ouch, i bruised my ego

03-25-24

Head's Up: this blog post is a bit of a bummer. Sorry.

It's been a pretty rough week, if I'm being totally honest.

Life has been lonely lately. IRL Friends haven't really reached out in a while, so I've been home a lot. Usually I'd be trying to plan a hang out or ask how things are going, but I feel like my efforts haven't been reciprocated. Call me petty but I wanted to see if others would make the effort if I stopped being the first to engage, and well, results have been lackluster.
( 〃．．)

I did have something to look forward to though. An actual local fighting game tournament.

As you can probably tell by my page, I like fighting games a lot. However, there isn't really a local scene where I live. So, this tournament felt like an opportunity I couldn't miss. It was a Street Fighter tourney being hosted at a nearby bar and I practiced all week for it; I didn't care that the flier was lacking in details and the whole thing was kinda shoddily scrapped together.

There was a lack of info on important stuff like tournament rules or the console we'd be playing on. So that meant I had to prepare myself for anything, even bringing three different controllers just in case. So, how'd it go?

In retrospect, I don't really know what I was expecting. First of all, yeah, things went wrong. Neither my controllers nor my arcade stick were compatible with the Playstation5 provided; so, I had to sheepishly ask to borrow someone's. I was also the only one with a face mask so I think that made me look weird.

There were an odd number of contestants so I got shoved right into Round 2 without fighting a preliminary match. So, I only got to play one game and lost it to the guy who went on to win the whole tournament, getting perfected multiple times.
(╥_╥)

The loss stung but I think it was more than that.

As I sat in the back of the bar, drinking a cup of water and watching the rest of the tournament, I thought: "Why does this feel so bad?" Half of the other players lost in the first round. They don't seem sad. Then, I looked around.

Everyone was there with their friends. They were drinking, chatting, having a good time. They didn't come here to win or to show off. They came to hang out and have a good time. But I didn't know anyone and was too anxious to even finish a sentence, so that left me beside myself.

To be honest, I came solely because I wanted to play Street Fighter and show off all the practice I'd done over several months. That's all I had. So when I couldn't achieve that, I left feeling empty. I guess that is what happens when you make a skill or hobby so fundamental to your identity. If the fighting game guy isn't good at fighting games, what does he got?

That's hyperbole though, don't worry. I don't genuinely think I'm just the fighting game guy. I'm much more than that, but I can't help but identify myself with just things that I do.

I play games. I like movies. I work on computers. And to not be good or knowledgable enough at the things that define you, chips at your ego.

I definitely define myself a lot by what I do or what I can provide to others.

It makes me contemplate over the relationship I have with my friends. Whenever, I try to get their attention, I often game-ify it in my mind. I think, "What can I do to make them more likely to want to hang out with me?" But, do they think that way too? Should they? No, that's far too transactional.

I don't really know where this train of thought leads. To be honest, I don't really know where to go from here in general. I gotta find some motivation for the following week.

Can't believe I got stomped so hard at a video game it made me get all existential. How embarassing...
(ノ﹏ヽ)