JesiahTEG
Smash Master
Melee...When I hear that word, many things pop into my head. An 11 year old Gamecube game. A community of gamers potentially on the verge of extinction. Deep, lifelong friendships. A seemingly unbeatable Melee god from Sweden. Good, bad, fun, difficult, sad, happy, but most importantly...
A journey.
It's been a while guys. Not gonna waste any time.
Since my last post, and even before that, I've had a crazy, unbelievable past year. A lot of it was some of the most difficult things I've ever went through in my life, but there were good times too. Most of all, I experienced so much growth as a person and a lot has happened in terms of Melee. To anyone who has been following this thread/my journey, get ready because you know you're in for a ****ton of reading as well as me pouring my heart out like I usually do. And thanks for still reading.
To begin with I want to start with how much I've changed as a person, and how that's affected my ENTIRE Melee journey.
When I first posted about wanting to become the best, I was ready to do anything to become the best Melee player. I became obsessed with the game, and I also wanted to test myself and see if I could make my first real dream in life come true. I had a deep love for the game and was prepared to dedicate myself fully and completely to it.
My motivations were pure, and I look back on that and see a kid who had a ****ed up childhood, moved out of his house and instantly started pursuing a dream he had. I was wild. I was fiery. My emotions were pretty uncontrollable at times, and I'd often rage when I lost.
No matter how much I lost or who I lost to though, I never felt like they deserved to win. While I logically believed in No Johns and followed that philosophy as hard as I could all the time, I would uncontrollably attribute my losses to things like choking in tournaments, bad controllers etc.
It's hard for me to publicly post this online, but I made a commitment to see this journey through to the end, one way or another, and that includes keeping whoever's reading informed of what's going on.
I'm not going to say I was a messed up person, because I wasn't. But, I definitely had a lot of bad qualities in me that needed to be weeded out, even though at the time I wasn't aware I was even like that. I had attention issues, definitely. I guess for some reason I just thought I was special. It was a pretty immature mindset I had and it held me back for so long. I definitely missed out on a lot of friendship opportunities in the Smash community.
I think what happened was, my life was so messed up in terms of family, relationships, money, that I just wanted to put my all into Smash, and run away from the problems. I got too hurt when my girlfriend broke up with me, and my brother's death really had me feeling like I didn't really like life that much anymore. But I was willing to put all of that otherwise spent energy into Smash, since I loved the game. That's why I wanted to become the best in the first place, because I was prepared to get all of my satisfaction in life from Smash. The better I became, the more happy overall I was. It made me really feel like I could do something that I set my mind too, because Smash is HARD for me. It does not come easy at all, in fact I'd say it is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Getting better is like a giant mystery to me, a giant puzzle whose pieces just need to be unveiled, and it's up to YOU to do whatever it takes to figure it out.
I loved it, but not this august, but last august I spent 2 weeks at a friend's house because I was transitioning apartments. I made a commitment to working on my life. My health, my job, relationships with people, getting my license, pimpin out my room, dating girls and a few more.
As a result of my commitment to working as hard as I could at my life, my passion for Melee dimmed way down. I didn't feel NEARLY as strong about the game as I did in the past, and at times I wouldn't think about Melee for months throughout my day.
I'm pretty sure this happened because, as I started improving every area of my life that I wanted to ( And it was unbelievably hard. It's the reason why I had such a struggle this year emotionally and mentally, but I came out better than ever.) I had to focus so hard to be able to do it that I couldn't think about Melee. And as I got results in my life, I needed Melee less and less to feel happy as well.
But this was an important step for me. It was like freeing the chains of "loserdom" if you will, and recovering from my childhood. At least that's the way I see it. I realized that I COULD do sick in life if I tried, and I plan on taking my life to a crazy level someday. Don't know if I'll get there, but I'm gonna try.
So all in all, I became less dependent on Melee, which helped my life but dulled my passion for the game.
