An Open Letter

Me, L, and S went crazy today, and we went 9 wins 2 losses. I forcibly stopped playing because I have to fix my sleep schedule, yesterday I heard the birds at 5am before going to bed. That’s not great. Guess I’ll keep this short so I can get some more rest tonight.

40% of games you lose by default, and 40% you win by default – 20% of games you make the difference in. I know this is realistic, but I really don’t like the idea of 40% of situations where I am powerless. I was playing with T earlier today, and we had a random smurf support who hard carried and singlehandedly won the game for us. He had a 80% winrate, with 46 games as Baptiste. For him, it’s 40-40-20. I want more of that agency, I want to be good enough to be able to affect more than 20% of those games. I feel pretty bad if I win a game and it didn’t matter if I was there or not. I want to be useful.

The biggest advice I can give academically is focus on loving your subject. If you tell yourself that God you hate this project or whatever, you will hate it. But also there is a lot of beautiful things about every subject, And if you enjoy it, it's not work at all and life feels better.

In order to help with this, you have to have a good foundation and not be overwhelmed – so go to every lecture and make sure you really UNDERSTAND what they're talking about, not just being able to do the homework with chatgpt and Google. Another benefit to this is you never have to cram for finals, because you already know the information. And the entire quarter is just 100 times easier and more enjoyable.

Take courses that scare you, you will be surprised with what you are actually capable of when push comes to shove. Go to office hours for free tutoring, And also just to see what professors you get along with. Some of them are really not that scary and are happy to just help you or talk to you. Plus this has the added benefit of someone who can help you with letter of recommendations later.

Outside of academics, I honestly think most things are great to struggle with and absolutely crash and burn. For me I always saw people partying, And so I forced myself to go to parties and make party friends, and while I do enjoy it, I also realized that's not exactly my cup of tea. If someone told me “oh don't worry about it parties aren't that fun!” I wouldn't believe it the same way as when I learn from my own experiences.

This applies to almost everything – Go ahead and get in a relationship that has more red flags than a China embassy, make stupid decisions stay up super late doing something questionable, and do super cringy things that when you look back on your face gets red. Not to scare you, but this is pretty much going to be some of the last years you can do this kind of stuff without much consequence. Enjoy that freedom.

Take care of your mental health as much as you can, if you can get therapy I absolutely stand by that, even if you don't think you need it to survive. Therapy really helps you grow and have a nice voice of reason consistently. But also something I really wish I knew way earlier was the advice that people always say and that is backed up by studies is surprisingly true. If you get enough sleep, get consistent exercise, social interaction, and eat well(ish) you will mentally feel better, I started going to the gym 6 days a week for a little bit over a year now, and that has given me so many more benefits than I could have ever imagined. I would really recommend try to get into that habit and stick to it for 21 days without slipping up at all.

But I think most of all, be excited for it. Don't be excited for anything specific, like don't be delusional and think oh I'm going to finally have a super hot girlfriend or whatever; but be excited that you are going to grow and experience things like you never have before. Every single year in college I became a completely different person, and every year I think it was for the better. Get ready for a whole lot of shit in 4 years that will eventually feel like it went by in a blink!

One of life's most valuable things is the willingness to tolerate discomfort. If you can sit through things you don’t want to, and take it on the chin, you can grow – instead of sitting in stagnant comfort. I was coaching T in OW, since he no longer wanted to be the worst out of us. We ended up talking about my reasoning of bruising his ego as little as possible to give him consistent reward from that point onwards. I told him about how when I was worse at games, how I would put my ego aside and get advice and help from random good players who were insufferable. I told him about how I would go into it dropping all ego, and just accept it every time they told me what I thought was wrong. I don’t have to believe it, but in that moment I can either try to defend myself or I can accept it and get more information instead. And I chose the latter. Because of that, I have more information to decide what to do with, and because of that I was able to get way better at things. I think this same tenacity has benefitted me in all other facets of my life. I got better at the gym, because I forced myself to tolerate that discomfort and push myself beyond what my mind or body wants to naturally do. I got mentally healthier because I pushed my mind to face things and utilize therapy to its fullest by facing horribly uncomfortable situations. I got better at games because I fully set aside my ego and pride and got coaching however I could. I got better at academics only when I didn’t have an ego or belief that I was good at it already.

If you can, practice that discomfort. Just sit with it and see how you survive, and over time you will see how you blossom.

Let me get this clear, I have no problems with alcohol as an idea or a problem for me, but I do have a few friends that are alcoholics, or at least I kinda feel that way. I was playing with T, and he got pretty drunk and started getting very argumentative and aggressive, and then afterwards he kinda just goes quiet and starts throwing games. I don’t mind the games part, but it does suck how he goes quiet and wants to kinda verbally fight. That part scares me about alcohol I guess, I can see the dangers of alcoholism.

