...And in this regard, I was highly successful overall! I still have three, lengthy, videos to watch (one is two hours; two are each 45 minutes), but I watched about ten videos today to get entirely caught up there. There were a bunch of things I needed to get caught up on, though, and...I was...less successful elsewhere.

In Minecraft I did do some work but had the tilting experience of zombie death losing my experience and risking my items...again. And now I wasted a bunch of time for what amounts to nothing.

In Teamfight Tactics, I needed to play five games for the orb of enlightenment and play enough games to get the four quests done--this also contained extreme tilt of either lousy luck in the earlygame and by the time my fortunes were turning around...being eliminated by those who had the amazing luck earlygame and were just strong enough to beat me before I could make a comeback...

...Or godly good luck earlygame, but which was severely soured by the lousy luck lategame where I would spend 100 gold and not get a single T3, not get the key T2 that I was after, and in many cases, not get the 5g unit I needed to make my comp transition into the lategame, where I knew I had the earlygame crushed but I knew that I needed to go to a very specific comp to not get outscaled...and couldn't because no matter how much gold I spent in spite of being the requisite level and literally nobody else running my comp, the unit just. wouldn't. spawn.

Which lasted until I got a few games I considered passable enough. Still didn't complete the latter two quests but considering one of said quests requires me to play nine games to completion and each game is like 30-60 minutes long, an average of 45 minutes...that...didn't happen.

Then in League I had multiple misfortunes. I had my Ashe stolen from me; that game went predictably badly. I was assigned a game of jungle. I said that I don't play jungle, recommended a swap, nobody took me up on the offer, but fortunately when one of my teammates noticed that my champion locked in was Ashe and asked "can Ashe jungle" and I bluntly said 'no', they dodged. (I generally assume that most of the people who dodge have alternate accounts or aren't willing to play games that they know they'll lose. I do not have alternate accounts and I will play games that I know I will lose, because I figure that they might give me a learning experience.)

Then I got a game where I accidentally took the wrong runes--the runes I took were runes I use on Ashe, but in that specific game, I really really needed Sorcery, and yet I was stuck with Fleet Footwork. Sorcery would've allowed me to get a ton of kills that game that I didn't get, because I took the wrong runes accidentally due to the Vlad game. Even if it was winnable, it became unwinnable when two members of my team dc'd.

And then I got a game where my team did flame me for my build--to be fair. I was 0/8, but in this case, that legitimately was not entirely my fault. My "support" was Tryndamere. Tryndamere can be played in 4/5 positions, like Ashe can--top, jungle, mid, even in the right circumstances adc. (With Ashe's four being top, mid, support, and adc, obv.) He is very much not a support in any way shape or form.

He didn't take a support item--which meant that whenever he last hit, he was stealing my cs. Because he was stealing my cs, I had less gold than I should have had. He also took fights that would be fine for him to take, between his ult and his spin--but he criticized me when I went in and criticized me when I didn't go in because while he has tools to escape from death...I do not. And he was expecting me to have some magical get-out-of-a-2v4-situation.

Because, yes. We were 2v4'd. Repeatedly. Given that it was a 2v4, I did fairly well given the circumstance. I could burn my ult defensively and summoners to escape to safety, and did so repeatedly, which kept me from dieing like four more times than I did, and at least two of my deaths were due to me getting collapsed on by 3-5 people when I didn't have vision on them and thought that they were somewhere else. (Those are at least partially my fault, yes, but when caught out by 3-5 people, I'm dead; there's no escaping that.)

He wanted me to engage in fights that were 2v3, even 2v4. I could not, and when I tried, I died. He wanted me to engage in situations which I knew I wasn't in position to engage in--he has a spin he can use for a gap close; if he spins into a fight when we were previously together...I can't get in range to help in time because Ashe is much much slower than Tryndamere's spin.

Not helping was the fact that my toplaner lost hardcore and my jungler was also in on the flaming (the jungler and "support" were the ones doing the flaming), in spite of my jungler himself having done pretty terrible. And it reflects in their scorelines, too. I had the second-lowest number of deaths in the game, but only by one. (Somehow, the jungler had one less death than me.)

It was all-around incredibly frustrating. Ashe can engage in all-ins, but she is primarily a specialist at dealing poke damage. She is the queen of kiting--of hit-and-run. Hit, retreat. Hit again, retreat. And only after the enemy has been whittled down sufficiently, do you engage...preferably still with enough ability to leave room for a disengage or a finisher.

Being asked to engage engage engage without kiting, to go purely on the offensive especially when we were behind in every lane with only one player on our team doing even close to remotely well, is the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do on Ashe, especially when behind.

