-related.

I've been considering opening commissions for Twitch emotes. I'm still not that good at digital art, but I've had a blast making my own emotes, and I'd like to be able to use my talents to make other people happy. Piano streams are another thing I've been entertaining the idea of. Like I could just play random piano music I have memorized, or pieces I actually have the sheet music for. I know quite a lot of music from video games on piano, because being able to play video game music was my main motivation to improve at piano as a kid. I know there are a lot of successful musicians who stream themselves playing video game music, so perhaps I could get in on that somehow. My setup is really sketchy, but it could definitely work.

This summer I moved out of my parents' house and into an apartment with a roommate. I would have preferred to live by myself, but he's really cool and we get along fine. I'm just glad to be out of my parents' house at long last. I had a taste of that when I went to college in Ann Arbor, but covid forced me to move back in with my family. They're cool, but it's just way too loud in their house, what with my eight-year-old brother and everyone yelling all the time. I can't stand it, and I like that I live somewhere quieter now.

My mental health has not been very great, especially the past year or so (insert serious paste about Red here). I think I need a therapist/antidepressants/some sort of mental health treatment, so I'm going to try to find options. I've had depression for at least 3 years, but it's been especially bad since the pandemic began. For the past few months I've just been kind of numb, like I don't feel anything at all most days, and that's really not a good sign. It was happening gradually as well, so I didn't realize that my mental state was getting worse and worse. I remember thinking a couple weeks ago, "Hey, this actually isn't normal to just feel nothing all the time." I absolutely need to take care of that, which might be difficult, since my family is... not the most receptive to mental health issues.

After having bad experiences at the University of Michigan related to the extremely botched transition to online classes and either failing or getting horrible grades in every class, I decided I wanted to transfer to Grand Valley State University and switch to a music major. I practiced really hard all summer for my audition, absolutely NAILED it, then three days into classes I realized becoming a music major was a huge mistake. I quickly switched majors yet again, this time to art. A couple days into art classes I became so overwhelmed and my depression was so bad that I thought it best to withdraw from classes and take a gap year. So I've just been working and streaming, pretty much.

I've adopted an... unorthodox sleep schedule since dropping out of college. I work from 4pm until usually midnight, then I sleep from 5am to 1pm. DoorDash is busiest around dinnertime, so it works with my work schedule. But I'm just a night owl in general, too.

On the topic of speedruns, 2021 was actually a great year for me. I got sub-1:50 in Red Glitchless back in May, which was my ultimate goal for quite a while. I also learned Yellow Glitchless, XY Any%, Red Classic, and DP Glitchless (and Any% Manipless KEKW), although most of those times are easily improvable if I put in some work. I was even 4th place on the Red Classic leaderboard for a while, which I'll admit I got a kick out of. I joined my second Red tournament and actually made it past round 1 this time, although I died in round 2 to Sky Attack Blizz miss after an unfortunate death due to a Gen 1 miss. Still very satisfied with how the tournament went, and I got a massive race PB in round 1 too. I consider my round 1 race the best speedrun I have ever done. For my standards I was playing out of my mind; that race is the first time I've ever felt truly proud of a run I did.

The whole Red tournament was a highlight of the year for me. I caught as many races as my schedule would allow for, and I regret none of it. It was so much fun being in voice chat with everyone, reacting to the madness that is Red tournament round 1 races. Having pre- and post-tourney races with the Red race crew was just an absolute blast as well. At the beginning of the year I was really shy and kind of awkward in voice chat, but after many, many races with people I started to come out of my shell a bit. Red Classic races have also been such a blast, and it's been loads of fun doing more non-serious meme races like that where everyone is struggling with the worst Nidoran known to mankind.

Running Red Classic in Questing for Glory was also an amazing experience. Ever since I started watching Werster on Twitch back in 2014 and watching GDQ events, I had always wanted to eventually speedrun a game in front of an audience, and I did exactly that in QfG. I was really nervous and I choked at some points, but overall it went really well. The reason I like speedrunning so much is because I love the idea of knowing everything about a game. Every little programming quirk and strange decision made, and being able to relay that information in a way that people can understand. I absolutely do NOT know everything about any game, but I want to come as close to that as I can for Red specifically and be able to know why everything is the way it is. That's really vague and nebulous, but learning new things about games I enjoy is my favorite thing about speedrunning. I absolutely love providing commentary for my own runs, and I'd love to eventually commentate someone else's, or even a race.

I got both DS and 3DS capture cards, and I've recently been running Diamond Glitchless, which I will continue to do after a short break because of arm pain. I didn't think I would like running this very much because I wasn't huge on Gen 4 casually, but man is it a cool run. I still have a lot to improve on, and I'm not tired of running it yet, like I might be for other games. It's been really enjoyable so far.

As for speedrunning goals for 2022, I have a few things in mind:
- Get 3:49 in Diamond Glitchless (probably lower if I feel like it)
- Relearn Gold Glitchless and get a decent time with all the manips (sub-3:20 seems like a good goal, however I'll probably make a more concrete goal once I start running)
- Get 1:47 in Red Glitchless (The tournament made me realize I am capable of getting 1:47, so I will eventually practice my ass off and try to skip 1:48 entirely)
- Possibly learn Sword Any%? (I want to learn a newer-gen run that isn't XY, and the Switch is the only console subdivision I haven't run in yet)
- Improve one or more of my less-ran games by a bit (Yellow or XY)
- Try for sub-2 in Red Classic???? (unlikely)

I'm sorry this is very rambly. It is 6 in the morning and I can't sleep. It's also my 21st birthday today. So yeah, that's cool. I don't know how to end this, but I hope 2022 will be a better year than 2021 was. Also wow my first stream was almost 3 years ago. Crazy. I think it was Ocarina of Time 3D on Citra.