But...the flame never went out. The passion I have for this game is unreal, and even at a time when it wasn't important to me at all, I found myself playing nearly everyday. Anywhere from between a half hour to 2 hours usually. I wasn't sitting at home watching videos, I wasn't theorycrafting or brainstorming ways to get better, and I barely even kept up with Smashboards/tournaments.
But I still played. And I got better and better. Much more slowly than I had before definitely, but still very consistently. I made the decision to switch to all Marth to focus whatever time I put into the game on him, so my Marth got much better. I also grew a lot mentally and mindset wise, and I confirmed it at ROM5.
I matured so much as a player. I know I probably have a less than stellar reputation in the community, and I probably had at least a little beef with some players. But my absence from the scene and the shift from Melee as the focus of my life completely changed the way I feel.
Everyone's cool to me now. I think I used to see everyone as competition only, without realizing that if they stomped me out instead of getting butthurt and rationalizing that I'm actually better than them which also caused me massive amount of negative emotions...Now I'm just happy to be able to play with people. All the negative emotions I felt from not being as good as I wanted, and getting beat by a lot of people over and over...they're completely gone.
I no longer get upset about not playing good anymore, and about my controllers not working. I took the time and cultivated a mindset that I thought would be most efficient for performance, and also one for learning. It took a lot of time to grow into it. I had to struggle with emotions a lot as well.
The main philosophy behind the new way I think about the game and play it, is basically to be as in the moment as possible, reacting to everything that you can. To do this, you can't be upset when you get hit, or when you feel like you got gayed, or when you feel like you lost a match to someone who you were better than.
The more negative emotions I allow myself to felt when playing, the more impossible it was to play good. I can't believe it took me so long to learn this.
It's completely changed the game for me. I ALWAYS enjoy playing it now, even when I'm losing really hard. It's because I don't have as much of my identity tied in to the game anymore, and I don't feel worthless when I can't play good. (Think Asuka from Evangelion)
They all affect each other. By not caring about the outcome to the game as much, I don't care about the mistakes I'm making which allows me to absorb more information to learn/information from my opponent.
By being able to absorb more information/play better against my opponent, I then begin to love the game even more. Not a needy, obsessive kind of love like I used to have though.
It's a much more mature appreciation for the game. It's not the end all be all for me anymore, but it is definitely a source of personal strength to me, as you can see from me consistently playing for the past 5 years no matter what.
Going to ROM5 was a milestone for me in my Melee career. I needed the tournament to be able to reflect and analyze where I stand as player, and just how much I improved in every way over the past year.
Turns out, ROM5 was the most enjoyable event for me EVER since I started playing Melee. And although the results don't reflect it (placed higher at Zenith and ROM2) it's definitely the best I've ever played. The most confident I've ever felt, the most clearly I've ever thought.
The journey is continuing. I've learned to juggle life as well as Melee and I feel much better about myself overall. I'm not going to lie, I don't feel the need to have to be the absolute best anymore. I don't need the game like that anymore.
But, I definitely feel like a veteran of the game. Maybe I haven't been to nearly as many tournaments as people, and I definitely don't place nearly as high as other, better players. But everything I've figured out about the game I've done it on my own despite how impossible it seemed to me at the time, and I'm finally starting to break into the level skill wise that I feel happy with. But definitely not satisfied.
As the community slowly thins out, and the weaker players quit and the better more dedicated players continue to get better, I can only fall in one of the two categories, and my passion for the game is just too much combined with my pride to let me fall into the former.
It's been a slow rise, that's for sure. And I definitely get roflstomped still, but there's something in me that wants to prove to myself so bad what I'm capable of in something that I was naturally terrible at.
Although my journey has never really ended, ROM5 definitely brought me back to it with more intensity than I've had in a while.
In addition to that, a kid named Dustin moved in with me for half a year and he pretty much loves the game and wants to get as good as possible. He's naturally extremely smart, and it's an opportunity for BOTH of us.
