EPTMy name is Maarten, I'm a 23-year-old martial arts enthousiast and starcraft fan from Bruges, Belgium.
This week is my last week at my job. I decided to quit; go back to college in september and get a degree I can actually get a decent job with. College starts in September, though, so I've got a few months to bridge before that.
Ideally, most of that time will dedicated to getting my French and economics back up to speed. I'm going to study company interpreting and translating in Dutch, English, German and French. I'm in good to excellent shape for all these languages, except French, which I haven't spoken in over four years. I've also got zero knowledge of economics, so I may as well start introducing myself to the subject while I've got the time to do so.
I'm also an avid student of Aikido, and I train up to six times a week. I say up to six times because I've begun to slack a bit the past few months.
Now why did I begin to slack? It's a question that I've been asking myself on a daily basis lately and it took a week of snowboarding to find out why. Here's the story. A few months ago I decided to go snowboarding with some people I know. I had snowboarded before, nine years ago to be exact, and it didn't go too well: I managed to sprain both my wrists and lost all confidence. I basically made zero progress but I did have a lot of fun. So I decided that it was time to have another go at it: I'm physically fitter than I had ever been and I've become pretty damn good at knowing how to fall without injuring myself. I set myself some goals: I was going to take it slow and try to achieve that which I failed to achieve nine years ago, and I succeeded. I was able to reliably make turns at a red-level slope while staying balanced, and I returned home without injuries.
All that got me thinking as to how I approached my aikido training: before that holiday I obsessed about one single goal: the black belt. I wanted it, and I wanted it bad. I wanted it so bad that I actually trained myself into a burn-out since I was increasingly dissatisfied with how I progressed. I grew fast because of natural talent and hard work, but it was at the expense of others: I was starting to look down on people. That black belt was clouding my mind way too much. I came to the conclusion that I should stop training for that black belt. After all it's just a piece of dyed cloth. I decided to train just for the sake of getting better. I put the idea of having a certain rank behind me and just trained. I watched some videos of some masters on youtube and found some ideas I wanted to incorporate in my technique. I started looking into what I was doing and found mistakes I could correct. I changed my focus completely from being Tori (the one that executes the techniques) to Uke (the attacker) and it is paying off. My understanding of the techniques is increasing rapidly, as is my composure when attacking and undergoing a technique. Above all, however, it is teaching me where I can improve my own technique: I can easily tell when someone has not got me controlled anymore, and as such I learn to avoid getting in the same situation. It's an approach that is generally completely overlooked despite its effectiveness. In the end, my goal changed from "getting a black belt" to "getting better at it, no matter the rank."
What has this got to do with Starcraft 2? A lot. I have been playing Starcraft 2 since the early beta, which is well over a year ago. I started off in bronze and made my way up to platinum. However, because of my focus on winning and fear of losing, I quickly stopped playing 1v1 games on a regular basis, telling myself that it was because it was all a bit too stressful. I recently realized that it is only as stressful as I myself made it to be. The sad thing is that it took the removal of the loss count on Battle.net and a new season before I realized this. I played my placement match and lost it. I got placed into platinum league nonetheless. I proceeded to lose the next four or so games, much to my own frustration. It's then that I recalled the lesson I learnt while snowboarding. I decided to keep at it, and try to progress one area at a time, and take it slow. My main focus now is to not end up with excess minerals too quickly. This is proving to be quite the challenge, especially when you've got an army and some expansions to babysit. It's quite fun nonetheless. I will still lose a whole lot, but the goal remains improvement. I already consider it quite a feat that I've started to realize (a bit late, I know) that every loss is because I made a mistake too many and have been outplayed. I used to blame it on imbalance, but I've finally found the right mindset.
These are my goals over the next few months: to prepare myself as good as humanly possible for college and to keep at it, to improve my aikido and to avoid getting a burn-out again, all while keeping with my current training schedule and to improve at Starcraft 2 and to not get frustrated every time I lose.
The emphasis is mainly on "keeping at it".
Link to my SC2 ranks profile:
http://www.sc2ranks.com/eu/406128/Analyst#
If anyone wants to hit me up on b.net: Analyst.940
This blog is mainly meant for myself. Writing all this gives me time to reflect on what I have been doing and whether I am doing it in an efficient way, both in terms of achieving my goals and keeping myself from getting frustrated.
EDIT: feel free to comment on any grammatical error in the text. I might learn something from it.