Heck, even the enemy team had a member who recognized that I wasn't the problem. And I believe it was my midlaner who shared that opinion, mentioning that Normals are a good place to practice or something to that effect, with at least one person in the game who wasn't the jungle/support saying that I could be pioneering a new meta.

Maybe they were sarcastic, maybe not, it's hard to say for sure, especially from vague memory, but if they were sincere in giving that benefit of the doubt then they were giving me far more than my own team did. (Plus at the beginning of the game I am fairly certain one or two members of my team dropped the N-word but since I was too busy playing the game I couldn't look up who it was. I have two very obvious suspects tho.)

And, heck. At the end of the game, I ended up with stats that were still some of the best on my team and I could tell that in teamfights where I was able to kite away from the enemy I was actually dealing significant damage, contrary to my teammates' claims of my build being worthless for damage. I was less than 400 damage away from dealing the second-highest damage on my team and I had the sixth-highest damage in the game; I did more damage than the enemy adc. I was one of the only two on my team to damage a turret. I earned more gold than our toplaner, which is an impressive feat mind you since, again I must reiterate: my "support" was stealing my cs so my gold income was halved. I was one point off of having the second-highest vision score on my team, and also one point off of matching the enemy adc.

I had the highest minion kill of my team...and had an exact tie with the enemy adc, down to the last number, for being second-highest in the game. The only player who killed more minions was the enemy toplaner. (Who, being Mordekaiser when Mordekaiser even post-nerf is kinda OP...was. Well. Mordekaiser.)

Are those good stats to have? No, not particularly. They are still not great. It still means that overall I was a little bit sucky. But in spite of my team having placed the blame on me and my build...I genuinely don't think that it was my fault? Like...toplane lost hard against a champion who can and did 1v5 us. Hard, HARD lost. Midlane was the best of us but even they in spite of getting the kills they did were barely going even with their counterpart and were losing against the enemy toplaner and losing when outnumbered.

My "support" didn't take a support item, took half of my cs (when I am already not good at csing), entered into areas we had zero vision of and expected me to follow, took fights that I couldn't engage in, took fights that I couldn't disengage from, and sure enough had the highest deaths in the game.

It is not an uncommon belief that in games, supports are the main difference between winning and losing--a good support might not win by 1v5ing the enemy team, so much as they win by setting their team up for success. A bad support directly loses their team the game, by setting them up for failure.

And, hey.
I didn't place blame on them in-game.
I never flamed back.
I never asked them questions about their rather-questionable tactics.
But I feel like I have the right to believing that that game was genuinely just not my fault? Like, sure. I admit. I made many, many, many mistakes. I did get genuinely caught out of position multiple times. I should have been smart enough to recognize, "I can't engage on that." I should have been smart enough to ping my teammates not to engage on that. I should have pinged when I was trying to engage on something.

And I made many misplays. Missed most of my ults. Missed many volleys. A ton of my volleys got minion-blocked where one minion (or if I were lucky, multiple minions) ate all of my arrows, meaning none of them connected. I did legitimately play a bad game, and I feel they had room to call me out on the mistakes I did make.

But they were calling me out on things that I genuinely don't think I was responsible for. Ashe needs lifesteal? I had it. I didn't have the full 12% because I couldn't farm it out, couldn't get champion kills, but I don't think that my inability to do those things lies on me. Ashe needs damage? I was dealing considerable damage when I wasn't instantly deleted. The only thing that they called me out on which I feel has merit is that Ashe needs crit, for a stronger slow. Crits double her slow and deal increased damage to slowed targets; my build didn't have the crit yet.

But honestly--in that game, I cannot think of a single time a crit giving increased slow would've made a difference. I was building defensive items that are designed to help keep someone alive, and which just so happen to on this build give me extra damage and a bottomless supply of mana. Would a stronger slow have allowed my team to kill an enemy who got away? No occasion that I can think of. Would a stronger slow have allowed someone to survive in a situation they didn't? Not when the slow would be applied to one enemy champion when someone is being dogpiled by three enemies. A stronger slow applied to one still leaves two in kill range.

I am fairly certain that there was no way I could have slowed them and made a difference.
But I am also fairly certain that I couldn't have done more damage with a different build.
The problem was that I kept dieing before I could deal the damage. There's no build in the world which can deal damage on Ashe when you're dead before you can so much as proc Ranger's Focus. If you get to only launch one volley and maybe one autoattack and are dead before you can launch a second auto...there's no Ashe build in the world which can get her a kill there. She can't oneshot like that.

And the build I go for is actually one of the best possible builds for trying to prevent being killed. It's a hugely defensive build with a metric ton of armor and a ton of MR in it as well. I was still being killed before I could get a full combo off, because I didn't have my teammates taking the damage for me. They were dead, they were fighting elsewhere, they were unable to stop the enemies from bypassing our frontline to focus on me, our backline. All three at different times.