Being in WNY is tough. It's lonely at the top, and I'm not saying that cuz I think I'm cool. I much rather have been in a region with really really good players who stomped me over and over, because then improving wouldn't have been so much of a mystery to me. I could have done it way easier, and this goes right along with this thread I read on Shoryuken a while ago, talking about what it takes to have a strong high level gaming community.
I've always wanted someone at my level, and Dustin and I are going to train harder than ever together. How good we can get is limitless with the ability to drill with each other, play with each other, run theories by each other, and test EVERYTHING. Everything. He's already getting good extremely fast, and he's definitely one of my closest friends at this point.
For me, it's kinda like a dream come true, and hopefully I can improve at the rate that I want while still getting stronger/faster/more stamina in the gym, get a promotion I've been working towards so hard at my job, possibly even find a girlfriend, who knows. But it's a test to see if I can maintain my life at the level I want to.
How good do I want to be? Don't know. Dustin and I have basically decided to play it by ear. You can definitely plan for the future, and I do that a lot. I love living life, and want to eventually have an amazing life. But I love Melee too much to let it stress me out, and I don't want to set a goal in case something comes up in my life that I have to pursue, because then I will feel like crap about myself for giving up on my Melee dream.
And I never want to feel anything negative about the game when looking back on it years from now.
Instead, I just want to enjoy the challenge, fun, and excitement of continuing to improve. I'll be attempting to take my game to the highest level possible though, and I'm PUMPED to do that. I'm approaching a level where I'm going to need to make a LEAP forwards in skill if I really want to become a somebody in this game.
I also love the idea of Mastery. The idea of mastery with Marth gets me so hype.
Can I do it? I think so. If not, I'll have an insane amount of fun trying though.
At this point, I'm keeping people up to date that have been following the journey and just want to see where it goes. The whole reason I started this was so the public could get a chance to see what it was like for a dedicated Melee player to try to rise to the top and follow it, and that still hasn't changed for those interested.
Thanks for reading, and it will probably be a while before I post again. I'll talk in this thread of course until it goes away, but it could be another year before I post again. If you ever want to talk about Melee, hit me up. My facebook is Jesse Morse and I'll talk about Melee anytime with anyone pretty much.
A journey.
It's been a while guys. Not gonna waste any time.
Since my last post, and even before that, I've had a crazy, unbelievable past year. A lot of it was some of the most difficult things I've ever went through in my life, but there were good times too. Most of all, I experienced so much growth as a person and a lot has happened in terms of Melee. To anyone who has been following this thread/my journey, get ready because you know you're in for a ****ton of reading as well as me pouring my heart out like I usually do. And thanks for still reading.
To begin with I want to start with how much I've changed as a person, and how that's affected my ENTIRE Melee journey.
When I first posted about wanting to become the best, I was ready to do anything to become the best Melee player. I became obsessed with the game, and I also wanted to test myself and see if I could make my first real dream in life come true. I had a deep love for the game and was prepared to dedicate myself fully and completely to it.
My motivations were pure, and I look back on that and see a kid who had a ****ed up childhood, moved out of his house and instantly started pursuing a dream he had. I was wild. I was fiery. My emotions were pretty uncontrollable at times, and I'd often rage when I lost.
No matter how much I lost or who I lost to though, I never felt like they deserved to win. While I logically believed in No Johns and followed that philosophy as hard as I could all the time, I would uncontrollably attribute my losses to things like choking in tournaments, bad controllers etc.
It's hard for me to publicly post this online, but I made a commitment to see this journey through to the end, one way or another, and that includes keeping whoever's reading informed of what's going on.
I'm not going to say I was a messed up person, because I wasn't. But, I definitely had a lot of bad qualities in me that needed to be weeded out, even though at the time I wasn't aware I was even like that. I had attention issues, definitely. I guess for some reason I just thought I was special. It was a pretty immature mindset I had and it held me back for so long. I definitely missed out on a lot of friendship opportunities in the Smash community.
