Over the past ~month, I've been embarking on a journey to attempt to better my life, as there are many things currently that I am dissatisfied with. I write this at midnight on the 28th day of this journey, and I'm exhausted. I want to write about the changes I've made, how they've affected me, and how they will continue to affect me. I'd like to talk about goals here as well. I've been quite unhappy with many of the events that have transpired over the last few years of my life. I've felt like I'd been taking a passenger approach to my own life, not particularly leading my own life very well. I'd just let whatever happened happen, and move on. I did not care very much about almost anything, and as a result developed many bad habits. Among the most degenerative were my excessive laziness and apathy towards others and the world around me. I'm now a senior in high school and realize that this is not a way that I can continue to live my life. I went through a terrible stretch of a few days in October 2017 and felt the most down I had in a long time. I decided from then on that I would attempt to feel like this as little as possible, and attempt to reverse the bad habits I'd accumulated over the past few years. I've put on some weight; not a ton, but enough that I felt unhealthy and that it would become a terrible habit over time. I have not done my homework in high school at all and I'm one of the most serious procrastinators of all time. I put off everything until it is a red hot emergency. I beat myself up over small issues that really don't matter. Finally, I have taken a huge hit in my smash progress because of this mindset and all of these issues that are causing a conflict in my mind.
Over the past 28 days, I've seen dramatic improvement. I began my process of improvement by writing down a list of things that I need to fix about my life and my habits. I keep this list on me at all times to serve as a reminder of my end goal, even when it seems difficult to stick to the game plan. For this plan to work, I decided to only try to add one new fix in at a time. I pondered for awhile what the first change I should make was, and that decision was my physical health and fitness. I have done an intense ab and chest workout 6 days a week, taking off only on Saturdays. I have dropped 6 pounds, from 201 to 195.2. This has been very encouraging, as it put me below 200 again. I'm not where I need to be yet, but this is progress. Another attempt I've made at fixing my life is being less lazy. The past few days have been some of the worst in that category, but as a whole I've done very well. My gpa for first marking period is a 96.3%, which is 3% above my cumulative average thus far. I have focus issues and cannot pay attention in class all the time, and do not have time to study due to productivity issues, but this is a great start. I just must keep my mind set on my goals to spark my productivity again tomorrow.
My biggest issue of all over these past few years though has been mindset and outlook on life in general. This is quite an issue, so it gets its own paragraph. I have always been pessimistic and had a negative attitude towards everything: school, people, relationships, adversity, things or people that contradict me, anything really. I would see everything as a negative and never take anything positive from anything, including positive things that happened to me. This will be the most drastic change I make, but will be the most worthwhile in the endgame. I decided that one way of trying to fix my mindset is through meditation. I use the headspace app for meditation, and say what you will about it, but it does calm me personally. I think meditation is something I should do twice a day as opposed to once a day. I think I could benefit greatly from doing it in the morning and at night instead of just at night. As a whole, my mindset has gotten better through conscious positive thought and the aforementioned meditation. It has shown in my smash gameplay. I play more confident, while also playing more safe. I'm open to help and criticism, and I'm able to get over losses more quickly and rally in the losers bracket even if I suffer a hard loss in winners. I beat my first PRed player on Saturday, Quinn. It was my first Melee PR win; it was a monument occasion for me. I didn't think it could happen, but it did. This positive outlook was certainly a large reason that I can maintain composure in stressful sets like that. These past 2 days have been extremely rough for me in terms of keeping this mindset though, and I've gotta work on that one hard. Productivity was zero today and motivation was too. I've gotta keep my eyes on the prize and do better tomorrow.
The final piece of this is going to be a quick statement of my goals. I want to meet the qualifying times for track at tryouts this year, so that I can feel like I deserve to be there. I want to drop another ~5-10 pounds by the time the season starts, as I feel that's a perfect weight for me to be at. I want to be PRed in Melee, and be undisputed #2 in region for PM for short term goals. I want above an unweighted 94 in all of my classes for the second marking period, and I want to be able to enjoy my life more for the rest of this year. I want to continue to see success with this method, and I just want to be happy.
Thanks to anyone who wasted their time to read this rant about me and why I need to get my shit together.
Everyone's favorite scrub
~Ronan/Bionis
