Mid-year life update/dump! (2025年)

2025/06/11

Introduction

Welcome to the mid-2025 life update! So far we’re through half of the year, and I thought it would be a good idea to write out what’s been going on for me so far, what’s changed, and what’s the relative feeling right now. I will like to preface this post by saying it’s not the most uplifting nor is it the most inspiring. I honestly haven’t gotten a lot done, especially over the past month since my previous partner broke up with me. I don’t want sympathy or any witch-hunting by any means. I know my channel is small enough that this wouldn’t happen anyways, but I always want to put it out there incase we have any bad-faith actors. Don’t be cringe please.

CS2 Addiction

Sometimes I wonder if jvscholz ever checks in on my channel or rss/blog at all. If you do, hi jimmy, email me how your pickem’s have been throughout this major.

I’ve honestly relapsed onto playing counterstrike again because of the Austin Major. I haven’t put this much time into relearning a game in a very long time, and it has taken away a lot of time that I should have been using to be productive. It isn’t the playing of the game that’s the issue in my head. It’s the major. I am a huge huge HUGE sucker for live esports. I have been an avid follower of various esports for the past 8-9 years of my life, and I love watching in-person gaming. It’s literally peak. I don’t normally have a fear of missing out UNLESS there is a tournament going on. Then I have to watch every game that I can (or every game that I am interested in which is majority).

I have put in almost 70 hours in the past 2 weeks, I’ve been testing out different resolutions so I can run the game faster, and I’ve been queueing up with friends that I haven’t played games with in a hot minute. It’s been really fun reconnecting with people and just gaming like I used to back in primary school for a little bit while I have the time to.

Old habits die hard, but old gear dies harder

Since I started playing CS again, I decided to spend a little bit of money on new gear. Specifically a mouse. I bought the VXE R1 Pro, but I’m still sticking with my Steelseries 6GV2. I tried using my HHKB for CS but I honestly really hate it. I think it’s a lot better for me to tilt my keyboard and use CTRL. It just feels better when I am gaming at the moment. But that’s not the only thing I went back to.

I am no longer using my ortho-split keyboard; at least for the time being I am not using it. I could never find a super comfortable position for it and I don’t want to spend more money trying to find out how to optimise it. So I just went back to my HHKB. I think the HHKB is the best long-term keyboard investment I have ever made in my life and if I could buy a couple more then I honestly would. I love topre and I really don’t have to optimise my typing that heavily. What I was organizing with layers I can honestly do with some Neovim snippets and whatnot. I’ve also been using a non-ortho keyboard for a bit now so it’s easier for me to swap between both computers now.

I also realized that all the problems I had with my Logi M575 were due to me disabling mouse accel on my Linux desktop. As a note to anyone who is planning on using a trackball, you nEED mouse accel. Without it they feel trash and you’re going to have a terrible time doing things. I was just really used to disabling mouse accel on everything due to my gaming past.

Priorities (or lack-there-of)

Now we get to the more serious shit at the bottom. You’ve noticed that I’ve talked a lot about gaming, and that’s been a major problem in my life again. I’ve been gaming a lot. I’ve relapsed on a lot of dopamine-bringing habits and my screentime has been through the roof. I’ve been in a pretty heavy slump, as much as I don’t like to admit it or it doesn’t sound like it if you talk to me. I realized recently that a lot of what I was doing in my personal life was so then I could be with my ex long-term and be as flexible as possible. But I have my own things that I want to do, and other things I also want to learn.

For 2-3 months, programming in Ruby felt like a chore and that’s because I wanted to fit myself into something so then I could fast-track being a proficient developer so in the future I would be able to work anywhere. That’s not to say that I was doing the best job at it however. I did a lot of mismanaging, over-promising, and under-delivering (a lot like with this channel) and that’s due to me overthinking. If I overthink something, I put myself in a state of paralysis and do nothing. This is very self-destructive and leads to other problems.

It looks like I don’t care or that things don’t seem that serious to me. It seems as if I am taking advantage of things and not grateful. That’s never my intention. I just have a very hard time expressing myself and reaching out for help because I want to be self-sufficient like the people I watch online. But I live a very different life. I have a chronic illness now. I am graduating from a completely different field. I have my own life and interests. Hell, I live in a different country from everyone I watch. I have my own politics and own beliefs and my own priorities.

These have been my thoughts for a while and it’s honestly held me back a lot. I’ve been holding myself back a lot without even realizing it. The biggest thing to come from all of this is that I have to learn to speak for and be honest with myself. No one knows me better than myself.

Conclusion + For the future

I don’t want to over-promise more but I do one video in the works. It’s nothing large. I literally just have to chop it and put some music in the background. To spoil what it’s about, it’s about how I feel like my school district failed me throughout my primary + secondary experience. I’ve literally just been playing way too much counterstrike. Maybe I make a video about it in the future? I haven’t been super motivated or interested in making videos as of late. Hell I haven’t even been reading much. I’ve been playing guitar, watching copious amounts of counterstrike and YouTube, and ignoring anything that would give me any sort of long-term benefit in my life in fear of what I will see in myself. I guess this can be counted as an accountability post.

Thanks for reading.

People I look up to

These are just some people that I look up to and respect. I respect their dedication to their respective crafts and I find them really inspiring in their own ways.

Creators

Pro-gamers (call me cringe idk)

Musicians