Hello and welcome back! It hasn't been that long, has it? (lol)
I thought about writing all of the events post Combo Breaker in a long-form blog post and decided against it. The editing portion of putting up blog posts is often more cumbersome than I'd like it to be, so I'll just break this up into pieces to make it easier on me and hopefully more engaging for you all to take in.
Again, thank you for your time and let's move into part two of the post-CB reflection series.
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Hospitalization. This is certainly a scary word. Though, honestly speaking, I wasn't as scared as I thought that I would be for my first ever time going into the emergency room. I don't think that I was disassociating away from what was happening to me, but by the time I chose to go to the ER, I think I had mostly understood that I'd reached the limits of what I could do by myself.
To explain a bit shortly for those who are new followers or missed that sort of "saga". I had gotten pretty sick in August with what I thought was influenza. I had fever, stuffy nose, sore throat and the whole deal. Took some time off, crashed fluids, rest and OTC (over the counter) medicine but for whatever reason I didn't feel like I was getting much better.
Went to urgent care to get checked out and also prescribed some antibiotics. They helped, but I was still generating mucus and I thought that I had swallowed something that was stuck in my throat. Fast forward to the trip to the ER and an x-ray, I found out that my tonsils had swollen to about 4cm and were threatening to block my airway. I had felt like there was something in my diaphram that was moving around and so when I tried to sleep for a time, I was constantly adjusting in my bed to get a clear breathing path. I'm glad that I did, lol.
Anyway. I was taken over to the ICU to wait about a day and a half to get surgery and by Wednesday, I was out and home for bed rest and recovery. I'm very thankful to some policies at work, the support of my friends and family and my Health Savings Account that allows me to mostly live the way I've lived up to this point.
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Now, what this obviously meant is that I didn't really have much time to be going out to play video games here. The hospitalization also ate up a significant amount of my PTO so it made planning to go to events that much more difficult. Typically, I'd be able to travel down to the tournament destination with a day or two's worth of time off in order to get acclimated and in the mindset of being able to compete.
This time, because of my lack of PTO... I had worked a full shift on Friday and then left on the plane at around 8pm to go to Orlando and then subsequently took an early flight out on Monday morning to work a half-day shift back at the office. Not a fan of this and certainly don't want to do it again.
By the point that I had already made the arrangements for travel and such, I was still in the previous funk from after Juu-Yon-Kakuto (JYK) and so my mindset honestly wasn't very good. To be honest, there was also the thought that I had gotten slighted in seeding as well. A top 8 to start the year, 25th at CB, 3rd at Crossover Arc and the admittedly poor 9th at JYK made me wonder if people thought I was washed or something.
Needless to say, I wasn't very enthusiastic about playing that much. The side-ballroom where UNI and some of the other games were being run was also miserably hot. Absolutely dreary in there because the AC wasn't working well or something. Nevertheless, I was the 3rd seed in a pool with Defiant and Hiari.
I had managed to win my matches over Wormy Merkava and Pokecole Byakuya, but I wasn't terribly confident with my level of play at the event. Getting smoked by Ruric and BB in casuals certainly didn't help, but I played Defi pretty closely through most of our set. I wasn't sure which character he was going to choose to play, but he picked Hyde.
Defi is a fantastic defensive player and the strategy he had for disengaging with Akatsuki until I was forced to commit to some options was a very sound one. He built on a big lead in Game 3 and I had an important drop in what I thought was a momentum changer and he won cleanly off that.
I had to play two tough sets through gravyjones' Enkidu and the rematch with Pokecole, but I'd qualified out into top 24. Rikir, who had lost to Ruric, would be my opponent, though I didn't know it until a little later in the day.
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My day on Saturday was rather full, as I entered on Melty Blood Type Lumina a whim, went 3-2 and finished at 65th with my new Kohaku. I also went around to watch a bunch of my friends play in various games since it would be more of a hassle to go back to the hotel room and rest prior to Top 24.
I will reiterate that I was very annoyed about the Top 24 situation. We didn't know much about how it would work. UNI had a lot of time allocated, so we didn't know if all of our matches would be streamed. There wasn't a spot in the main ballroom allocated for us and so we didn't know if we had to go to the other ballroom to play and come back or how that was going to work.
I'm glad I ended up asking before our pools were set to begin at 6pm or so, but ultimately we had to convert 3 setups over and I had to sit down cold to play against Rikir after helping to find and locate everyone and get them over into the main ballroom. Truth be told, I don't remember too much about this set except that I missed another combo with tk.236a on throw tech timing and that Rikir beat me in straight rounds. So, my tournament ended with a frustrating but I suppose respectable 17th place.
I guess that I'm happy that I'd gotten out of pools every time so far for every major, but by the end of my run I wasn't sure if I would even bother trying to continue to play in 2023. I was extremely burnt out, feeling like I was washed and people thought I was washed. Just generally upset again with tournaments and tournament performance.
However, I had a very enjoyable time watching the rest of Top 24 and later Top 8 after I got eliminated. There's just something about the crowds and the atmosphere in UNI that has a pretty invigorating effect. The amount of effort and the talent that were shown off by all of the players there was simply amazing. In particular, I was very impressed with OmniDeag and PapaPesto. The "next generation" of UNI players have absolutely arrived and I'm excited to see how things continue to develop. Now, truly, we're waiting on French Bread to allow us to help further develop the amazing talent and community that has been fostered.
I also have to make a huge shoutout to cookie and F O X, who graciously let me chill and eat dinner with them in their hotel room. There was some venting, some real talk and just a very relaxed atmosphere that helped me put a lot of things back into perspective. You two are definitely some real ones for that.
Two more people I have to shoutout are Ryker and Deitz, who were my roommates over the weekend. We certainly missed you there too, wampuh! I honestly really missed being able to chat with and spend time with you as well. We haven't gone hard in the same game since the Yomi days and being in the hotel room felt like a time machine back into those times as well. I forgot how fun BBTag was, even while getting smoked. I hope we can meet up at another event soon.
Nevertheless, I still wasn't in great spirits coming back home for the reasons I mentioned and I was stuck between a mental rock and a hard place of no motivation while back in Columbus. Still not really sure what level of commitment to playing fighting games I was going to have, I looked forward to Climax of Night...