I don't think there was any build I could have done. None. Which could have prevented that.
And sure enough.
I had a final game I played where I ended up hugely popping off.
I do admit--I had an incredibly competent support, and my midlaner won lane. I think my jungler and toplaner actually lost lane tho? I mean, I remember almost all of my deaths were in the earlygame and yet I wasn't the one who gave first blood; it was my toplaner. And I recall my jungler having died early, too. Might be mistaken tho.

And I will fully confess. Even if we didn't all play well early. There wasn't a single weak link later in the game. (The closest was us having an uncoordinated assault on the enemy base where when some of us were dead, the others were attacking, and when they died, the others who respawned tried attacking, but that was a collective int from everyone including me making miscalculations.)

So it's not like I singlehandedly won my team the game. I had the most deaths on my team and the lowest kills to my name, but almost second-highest kill participation in the game. (Highest was my support, second-highest was my midlaner, by a slim margin--they had one more than me. Though I admit, I only had one more than our jungler or toplaner who both were just one behind me. Suffice to say: we teamfought a lot and worked incredibly well as a unit.)

I had better stats than most of the enemy team and better stats than the enemy adc across the board, and overall I did incredibly well. My team was friendly, supportive, we worked together well, coordinated reasonably well enough, and even when we inted, we usually got something out of it. Securing a drake even if three of us died (not exactly worth), securing a nexus turret even if most of us die (probably still worth), the like.

And this brings the total games I've run this build in on Normals, with the runes and items, up to five. I thought it was more than that, but I could only find five in my match history. Three of them have been victories. Two of them have had teammates who hard-flamed me in the form of some combination of {jungle, midlaner, support}. 

I blooged about the prior defeat before, and this is my blog about the defeat here.

But so far I still maintain my conclusions thusfar.
It feels like the build's success/failure rate has less to do with the build itself, so much as it does, the team I am on. If I have teammates who are making plays that are blatantly mistakes who then flame me when those plays go south...it doesn't work, but I don't think any build would work for those games for a player of my skill level, which is to say, not very good. I will fully admit to being a trash-tier player and a significant portion of my losses are due to mistakes I made so I will own up to having been a significant contributor to the loss.
(Though, as I said last time: I feel like I am in the right to justifiably not take exclusive blame for the loss and that my teammates played equally as large a part in the loss, at a minimum if not more of a part than I did.)

If I have teammates who are chill, work well with me, synergize with me, are willing to own up to "whoops, that was my fault" when they make a mistake, accept me saying the same, and who have a plan to recover rather than running in and doing the same thing we just got killed trying to do...it tends to work. Mind you, I admit: given those circumstances, probably any build would work.

And I do confess, this game I had a little bit of an extra edge; the enemy team was all-AD (a fact I didn't recognize until midway through the game; I probably should have built tabis in hindsight, or rather, since I didn't notice the enemy team was all-AD until midway through the match, sold my Ionian boots for Tabis), when two of my items give some of the highest armor in the game. Frozen Heart gives the highest armor in the game (100 armor), and Iceborn Gauntlet is in the top...I think six? Maybe it's only top eight, but it still gives a ridiculously large amount of armor. (I did let my team know about this fact, which they found useful to know, because apparently I was the first one to realize the enemy team was all-AD and none of them had realized it until I pointed it out, so that was a good contribution of mine. I mean, not sure it made much of a difference; the two members who built armor were two members who are already tanks, and a third who was maybe building into tank is also sometimes albeit not always played as a tank, so it's hard to confirm for sure that their itemization was due to them taking note of the full-ad enemy team after I noted it, but hey, I'd like to hope that I made a difference in helping them.)

Obviously, in terms of games to run the build in...a build where the enemy team has some difficulty bursting me down (though Pyke could still deliver killing blows with his ult, annoyingly enough, because many times where I thought I was high enough HP to survive, I received a nasty surprise that I didn't realize would kill me until it did) is going to be a bit more successful than a game where they can kill me even if I got to full-build easily.

And obviously, in terms of games to run the build in...having two tanky frontlines who have excellent tools at protecting their backline from being accessed, preventing the enemy champions from getting on top of me (with a third who, at least with their itemization, was also a tanky frontliner that had excellent tools at protecting me), is pretty much the dream. Gnar was building tank and he can toss people around; Sejuani has multiple ccs/slows in her kit; Leona has some cc in her kit and a gap-closer (admittedly, one-way--towards her enemy. But if the enemy bypasses her and she has the ability up, she can use it to again place herself between them and me).

I played it not as well as my other two wins, which is reflected in my final gold score and to some extent champion damage and similar stats. In spite of this being probably the best comp of my three victories for the build, it was my worst performance with the build of my victories.

