Speaking of rambling, I guess this is a good place to do some Pokemon ranting. I know this wasn't the biggest tournament ever, but I do take these subforum UU things fairly seriously since there aren't that many other settings to play my favorite tiers and I do love this community. I've talked a bit about this before, but historically I've never had a great relationship with this game since I relied a little too much on it for a competitive outlet and even meaningless validation since I didn't have a ton going on irl and needed something. I've always enjoyed the game to some extent, mainly building, otherwise I wouldn't have kept playing, but when it came to the factors outside the game itself, a lot of the time it felt like more added stress than fun. In a lot of tournaments like this, but especially in officials, I would constantly have mini confidence crises and hold myself to completely unrealistic standards. 2018 was when I had my main success in officials, but ultimately, the only real fun aspects were building and the team environments. Beyond that, I would put too much stock into what people thought about me and get caught up in way too much bullshit along those lines. Aside from that, my other big goal was to win UUPL and we ended up doing so in 2019. With that said, I dedicated wayyyyy too much time and energy to that tour and if we didn't win then it would've felt like the end of the world. When I finally took a step back, I felt like I had done all I really wanted to do on this site, feeling more pressure not to lose in whatever tour I'd sign up for instead of just trying to have fun.
This year has had a lot of growth for me as a person irl, and I don't think it was much of a coincidence that this is when it all came together, at least in the main tournaments I cared about, being in the UU community. Between UUPL, classic, and then UU snake, this is by far the best I've ever felt with the game itself, whether it was building, playing, or most of all, mentality. A couple years ago, if I was going for a lot of money in UUPL or picked highly in tours like this, then I'd be worrying about all the ways it could go wrong instead of focusing on enjoying it. This time around my confidence never really seemed to waver, and personally it makes me really happy to be able to say that. I would constantly feel like I wasn't doing well enough or not doing enough for the team overall, and ultimately it was never really worth the investment. With that said, it's so hard to just filter out all these random thoughts. Ironically by far the most stressful weeks for me this tour were when we were already in playoffs and I was playing for record more than anything. It was hard for this tournament to have gone much better, but that stretch specifically was so frustrating for me and the fact that this meaningless stretch was that frustrating made it even more annoying.
I still feel like I was a little too rigid in the builder this tour and that there's still so much more to do beyond my existing views, but I guess it worked out. It kind of is just my nature to never be satisfied with my performance in anything really, and it's certainly helped along the way, but it's honestly fucking annoying to not be able to just enjoy things for what they are a lot of the time. I've definitely made a lot of progress in this area, but it's still hard to keep things in perspective all the time. Like honestly, if I were to give any advice to some newer players in the community, it's to remember to try to have fun through whatever, since there's no point in participating otherwise. It's fine to be critical of yourself and understand where you can improve, but that should only go so far and remembering why you log on in the first place should take priority.