I think what happened was, my life was so messed up in terms of family, relationships, money, that I just wanted to put my all into Smash, and run away from the problems. I got too hurt when my girlfriend broke up with me, and my brother's death really had me feeling like I didn't really like life that much anymore. But I was willing to put all of that otherwise spent energy into Smash, since I loved the game. That's why I wanted to become the best in the first place, because I was prepared to get all of my satisfaction in life from Smash. The better I became, the more happy overall I was. It made me really feel like I could do something that I set my mind too, because Smash is HARD for me. It does not come easy at all, in fact I'd say it is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Getting better is like a giant mystery to me, a giant puzzle whose pieces just need to be unveiled, and it's up to YOU to do whatever it takes to figure it out.
I loved it, but not this august, but last august I spent 2 weeks at a friend's house because I was transitioning apartments. I made a commitment to working on my life. My health, my job, relationships with people, getting my license, pimpin out my room, dating girls and a few more.
As a result of my commitment to working as hard as I could at my life, my passion for Melee dimmed way down. I didn't feel NEARLY as strong about the game as I did in the past, and at times I wouldn't think about Melee for months throughout my day.
I'm pretty sure this happened because, as I started improving every area of my life that I wanted to ( And it was unbelievably hard. It's the reason why I had such a struggle this year emotionally and mentally, but I came out better than ever.) I had to focus so hard to be able to do it that I couldn't think about Melee. And as I got results in my life, I needed Melee less and less to feel happy as well.
But this was an important step for me. It was like freeing the chains of "loserdom" if you will, and recovering from my childhood. At least that's the way I see it. I realized that I COULD do sick in life if I tried, and I plan on taking my life to a crazy level someday. Don't know if I'll get there, but I'm gonna try.
So all in all, I became less dependent on Melee, which helped my life but dulled my passion for the game.
But...the flame never went out. The passion I have for this game is unreal, and even at a time when it wasn't important to me at all, I found myself playing nearly everyday. Anywhere from between a half hour to 2 hours usually. I wasn't sitting at home watching videos, I wasn't theorycrafting or brainstorming ways to get better, and I barely even kept up with Smashboards/tournaments.
But I still played. And I got better and better. Much more slowly than I had before definitely, but still very consistently. I made the decision to switch to all Marth to focus whatever time I put into the game on him, so my Marth got much better. I also grew a lot mentally and mindset wise, and I confirmed it at ROM5.
I matured so much as a player. I know I probably have a less than stellar reputation in the community, and I probably had at least a little beef with some players. But my absence from the scene and the shift from Melee as the focus of my life completely changed the way I feel.
Everyone's cool to me now. I think I used to see everyone as competition only, without realizing that if they stomped me out instead of getting butthurt and rationalizing that I'm actually better than them which also caused me massive amount of negative emotions...Now I'm just happy to be able to play with people. All the negative emotions I felt from not being as good as I wanted, and getting beat by a lot of people over and over...they're completely gone.
I no longer get upset about not playing good anymore, and about my controllers not working. I took the time and cultivated a mindset that I thought would be most efficient for performance, and also one for learning. It took a lot of time to grow into it. I had to struggle with emotions a lot as well.
The main philosophy behind the new way I think about the game and play it, is basically to be as in the moment as possible, reacting to everything that you can. To do this, you can't be upset when you get hit, or when you feel like you got gayed, or when you feel like you lost a match to someone who you were better than.
The more negative emotions I allow myself to felt when playing, the more impossible it was to play good. I can't believe it took me so long to learn this.
It's completely changed the game for me. I ALWAYS enjoy playing it now, even when I'm losing really hard. It's because I don't have as much of my identity tied in to the game anymore, and I don't feel worthless when I can't play good. (Think Asuka from Evangelion)
They all affect each other. By not caring about the outcome to the game as much, I don't care about the mistakes I'm making which allows me to absorb more information to learn/information from my opponent.
By being able to absorb more information/play better against my opponent, I then begin to love the game even more. Not a needy, obsessive kind of love like I used to have though.
