Week 10 - Still Alive

Hello. I've had a rough few weeks, but I'm ready to get back to the Mahjong now. This won't be a normal update, but mostly just an update on what's been going on with me.

By the way, if you missed it, Dasuke did a stream for National Mahjong Day where he went over the exercises from this blog, as well as a few more. He talks about them, why they're done, and how to do them with visual demonstration. I've linked timestamped sections in each of the exercise posts, but you can see the full video here:

As for me, I think I've gotten a case of ladder anxiety recently. This quote from an article on TempoStorm is pretty relatable:

But from that point, I couldn’t improve. I lost more games than I won, which led me to start queueing for fewer games than I used to. Even when I did queue, the games I played didn’t feel great. It got worse and worse, up to the point where I quit the game, without really wanting to actually quit.

It’s hard to explain. While I loved the game, watched tournaments and replays, read guides, and watched YouTube videos, I simply couldn’t manage to bring myself to press the Play button.

It's a pretty hard thing to fix. It's hard to separate yourself from your rank. I played some Mahjong Soul over the past few weeks, but couldn't build up the motivation to play Tenhou. I've kind of gotten over it now via accountability. I tell people how my games went, so they know I'm playing games. I've played a handful this week, and I'm planning to play a lot more over the weekend.

The rest of the post is just my excuses for not playing. Feel free to stop reading here, and look forward to a return to regular updates next week.

Ladder anxiety's not the only thing that got in the way of Mahjong. I've missed three weeks so far. The first week, my doctor changed my prescription for my mental health pills. Switching medicine has a bit of a handover period, so I got kinda depressed while my body got used to the new pills. At the same time, I decided to quit coffee. Might as well get both withdrawals out of the way at once, right?

And then there's actual anxiety. A StarCraft player named Geoff "iNcontroL" Robinson passed away on July 20th from a pulmonary embolism. Blood clots are pretty scary things, and I already have a healthy fear of death. I bought a standing desk in the hopes of avoiding the same fate. Fortunately, I already have a standing desk at work.

Additionally, shory, a Houou player I'm rather close with, quit Mahjong recently. It might be that his dissatisfaction with Mahjong rubbed off on me. We've been trying out a few new things to try to find something he might like. I've sort of been doing similar myself, floating around between various games, hoping to cure my ennui. Though, the summer heat makes playing games (which causes my computer to give off more heat) nearly intolerable.

I don't remember what resparked my desire to play Mahjong, but something did. Maybe it's due to me eating healthier. I've started preparing overnight oats, with fruit, dark chocolate, and walnut pieces. This then prevents me from raiding the snacks at work and eating Doritos for breakfast, so maybe that's improving my mood? Who knows... Well, let's see what happens over the next week!