More Midnight Ramblings

There's something I really love about late summer nights. Well,
most of what I refer to as nights are actually mornings, the cracks
of dawn, witching hours, whatever else you might call them. I think
back to the days of my early high school years (I've just recently
graduated), when I was first getting into StarCraft II and finding
what has turned out to be one of my two true passions in life so far.
I'm alone to just sit and relax, reflect, drift in and out of good
memories and attentive reading of statistics, previews, and recaps,
listen to my favorite music, and daydream. I have hit a point in my
life where I feel like every day, every hour is one that I need to
budget. In some aspects, it's easing to be able to plot out how I'm
going to live my life before I'm thrown into a mess of uncertainty
that is the adjustment to freshman year in college. Sometimes,
though, it's disappointing, frustrating, almost depressing (although I
don't think I've ever truly experienced that).

To go off on a tangent, as I will probably do a few more times, I had
what I think was a unique approach to tackling stressful moments
when I was in high school, even though now it feels stupid to think I
was ever stressed when any inconvenience was a fault of poor time
management. I never sought to understand what stress even was.
I never said once, even thought, "I am stressed." I did my best to
keep a mentality that I'll just get through it. Tomorrow I've got 4
tests (yes, it happened a few times)? Well shit, I guess all I can do
is study until 12 so that I can get at best 7 hours of sleep. The day
will come and go, time will move at the same rate, I will trust in my
abilities in each subject, in my preparation for the test, and I'll find
moments here and there to do quick refreshers to give myself an
extra peace of mind. It worked pretty well. But it is weird to say that
I don't know what some of these feelings are that so many people
my age seem to be buzzing about. Not to imply that depression is
being exaggerated or overdiagnosed---I have no idea.

Going back. I reach this sometimes vacuous, mostly nebulous,
generally lethargic state (wow, shut the fuck up with your
pretentious words; honestly though I check with a dictionary for
most words and I feel like those are pretty precise and accurate)
where I go in circles. I feel like this is a big moment in my life. It
probably is. Going to college is a pretty big deal right? It is to me.
But the prospect of this momentous shift is daunting. Now actually
getting back to what I was saying earlier, every day I feel like I
should be productive. I feel the urge to do something. Today
I'm going to ladder and work my way up to top 50. Today I'm
really going to start working out (this one I've actually succesfully
started doing, so that's good). Today I'm going to read some of this
book. Today I'm going to work on a special feature article and build
my creds for a TL promotion.

Here's an aside about that. As much as I would love to, I have had
absolutely zero inspiration. Zealously said something about how
waiting for inspiration results in nothing getting done, which is
apparently quite true. I can't emphasize how badly I want to think of
something to write. I love writing for TL. But goddamn I've got
nothing. It's frustrating because I feel like the very fact that I can't
think of anything is proof that I'm not ready for a greater distinction.
Then again, I would never feel like I deserved it anyways. I'm
worried that when I get to college I'm going to have overestimated
how much time I'll still be able to devote to helping out with
coverage. Halting productivity certainly doesn't deserve any
distinction. So in that sense I'm kind of glad I'm not even close to
making "senior writer" or way down the line a color (blue or red, I
have no idea). I don't want the psychological burden of feeling like
I've set myself apart through self-developed standards of output
and work ethic only to start falling short of them. But the desire to
stand out persists. I'm a teenager, I'm insecure as hell, you bet I
want people to read something I wrote and praise me for it. I'd love
to break 30k on a piece at which I spent what would probably end
up being 20+ hours working. It nags at me every day, multiple times
throughout the day. It's perpetuated by a lack of general feedback
on the things I do. I don't fault the other writers, particularly the
editors/admins since this would be applicable almost entirely and
only to them, for not being more vocal with feedback. I firmly
believe in "he who is silent consents" and I have gotten the
impression that's just how this group of people operates. I'm not
going to beg for more comments with feedback. Even though I
crave it and embrace the good, I also hate it (the bad, that is). It's
stupid and illogical and contradictory, all that, but that's just how my
mind has been working in the almost 12 months I've been writing
for TL. Some things are obviously not constructive and shouldn't be
taken to heart, shouldn't become offensive. I shouldn't be so
sensitive. But here I am, telling you all this because I seem to think
that at this point the only catharsis is just to tell everyone that it's
increasingly demoralizing to contribute with such minimal reward.
It's made me want to quit a few times, but I know how much it
means to me and what a big part of my life it is, so I know I wont'. Is
that a sign of diminishing passion? Maybe. Is it just the wrong time
of day and I'm being more pessimistic than usual? Also possible.

So these things plague my mind throughout the day, and ultimately,
ruin my attempts to be organized, productive, anything. Want to
write something? Let's watch some VoDs I've already seen before
again. And some music videos. Oh hey I haven't been on reddit in
a few hours. Oh look, twitter feed. What's this conversation in the
skype chat about? All of a sudden I've lost an entire day. We're
inching closer to that big day. I'm going to plunge into a completely
new life, unsure if I'll be able to watch and enjoy StarCraft as much
as I do now, let alone write stuff for TL (good thing Proleague takes
a break for most of the fall semester). What if I don't even get to
write herO's Blizzcon article? What if I want to write more for
Blizzcon (and I feel like I probably should, given our staff numbers,
but we'll see) but don't have the time to because of school? And
now it's 3 am, and I'll sleep until the afternoon. I'll wake up and
repeat the process. Maybe I'll hang out with my friends once a
week (friendship insecurities, holy shit, that's a whole other blog's
worth of ramblings), maybe I'll actually get a few pages of that book
read. But I'll still end up watching lots of StarCraft. Excessive
amounts. I'll play more games against the A.I. to practice builds
than actual ladder games, accomplishing very little. I'll idle on skype,
twitter, reddit, TL. All the while, the dark clouds roll closer.

These are some of the best days of my life. I can keep my own
schedule, eat pretty much what I want, do whatever I want. I can
escape to different, but not necessarily better times. Days when I
was younger, the passion was perhaps more fiery, the blissful
ignorance was greater. I'll relive herO's tournament runs, stare at
WCS standings and anticipate this year's Blizzcon, and be oddly
satisfied with being able to put my playlist on shuffle and never feel
the need to skip a song. Once again, my demeanor twists. The
dark clouds flash bright silver linings. I'm really looking forward to
what I've facetiously dubbed "the beginning of my real life" in
exactly two months' time. I just hope between now and then I can
clear all this fog.