Inconsistency

Another week, another speedrun.

For those of you who don’t know what a speedrun is, it’s when people try to finish a game in the fastest possible time. Imagine beating Pokémon Yellow in just under 2 minutes. Yup, it can be that insane.

You won’t believe how intense certain sections of the gaming community are when it comes to World Records and cheating scandals in the speedrunning scene. The term has been embedded in gaming culture so much so that “speedrunning” has become some sort of a meme, for lack of a better term. For example, if you’re constantly performing terribly at your job, you could say you’re “speedrunning your employment.” If a famous star says something offensive on Twitter, one could say they did a “speedrun of their career” if they get canceled.

But, yet again, this tangent is becoming unnecessarily long, so I guess I’ll just get into it.

For the past few weeks, I’ve managed to get into a groove where I could say that I feel amazing about myself. I wake up early, I get a lot of work done, I exercise (a little), I drink water regularly, all that.

But, recently, I’ve “slumped” back into a more sloppy way of doing things. I still get everything done, but I think the quality of me doing has gotten a bit worse. For example, I still can do my regular exercise (it’s not much btw I’m not at that level yet), but I sometimes put them off at 11 PM rather than my usual 4 or 5 PM. I don’t get up as early anymore, but I still get at least 7 hours of sleep (sometimes). Because I wake up late, the coffee I make isn’t as good because I skip using my weighing scale for measuring coffee beans and water. Work is still the same for me, but I’ve found myself leaning harder on my sticky notes to remind me what to do compared to when I was on that “amazing” run.

I used to always feel bad for myself when I’m like that, but because it keeps happening to me, I’m starting to think that it’s something that happens usually.

Before you console me or anything like that, do know that I’m not “depressed” or anything like that. I just believe that we have our highs and lows. Sometimes we do good. Sometimes we’re poopoo. Sure, we’re at fault too sometimes, but that’s beside the point. If I forget about working for a week, then that’s on me. But if I can’t work at the highest level ALL THE TIME, then I shouldn’t be surprised.

Sometimes, it’s fine to forget the weighing scale and make a subpar pour-over coffee. It’s okay to skip out on your morning coffee and have terrible headaches in the afternoon (not really). It’s fine to be an average version of yourself.

I’ll be back there again. For now, I’ll just make sure that my life doesn’t go up in flames. If you’re in the same boat as me – you got this too!

Allow me to extend the tangent from earlier. Speedrunning entails routines – remembering when and where you should press certain buttons. Speedrunners have baked all this information into their systems so strongly that many of them can play the games blindfolded and still end up finishing the game.

So for this week, it’s another speedrun until I wake up as better me. I’ll stick to the right things, and it’ll get me a favorable result, even if I’m a little off my game.