As some of you will remember, I had promised earlier on in the year that I would overtake the #1 spot on the Sitewide rankings by the end of it. A promise that I earnestly meant to keep, but now reasonably won't have the opportunity to actually fulfill. Unless a miracle happens; I've done it before.
Anyhow, there are some things about my competitive absence that I feel the need to explain regardless of how uncomfortable it is and how much I hate to do this, so I'll go ahead and tell you a few simple things about my conditions: Long since before I first joined TSC or even had any active thoughts regarding game-competition, I've been living in a demeaning and unstimulating environment that has given me relatively poor self-confidence (as amazing as that may sound) and consistently kept down my motivation to a minimum; not to mention that I'm apparently suffering from a severe case of bad luck (and I've come up with several probable theories regarding the poor luck that I have, but that's irrelevant here). Now, those are things that have been prominent factors throughout a lot of my competition, as some of you no doubt recognize the symptoms of now that you hear it said; even if I've actually been fairly motivated and sure of myself at times, mainly when challenged for a record.
The truth of the matter is... that for a long time I've been subject to many problems that are entirely beyond my control; Things that have been incredibly frustrating for me to experience and thence made that both my -will- and -ability- to compete has been severally diminished (not that I've ever become bad at it as such). Which is partially because it has become a near impossibility for me to have any good opportunities of even getting a chance to compete in some games. As an example I'll reveal to you that my Xbox's DVD-reader is fairly broken and has had a habit of -repeatedly crashing- unprovokedly for about 3 years in a row now, thus effectively making -almost my entire time of competing in Sonic Heroes- an unbelievably frustrating and burdensome hell to endure (and that's in addition to the many glitches that are already present in the game itself...), with crashes happening randomly and unexpectedly either when trying to load a level, while in the middle of playing one, or precisely when you hit the goal ring based on a dice roll; Try to imagine that. Oh, and some of the stages aren't even playable at all anymore, courtesy of me inadvertently lending the disc to someone who doesn't really care about how they should be handled.
So, here's a simple question: Does this sound harsh to you? I can testify that it is. In fact, I can barely see why people with working consoles are having so many issues with Sonic Heroes, thanks to the merciless, always-impending mid-game crashes that I've had to experience. No wonder that I haven't been feeling like competing in general, eh?
Well, okay. Now that I've finally decided to spill the beans and tell you all something about myself, I can go on to the next point... Near the conclusion of the last (Real) Top 10, I wrote an as-of-yet unsubmitted post where I had elaborated more thoroughly on the subject, but that I never sent for a few reasons that are still very actual. One of those reasons being that I felt a very potent shame and embarassment over the fact that I had no real power, nor any control over my own life situation including the possibility for me to engage in competition when it's something that I really like to do, not to mention that I really hate the prospect of making anyone -else- depressed with my own issues. However, I might post that one too sometime just in order to shed some more light for the curious.
Regardless, to anyone who cares at all: Starting immediately today (on the 11th December), as I've conjured up a deal with powers that shalln't be mentioned, I'm definitely going back to competing and will at least make a very valiant attempt to lessen the gap between me and the champion spot in the time that I have left.
