Random thoughts I had about my experience in PSR so far.

I started learning Pokemon Yellow any% glitchless Sept 13, 2018. I steadily improved until I got a time of 1:57:57 on Dec. 20, 2018, after around 3 months of running. At this point, I was pretty satisfied with my time, and decided to take a break from speedrunning and do other stuff. At this point, I had rarely spoken to anyone in the community, other than asking questions in discord. I didn't really know anyone or interact with other runners in a 1-on-1 setting. I was a runner, but not necessarily part of the community.

May 25, 2019, I decided to pick up yellow again and go for pb attempts. Around a week later, I joined my first race, with Juanlyways and TiKevin83. I'd say that this was my first real introduction into the PSR community. I started joining a lot more yellow races, and being a lot more active in the PSR discord. Slowly, I got to know the yellow races better and build a rapport with them. Juanly, Araya, Diego, and Headbob were the first people I started talking to in PSR, and I'm really grateful for being involved in such a welcoming community. 

July 7, I got my first new yellow PB since I had picked Yellow back up again, and over the next month, I proceeded to set 4 more PBs, until my 1:55:39, in 6th place (at the time). At this point, I had always thought that I was capable of getting a good time, but this really cemented it for me. Not that I think 1:55:39 was particularly spectacular, but the fact that I had taken a lot of names on the leaderboard, and that I had a similar time to amazing runners like Wave, Araya, and Juanly gave me a lot of confidence. At this point, I was still only really interacting with the yellow runners in streams and in the races.

The week after my yellow pb, I started picking up red to enter the new tournament. It was really daunting at first, picking up a new game. The red scene was much more active with many more top runners, and I wasn't sure how I was going to stack up. Again, the community was amazing in helping me improve. I was constantly asking a ton of questions (including some very silly ones), but always got high quality responses from top runners willing to help out a newer red runner. A lot of experience carried over and I was soon setting some decent times in Red. The day before the tournament window closed, I had a 1:50:31 that unfortunately had no sound recorded, but I was happy to at least get that time after only a few weeks of playing red. At this point, I still didn't have any sort of expectation of my skill in red, since I was behind tons of other talented runners. I ended up in the middle pool of seeds for the tournament, with a 1:51 I had set in a race.

One particular experience I found noteworthy was the red tournament drawing for round 1. I immediately noticed that whenever my name was mentioned by a top runner, a lot of them were saying how they wanted to dodge me (or in Araya's case, how he wanted to destroy me). I didn't really think I deserved that sort of recognition from the other top runners yet, since there were other amazing runners in pot 2 that I thought were better than me. I ended up drawing Que and Sudo for round 1, and everybody was hyping our match as the "best one" of round 1 to watch. That definitely didn't help my nerves.

During the course of the next few weeks, I started joining a ton of races, and got to know a lot more people in PSR. I still didn't really talk to that many people, but more people were learning my name, and I was starting to interact with a lot more players. I still talked to Juanly/Araya/Wave the most, but I also was able to talk a lot with Crafted, who helped me learn about some different red routes. There's too many people to name here, but I can say that I got to know a decent number of red racers during this time, and I'm really blessed for it.

Even though I got out of the tournament at round 2, I still decided to stick around playing red. I didn't have a solid PB yet, since all of my PBs were set in race settings. I wanted to play red, at least until the tournament ended, just to see how far I could go. I had one offline run that was nearly on 1:45 pace, and that really shocked me. I didn't think I would be able to set that sort of time, and even though I choked it away, it was a huge confidence booster.

It took me a few weeks, but I finally set a "respectable" time of 1:47:05, notably bopping Wave at the time. It was at this point that I started to see myself as more of a top runner than just average. At the risk of sounding too egotistical, I felt like I was actually somewhat decent at the game. I gained a lot of confidence from that PB, and really took a ton of names with that score, landing at 6th place at the time. Top runners like Araya, Wave, Teppich, Hammer...I didn't think I'd see my name on that leaderboard so soon in red, but there it was.

Today, I got another pb of 1:46:39, which didn't move me up in the leaderboard, but was a good attempt nonetheless. I choked another good time away, but this one at least finished. It's a solid time, and one that I wouldn't be upset about leaving up and not playing Red. However, I'm just upset that I choked another run away to a silly mistake, and it makes me want to keep playing and get a run I can truly be content with. I don't really mind the time, but it's the execution that really irks me.

I'm not really sure where I wanted to go with this, but I guess I just wanted a place to write out some thoughts. It's strange to see my name so high on the leaderboard, but at this point, I think I'm undeniably a "decent" player at the very least. I definitely don't think I'm as good as the top echelon, but I'm close. It's still strange to see myself in that sense, since I don't think I'm particularly good, but the time is there. The biggest take away from this is that I just really enjoyed my time so far in PSR. I don't plan on stopping any time soon, but I really do appreciate all the people I've been able to build relations with. 

I'm not going to name everyone, but just wanted to point out:
Araya, Juanly, Wave, Headbob, Sudo, Weed, Fran, Wsop, Pokeguy...and many others, thanks for making my time awesome in psr so far.