It's a much more mature appreciation for the game. It's not the end all be all for me anymore, but it is definitely a source of personal strength to me, as you can see from me consistently playing for the past 5 years no matter what.
Going to ROM5 was a milestone for me in my Melee career. I needed the tournament to be able to reflect and analyze where I stand as player, and just how much I improved in every way over the past year.
Turns out, ROM5 was the most enjoyable event for me EVER since I started playing Melee. And although the results don't reflect it (placed higher at Zenith and ROM2) it's definitely the best I've ever played. The most confident I've ever felt, the most clearly I've ever thought.
The journey is continuing. I've learned to juggle life as well as Melee and I feel much better about myself overall. I'm not going to lie, I don't feel the need to have to be the absolute best anymore. I don't need the game like that anymore.
But, I definitely feel like a veteran of the game. Maybe I haven't been to nearly as many tournaments as people, and I definitely don't place nearly as high as other, better players. But everything I've figured out about the game I've done it on my own despite how impossible it seemed to me at the time, and I'm finally starting to break into the level skill wise that I feel happy with. But definitely not satisfied.
As the community slowly thins out, and the weaker players quit and the better more dedicated players continue to get better, I can only fall in one of the two categories, and my passion for the game is just too much combined with my pride to let me fall into the former.
It's been a slow rise, that's for sure. And I definitely get roflstomped still, but there's something in me that wants to prove to myself so bad what I'm capable of in something that I was naturally terrible at.
Although my journey has never really ended, ROM5 definitely brought me back to it with more intensity than I've had in a while.
In addition to that, a kid named Dustin moved in with me for half a year and he pretty much loves the game and wants to get as good as possible. He's naturally extremely smart, and it's an opportunity for BOTH of us.
Being in WNY is tough. It's lonely at the top, and I'm not saying that cuz I think I'm cool. I much rather have been in a region with really really good players who stomped me over and over, because then improving wouldn't have been so much of a mystery to me. I could have done it way easier, and this goes right along with this thread I read on Shoryuken a while ago, talking about what it takes to have a strong high level gaming community.
I've always wanted someone at my level, and Dustin and I are going to train harder than ever together. How good we can get is limitless with the ability to drill with each other, play with each other, run theories by each other, and test EVERYTHING. Everything. He's already getting good extremely fast, and he's definitely one of my closest friends at this point.
For me, it's kinda like a dream come true, and hopefully I can improve at the rate that I want while still getting stronger/faster/more stamina in the gym, get a promotion I've been working towards so hard at my job, possibly even find a girlfriend, who knows. But it's a test to see if I can maintain my life at the level I want to.
How good do I want to be? Don't know. Dustin and I have basically decided to play it by ear. You can definitely plan for the future, and I do that a lot. I love living life, and want to eventually have an amazing life. But I love Melee too much to let it stress me out, and I don't want to set a goal in case something comes up in my life that I have to pursue, because then I will feel like crap about myself for giving up on my Melee dream.
And I never want to feel anything negative about the game when looking back on it years from now.
Instead, I just want to enjoy the challenge, fun, and excitement of continuing to improve. I'll be attempting to take my game to the highest level possible though, and I'm PUMPED to do that. I'm approaching a level where I'm going to need to make a LEAP forwards in skill if I really want to become a somebody in this game.
I also love the idea of Mastery. The idea of mastery with Marth gets me so hype.
Can I do it? I think so. If not, I'll have an insane amount of fun trying though.
At this point, I'm keeping people up to date that have been following the journey and just want to see where it goes. The whole reason I started this was so the public could get a chance to see what it was like for a dedicated Melee player to try to rise to the top and follow it, and that still hasn't changed for those interested.
Thanks for reading, and it will probably be a while before I post again. I'll talk in this thread of course until it goes away, but it could be another year before I post again. If you ever want to talk about Melee, hit me up. My facebook is Jesse Morse and I'll talk about Melee anytime with anyone pretty much.