But that wasn't the build's fault, that was me being tired, tilted, and making multiple misplays. I would've been those things with any build. In fact I would again argue: using any other build other than the build I used, would've resulted in me being the LVP, least valuable teammate, of the game, because any other build for this game would've had me still be tired, tilted, and making multiple misplays, but with a build not suited for perfectly working with my team's comp, to perfectly counter the enemy team's comp.

Overall, my faith in the build isn't being shaken by anything.
Briefly, in the game where I was being flamed for it.
I did consider it.
Of, "is it actually not that good in spite of my insistence otherwise?".
I did.
But after that consideration.
And upon reflection of looking at how that game went, the scoreline, how that game felt to me as a player, with how at the end I did feel like I was doing the damage I was supposed to be doing, how most of my problems were due to mistakes I made as a player with my team certainly not helping, and looking at the postgame to have an intuitive feeling for what my instincts had told me about my team. (My instincts told me that my "support" didn't have a support item; my instincts told me that my support and jungler weren't really playing well; my instincts told me that the enemy toplaner had hard-stomped due to how strong he was compared to the others on the enemy team.)

I just have the feeling that it really wasn't the build's fault we lost that game, no matter what my flaming teammates might believe. And feel like I am rather justified in that belief.

I feel like the build is working for me.
Heck, even if it's not a build which works for other players.
I think it is a build which works for me. And if it works for me.
It feels good to run.
My successes feel like a large part due to the build.
My failures don't feel like they're due to the build.

Then I feel like it is the right build for me.

But I digress.
I've been writing this blog for at least an hour; I suspect it is closer to two. It's 3:48 am right now, the game I finished I believe finished at 2 am? I don't think that I went straight from it to here, but I certainly didn't do much after it before coming here to the blog.

I have work tomorrow.
I get up at 8 am for a shift starting at 10.
And, oh yeah.
I still have a bunch of stuff I need to do.
I got some stuff caught up on.

I got most of my stuff, not.
Like, I still need to get caught up on my emails and to send one to my boss about trainings. They said that the ones available were full, and that they were "looking into" options. I need to give them a reminder of, "Hey, I uh...really need this?" Because trainings are a Big Deal to keep up to date on.
And I still have a ton of daily chores to do that I haven't done yet.

I half-considered writing a blog today saying "god I am pathetic" by listing all of the things I need to do, which I promised I would do (I promised to do judging today, after having previously promising to do it on Monday and failing to deliver on that promise), because...well, when you think about it.

I really kinda am pathetic.
I watched videos instead of attending to those matters.
I played games instead of attending to those matters.
I wrote this long-winded blog post that amounts to little more than a ramble ranting about my delusions of having a good build and complaining about teammates calling me trash when I believe that they themselves more than qualify for that term themselves, something which even if it is true leads to a dangerous road of me not acknowledging my own faults. (I try to take responsibility for what was in fact my fault, but if I think that it isn't my fault and is my team's fault, even if that is true, it can lead to me thinking it isn't my fault and was my team's fault...when it isn't true. And I want to avoid that.)

I basically started today thinking, "today will be a day where I get everything I need to, done...or close to, knocking out almost everything on my immediate to-do list!".

I ended up realizing that while I did do some things and while nothing I did ended up in a complete and total waste...
...Due to tilt, I ended up doing just about none of what I set out to do. Some, I did! Most I did not.

So yes.
I do suck and am a piece of utter garbage for failing like this.
No wonder I prefer to focus on writing the gaming entries like on League.
Because at least on those I feel like I am writing about things I'm not​ a failure on.

...Not a very good one mind you but it'd have been a bit lengthy.
But I had a long workday followed by dance and even if I didn't.
I've been dead tired all day for god only knows what reason.
And I have work tomorrow anyway.
And it is surprisingly, alarmingly, late.
So I am going to go to bed.

It wasn't really a good blog entry in my opinion anyway. Would've been lengthy, sure, but just me rambling on some more nonsense.

Yesterday I got caught up on almost everything. In Minecraft I knocked out most tasks I had set out for myself; I got caught up in videos; I did a bunch of stuff, not that I remember it now (it was a full 24 hours ago and I am already immensely tired), but I remember yesterday being an incredibly productive day.

Today I've done nothing.

I played one game of TFT, but I didn't feel like playing even that one and certainly not playing more than the one--I still have a quest to complete. Heck, I accidentally cheated myself out of 25 beta pass points by not realizing I hadn't played 5 games and had only played 4 and I need to not do that again.

I don't remember doing anything productive in minecraft.

