Baby’s first experimental post.

PURPOSE

Why am I starting this blog? Well, I have two problems. I’m (i) not very good at setting small, achievable goals and (ii) not good at sticking to things I don’t enjoy.

As you could probably guess, these problems are related to one another. These have been problems for a long time and I haven’t really made that much progress in fixing these things. I think that these are starting to really affect my career as I’m starting to find myself burnt out with my career.

I have an idea that by playing two specific video games, I can begin to fix these problems. and decided that starting a personal blog might be a good way to detail these. I don’t really expect anyone to look at this (and might be embarrassed if someone does), but something about the idea of posting these online instead of just writing it in a journal feels a bit more exciting. If anything it will be a good way for me to track my progress and keep myself accountable.

TEKKEN

I started playing Tekken with two friends. I was a bit familiar with Street Fighter and GG:S but never Tekken as I wasn’t very interested. To me, Tekken was the crazy game where the buttons were limbs and both characters QWOP’d their way into an awkward flailing contest. However, when we started playing I realized I was having a lot of fun. One of my friends kindly helped explain a lot of the mechanics and I noticed I was developing a genuine interest in engaging. I think that the constant adaptation during a match is really fun. Right now, I’m interested in learning King, Kuma and Hwoarang. King fits with my love of grappler characters, Hwoarang because I think TKD characters are cool and Kuma is just cute. I’m hoping that by setting small, achievable goals in Tekken I can begin to get better.

FINAL FANTASY XIV

So to be super honest, I think this game sucks. I think it’s incredibly boring. I want to get into it because my friend likes it and we talked about picking up a game with incremental progress. I previously played the game as a Lancer until ~Level 26 and it was a boring slog. I picked it back up and got to ~Level 33 and was ready to call it quits again. Yeah I became a Dragoon but the game is just running from one place to another and doing tedious stuff. I told my friend I wanted to quit and I got the sense he didn’t think I was really giving it a fair shake.

I talked with my roommate about it and he basically helped me realize that I fundamentally misunderstand how to play multiplayer games. I’m used to playing single player games where you can just grind it out for long sessions by yourself, but multiplayer games are not designed that way and in fact are really boring to do that way. It’s a great way to get burnt out. FF in particular is a rough one for that because the story is supposed to be the most engaging part. I had been playing it mindlessly and just skipping all dialogue and getting through the story quests as fast as I could.

Now my friend has told me that the game gets more interesting and the story gets really good – it’s just the early game that’s rough. And it’s ROUGH. But I do trust that it’s going to get better. Pat from Castle Super Beast whose opinion I trust a lot seems to like the game. I guess I gotta just grind it out.

My roommate pointed out that setting goals could really help. Playing the game without setting any near goals will just feel like you’re suffering in hell with no future. And this brings me to the real reason I’m doing all this. I hate my job because it feels like I’m not working toward anything. I have no future goals. I hope to learn how to set future goals through this and maybe in the process learn something useful about my life and work. I hope to commit to both of these games and see real progress that I can document here.

LONG TERM GOALS:

Tekken: Something about getting to X rank in ranked? Knowing how to do basic combos with each character?

FF: Reach the next DLC.

SHORT TERM GOALS

Tekken – Learn 2 Hwoarang comboes

Final Fantasy – Play 1 session where I don’t skip any of the dialogue