I wake up and feel like shit, but even though I know I should sleep I can’t bring myself to give up having free time to unwind. When I go to bed, my free time ends. And I don’t want that, so I end up staying up longer than I should be. I was almost falling asleep on the ride home, and I was sleep-deprived tweaking while playing with friends. I really need to figure something out.

One day you won’t be able to anymore. Nothing new will be introduced there – you may find some old relic that you didn’t know about, or hear a story about them, but nothing new will be introduced. There’s some limit to your interactions with them from then on. Memories also will fade, so you are slowly losing that part of them too. The scariest part is that this could happen at any time. I think about how my grandma died without ever resolving things with Mama. She intentionally chose to end it, and my mom will never be able to get that closure from her. There were so many things left unsaid. I think that’s an incredible weight that can’t ever really be undone or lifted, just lessened. My own death hasn’t ever really scared me, but the death of others does.

I hung out with A today because he was in town, and we ended up getting lunch, bowling, and then racing at K1. I had a blast, and I especially loved go-karting. I’ve kinda looked into racing to replace that need for speed, since I no longer think it’s responsible to get a motorcycle. I decided that the cost of being in an accident would inhibit every other part of life that I enjoy, and so it wasn’t worth the risk. But racing is really fun, no such thing as a speed limit there. I want to look into it more if I can.

I woke up horribly depressed from yesterday. I didn’t have the energy to get up or do anything, but because Hash needed to be taken out and fed, I got up. I ended up going to get food nearby, and didn’t feel shit. I didn’t want to just go home and bed rot, so I decided to drive to get boba, and halfway there I realized I’m not going to enjoy it and just waste more money, but I could go to a movie theater. I went to downtown Sunnyvale, and ended up in a very fancy AMC and watched the first movie that showed up – A quiet place: day one. Turns out that movie is horror, and also a prequel (for a movie I didn’t watch). I got jump scared several times pretty bad (good), to the point I had to keep reminding myself to not interlock my fingers as I’d squeeze down too hard. After, I guess I had enough of a shock to finally cal a friend to talk about it. I only really thought about that because I saw a sign saying “It’s ok to reach out” while I was driving over. We talked for a while, and I felt better. I got some caffeine and then dragged myself to the gym, where I then worked out a bit, intense enough to feel a bit more better. I did finally get that boba, and by then I felt somewhat back to myself. I went home and took my meds, did my laundry, and played a new game (which I will not say yet, for reasons I will eventually disclose). I feel better.

I grew up always compared to my sister. My parents did it enough that the times when they didn’t, I did it for them. They always had the awareness to not say it for the big things, like not getting top 20 in high school, or getting into Berkeley, or not getting varsity tennis. But I compared myself for them, just the way they taught me. I will never be able not to believe that failure, because they never said it. I did, just like how I learned.

The only thing my father acknowledged was my successes. But whatever I did was never enough for him to be happy with me. I got perfect scores in courses, took on obscene workloads, and won competitions, none of it mattered. All I ever got was “good job.” in a monotone voice. No eye contact either. It felt like it was always some consolation prize. It didn’t matter what I did, what I won, what I worked hard for. It was always a monotone statement said as an obligation.

Today hurt me a lot, because of those prior scars. But whenever I play with my friends, it doesn’t really matter what I do but it’s the same. Other than S, they don’t cheer for me when I do well, or even say anything if I am happy for myself. Today I had some of the best games of my life, my aim isn’t great so playing Cassidy was out of the norm – but I was doing INCREDIBLY well, hitting some of the best shots of my life. In one game I had more damage than the other DPS and tank combined, and even when I said I was doing the best I’ve ever done, silence. Not a single person was happy for me. But these people are also the ones to instantly jump at whenever I make a mistake. Without fail. The same condescending tone, like they’ve been waiting for me to fuck up. It destroys me slowly from the inside, only your mistakes pointed out and never anything else. They usually also shit on me when I’m happy for myself and say something. I could hit a full team shatter, get play of the game, and either complete silence or “eh, I would have done better”, or some other comment just to steal my joy.

I feel like it’s the same thing as my dad. Nothing I can do is good enough, but whenever I make a mistake they will never forget that. I hate sharing achievements because no one is ever fucking happy for me. I carefully guard the things I care about because I won’t get any empathy if I say them.

Rant over, I just wanted to get this out somehow. I’m sad because things won’t change with these friends, but I’d rather be strong enough to be fine with friends putting me down. I will say I do wish I had more friends to play with that felt like teammates, not enemies sometimes. I wish they noticed how often I consciously try to gas them up or hype them up. I just wish I had the same back.