And I've done literally nothing else.
No videos.
None of my duties (aside from a quick check-in and answering a question, but I was supposed to attend to something today but it'll have to be done tomorrow).
No progress on my secret santa gift.

A big.
fat.
pile.
of nothing.

Nothing to show for it, and no clue what I was really doing. There wasn't any stream I was watching to distract me/make me think I was more busy than I actually was. (Okay so there was earlier in the day, a charity stream, but that ended like six hours ago and after that there wasn't any streamers I was following online at all.)
There wasn't some game I was playing.
There was just...nothing.

I know I did have a slightly busy day. Work and then family night. But while work was my morning and afternoon (a 5.5 hour shift), family nights I basically automatically tune out and ignore, so family night is not an excuse for me having gotten nothing done today.

Yesterday I was doing so well.
And today I slacked off and ended up getting nothing done.
​And any day that I end up getting nothing done, is a day that I end up falling behind during.

It's actually been rather successful, but there's so. much. stuff. to do that it'll take me a while to get literally all of it done. I signed up for a secret santa event and today I finally started the project. It's...a little less than a third complete, but hey, before today, it was 0% complete! And I've still got five days to finish it, so if I work on it the next few days the same amount as today, should be done before the deadline.

I believe I caught up elsewhere on that site as well, for the most part. And in minecraft I knocked basically every single item off of my immediate to-do list. Some items will require a lot more resources to complete (eventually, I have the end goal of making the main pathway in my strip mine have smooth stone slabs as the path with railings on top and after I look at a tutorial on minecart railings, with the appropriate extras--this will take a lot; eventually, I have the end goal of making the main pathway in my strip mine have entirely stone brick surroundings, which will take a lot; eventually, I have the end goal of having every major point in my strip mine network be appropriately signed and marked by railings, which will take a ton of resources and time), so I still have those to do.

There was one project which I have the resources to do, I just need to spend time and pickaxe durability on actually doing, but which I didn't actually get done; another thing which I want to do is to stock up on emeralds which requires getting resources that the farmer in the nearby village will buy, which takes a ton of resources to get even close to a reasonable number of emeralds. (I think, for instance, it's something like 10 wheat for 1 emerald? And while I have a rather extensive wheat farm network, it aint extensive enough; I get like 2-3 stacks of 64 when ideally I'd get 9-10.)

Also, when I made my latest wheat farm I neglected to actually put the water into the central port so I need to stop being lazy and actually do that, but that's a small thing.

In TFT I completed a quest--I didn't really feel like playing TFT today (shocker! The girl who plays TFT nearly every day, actually had a day she didn't really want to? I know, right?), so the one game to complete the quest was all I did. (Surprisingly, it was a game where someone midgame stole my comp and I finished seventh as a direct consequence of them stealing my units. Incredibly tilting also was getting two Braums with giant's belts but for the whole game, not getting a single third Braum to make a T2 Braum with Warmogs. Incredibly tilting game where everything which could've gone wrong, did...and yet I didn't feel like playing another game? That never happens, I always feel like continuing until I get a game I'm satisfied with, but today I just...didn't want to play so completing the quest was satisfaction enough.)

​In League, I haven't played a match today yet so I still need my win of the day. And the ongoing event has three unfinished quests (which TFT games also count towards), which getting a win of the day helps with. There was also a new patch which went live, which was disappointing for TFT (remember when I said I was expecting the new lunar trait to either be nerfed or cause both electric and assassins to be nerfed? Yeah, well...Riot went with the latter rather than the former, and to add insult to injury, the lunar trait isn't live yet and won't be live this year from my understanding), and which vastly nerfed dragons and dragon souls in league.

Which, honestly, I am rather fine with. The only time I hold no accountability for drakes is when I'm a toplaner (where I'm instead accountable for rift), basically. (I mean that's not exactly true, toplaners can and do have an impact on drakes especially post-laning phase, but IN GENERAL, toplaners are mostly responsible for the top half of the map, not the bottom half. My friend if they are still into league at all could probably rant at me for my portrayal here and I'll just say, YES I KNOW, let me just talk it out a bit.)

WHAT I MEAN BY THIS, is.
I am a trash-tier player.
We almost never get drakes in games I play in, because I am meant to play a key part in securing them. Midlaner, botlaner, support, my job as any of them is to help out there, and that is something which I consistently fail to be anywhere remotely competent at helping with. If we go for a drake and come out behind, I am safely the one who bears the most blame. Yeah, maybe my teammates make mistakes as well, but their mistakes are compounded by my own and my own are usually worse than theirs.

So drakes being nerfed?

Helps me a lot because my team rarely if ever gets them due to my own incompetency, meaning the enemy team gets less from having secured them so easily.

So the patch helps me in league by virtue of me being the one who was getting more hard-crushed by drakes being secured. Which helps me play and will make me want to play more and which might mean my team flames me less often. 

Most of the catchup I need to do though is still videos. I did a fair amount...was it yesterday? It was either yesterday or Monday. But I need to do more today. I have at least six to watch, though probably no more than ten. Most of those videos average ~10 minutes each so that's about an hour minimum, though because one video is an average of 45 minutes (give or take 30, being as low as 15 and as high as an hour 15), that bumps my estimated total up to about two hours to get caught up there.

There's also still the art blog I want to make--I could make it now I guess, but while I have plenty of time to do so, this...is actually plenty long enough a blog for today? I mean, I can and have made blogs which were ridiculously long which switched subjects midway through and people probably end up missing the content as a consequence thinking it's entirely the one thing when it transitions to the other. (Trust me, I know this because it's happened to me; when searching my own blog for specific things, I had trouble finding them because I started reading an entry thinking it was the one thing, not realizing it transitioned into the actual thing I was looking for later.)

Heck, this blog itself while it is fairly coherent and mostly on the same sort of subject line (about my efforts to catch up on stuff with small quick updates) has already been like that a little, having mentions of things which would themselves normally be individual blog entries. So I don't really want to blog about it now, even though I realize there's the very real chance that I never end up blogging about it because when that happens I often never do.

In the eventual future I'll also need a real-life thing of signing up for a training, but that's more of a thing which can be done last-minute and the closer to the due date the better actually, within reason. (Basically there's a training I need to do for my job but I want to take it as close to the expiration of the original as is possible.)

So basically.

I'm kinda sorta actually staying on top of things?

Not as much as I'd prefer.
Not as much as is ideal.
And I'm really not doing much in my life at all (among other things I'm not doing, not really spending time with my friend and hanging out to do things like watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, One Piece episodes, have me play the third Danganronpa, and such, though that is at least partially due to how busy they are right now and also how they have others to spend time with than just me so they have not only their own real life to try and stay on top of but also others in their life they try to stay in contact with other than just me which I recognize eats up their time).

So it's obviously not the maximum optimal situation.
But.
​It's pretty darn close?

Well today was also work, so I didn't have much of a window to actually make a blog entry today. I did have a small one after work and before my bedtime (which will be after I eat my dinner), but I spent it on doing some work in Minecraft on my mine. I'm working on expanding the top stairs to be 7 blocks wide from their original five, and the bottom stairs to be 5 wide from their original three. All in stone.

Something I eventually want to do is to maybe line my mine with one strip of redstone blocks because of how much redstone I have, to use them aesthetically. I'm thinking like...maybe keep it almost all stone brick blocks, but keep at eye level a continuous line of red on both sides? Maybe with the occasional lapis lazuli to break it up artistically.

​I've got the idea, just need to figure out how to execute it more precisely.

...And even if I didn't have a nightmarishly long hellish shift tomorrow which starts early and goes fairly late at a high traffic time (the one hope of it not being high traffic is maybe MAYBE the hope, HOPE, that the day after a holiday will be reduced traffic).

Which mind you, I do; I need to go to bed for that.

Even if I didn't have that.

I am already dead tired from today.

I've been feeling exhausted since the moment I woke up and it hasn't improved during the day at all.
I'm tired, I need bed, I have work anyway, so all those things which need to be done, won't be done.
Sucks.
​But it is what it is.

So remember how I said yesterday that I had bought a female bathing suit? Well today, I got to wear it. And my GOD it is amazing. It fit me perfectly. I honestly don't know why more guys don't wear something similar--there is an existing male one-piece full-body bathing suit, a really really old style no less. Or really new. Or both. You can find things similar to what I was wearing for men and plenty of men do buy them, but most men who swim...choose things which don't go above their waist.

I honestly don't know why they wouldn't tho, because I wouldn't need to be a girl to have known the experience of the swimsuit was amazing. But my god was it exactly that. It was incredibly comfortable, and it made me feel more like me. It also made me feel a little bit sexy. The whole day, I was just...exuding an aura of something I rarely display, of just an energy that I only display in my most euphoric moments. The moments where not a touch of gender dysphoria hits me, where I feel like I look like a girl.

Mind you.

While I loved it.
It was not without its downsides.
1: It was a bit warm. This is pretty unavoidable. The only things I was wearing on my torso (the area which was warm) were the bathing suit and my lifeguard shirt. I obviously can't get rid of my guarding shirt, so...not much I can do to be cooler when wearing the bathing suit underneath. Not much of an issue, given that I am skin and bones so rarely overheat anyway.

2: Some parts were initially a little itchy. I imagine that this is a byproduct of it being a new swimsuit though, because I'm pretty sure that every swimsuit I've ever worn has had that problem when they were brand new.

3: Some parts felt a little tight at times and some areas didn't quite stay in place properly. I believe the two are related, in that the tightness likely came from areas of the suit slipping out of their proper position. This is not something which is very fixable because it's an issue you deal with, with any given article of clothing. No piece of clothing is perfectly tailored to your exact measurements (unless of course...they are, but those are like...$200 business suits), and swimsuits are no exception to this. This is something which happens for all of my clothes, so isn't an issue specific to the bathing suit.

4: The straps at times seemed to be pushing in, in a way akin to having worn a heavy loaded backpack for too long. Especially the left shoulder which was bothering me about 50% of the time. Half of this can be attributed to the above--the suit slightly shifted out of the proper position, I didn't really notice this in the area it slipped, but felt the slippage in the form of the shoulder straps.

But mostly? This wasn't creating a problem; this was alerting me to an existing problem. Even without the bathing suit's straps, my left shoulder was suffering from a condition which I'd call some combination of "tight, sore, tender, stiff, fatigued". This is not a new issue. It's a known problem I frequently suffer from. From the base of my neck to my deltoid muscle, my left shoulder flares up on occasion to have that issue.

The only fix I have to it is trying to stretch the muscles, massage them a little, roll the shoulder, hyperextend it, basically try every trick in the book to loosen them up, to remove tension from them, to basically make them...not bother me. So, again. Not a problem related to the suit.

Noticing a trend? Yeah, basically, none of the problems were due to the suit and all of them are things which can be managed and were minor nuisances, not real problems. Things which are annoying, but which aren't detrimental and won't consistently plague me especially not now that I know of them (and even if they do, given time to break the suit in, they'll go away).

There is one problem which is due to the suit tho.
One which will, presumably, go away after a while, but which is still a little inconvenient.

5: So sometimes, I can randomly be aroused by thoughts which aren't sexual at all. These arousing things strike randomly, where I basically go, "what the hell, body? There wasn't so much as a single sexy thought in there, not even a kinky thought, not anything which is a fetish, so why are you being aroused by that?"

When I was initially putting the suit on, this hit me hard. (Haha. Sadly.) If I had to guess, my guess is basically that I suffered from Distracted By My Own Sexy, in that I literally said to myself, "Okay, yeah, I get it. I'm sexy like this. Now shut up. We've got work to do." And at the end of my shift when changing out, while I was wearing nothing but the swim suit, I ended up going for a while, "Okay, fine. I'll take some time to appreciate that, yes. I am sexy in this. I have the time to spare. But you need to get used to it, body, because this is going to be the new me."

Because, yeah. I feel incredibly sexy in it. It fits me, it looks good on me (well, as far as I can tell, anyway; I have no mirror so hard to say for sure), and I feel a lot more like my femininity is more on display while wearing it (even though it's not actually visible). I feel like I am more openly displaying "hey I'm a girl" while wearing it and that feels so good. Everything about it is amazing and it is incredibly comfortable.

I do think that eventually, my body will adjust to that and it'll stop happening. (It's honestly annoying and I feel a little annoyed/guilty that the arousal happens when putting it on/taking it off. So hopefully it's a temporary thing related to it being a new change that the arousal is just extreme excitement about.)

So overall.

It's perfect.

​So glad I took the plunge and made that buy.

Splyce came so close to being first in their group.
You may recall that after they went 1-2 I was among the doubters.
I said "The Splyce we've seen doesn't deserve to move on; if they want to move on, they need to prove it by showing us the Splyce that went even with the likes of Fnatic and G2", more or less. That they needed to step up their game or go home. That the Splyce we had seen wasn't worthy of worlds, even though the Splyce we'd previously seen prior to the tournament was.

That in order for them to earn their spot they needed to be in top form.

And while I missed half of the matches today, I caught Splyce's first match against FPX and their match against GAM--and I can say that Splyce did precisely what they needed to. They did precisely what I said they needed to do in order to deserve moving on, in order to prove themselves worthy of worlds. They stepped up their game and showed up in if not top form close to it. They were a force to be reckoned with, and this was the Splyce who made me place them as the favorites to win first in their group.

And while they lost the tiebreaker to FPX and thus didn't--that it came down to a tiebreaker proves to me that my original faith in them was not wasted. Yeah, their losses showed their weaknesses. Yeah, even in their wins they had elements which weren't clean. But the Splyce I saw today was the Splyce I was rooting for since the beginning of the tournament, a Splyce who was good whereas when I said "Splyce in this form doesn't deserve to move on", they were...not good.

They did it. I am so glad they did.

Yeah it sucks that my predictions for positions ended up both wrong for the group, with Splyce 2nd GAM 4th when I had them as 1st/3rd, but OH WELL. I am still happy.

Am terribly behind in the vogs tho.

In non-gaming news: today I went shopping for some swimwear. It was ludicrously expensive, at $130ish in price to get what I got. Some of it was necessary costs. Others were there more or less to mask my true purpose for the visit. Yeah, I got gear that I desperately needed, but while I could use a new jammer swimsuit and I've needed new goggles for months the rest of what I got aside from one item was luxuries meant to help give a mask for what I really was there to buy.

Fun fact: I thought that the trope I Have This Friend was, in real life, so transparently obvious as to not be worth trying. That it would be ridiculously transparent, cliched, obvious, and give away my true meaning easily. But apparently it works well enough! I said that I needed help shopping for a gift for a girl, about my height, and wanted to get them a swimsuit, more or less. I got the help I needed; while I have no clue if it'll fit, I will at least try it on tomorrow and hoh boy is it exciting for me. I imagine that it will not be very comfortable, but it'll be worth it I feel in the end.

And like an idiot, I'm not letting myself get enough sleep. I do work that day so will be running after a day of work, but in this case I actually think that's a good thing. It'll have a delay, during which I can eat subway. It'll keep my hydrated (something I frequently forget to do when not working), and it'll give me a bit of a warmup in the form of me walking during work.

Obviously, exhaustion after work is never a good thing, but there's a delay to help remove the exhaustion.

Hopefully, all goes well.

A common traveler pitfall. Normally, you'd associate said pitfall with flights; they are known to be the breeding ground of the perfect recipe of bacteria. Environment's right even if they sanitize everything...and they sanitize nothing. But most of those conditions? Still apply to traveling in a car across half the country in 28 hours' time continuously. So it should be no surprise that I am siiiiiiick.

Annoyingly enough. My vitamin C pill's one of the few pills I did not bring. It's a pill I don't take daily, but have at home to take whenever I suspect sickness, to help shorten the duration of it and the strength of it. Normally have it; today I do not. So the only treatment I have is time...and in this foreign environment, not the best of things there, either, considering we leave on Monday. 

All in all, socializing seems to be so-so at this event. I was miserable when I had to constantly run from the smokers, but later in the day that proved to be less of a problem. There was an incident at the gathering, though. One of the steel benches tipped over after a couple sat down on them...and they went down with the bench. The guy hit his back hard, as well as bumping his head on the back of another nearby bench.

I am trained to respond to spinals, even on land. This was a textbook spinal. But I felt powerless to help him. The extent of my training for spinals, after all, is pretty much "stabilize the spine, and wait for EMS to arrive for them to take over care". There's a little more to it than that, asking questions and whatnot, monitoring the patient, and so on and so forth, butstill. In practice, I didn't feel like I could do much.

After EMS came, he declined to go to the hospital eventually, but some time after they left, other family members there managed to talk him into it. A good thing, too, because while I can't diagnose him for certain...he was showing symptoms of something being wrong. Possibilities include having suffered from a heart attack (possible if the sudden impact caused a type of ventricular fibrillation), or more likely in my opinion, shock...a possible body response to internal bleeding (something an EMS responder might not notice but which they would probably see at the hospital).

When the injury happened, while he remained conscious, initially, he couldn't talk; his hands seemed to not be able to make full motion; he was incredibly shaky; he was sweating profusely; he later said that he was having trouble breathing. Like I said, my contribution was mostly minimal, in strongly recommending to go to the doctor, helping him out, monitoring him between the time EMS left and he was talked into going, the like, but I still feel like I should've been more decisive, more helpful, voiced my opinion on things to someone who could relay it on, something more than what little I did.

Ultimately, I know it doesn't matter much; he still ended up going to the hospital, there was a hospital less than five minutes away so I'm pretty sure he's got good treatment, there's probably nothing I could have done which would have helped him more than he got help especially given his initial stubbornness (he really didn't want to go to the hospital and my training basically tells me to respect patient's wishes so I am trained to not try and push them, more or less), but it still makes me feel kinda like a fraud.

I've got training in first aid. I've got training in how to deal with spinals, and deal with spinals at every staff meeting. (Speaking of which, there was one today that I couldn't attend for obvious reasons. I'm considering cheekily/half-jokingly telling my supervisors that in spite of not having been at the staff meeting I still got practice in spinals.) But if that training doesn't allow me to help someone when it's actually happening for real outside of training...it's kinda disheartening. 

I was asked afterwards since I was the closest one to the incident and saw it unfold start to finish if I was okay, the expected concern being that as a witness I'd be traumatized. The trauma isn't in the event having happened; I am trained for things like that happening. The trauma is in knowing I am trained and yet feeling like a bystander who is untrained. Which makes me feel like a failure, to be honest.