Postive Experience #2

Yesterday was a big day. It was Halloween. That's not necessarily my favorite holiday but I do like Fall and now that I live somewhere with fancy leaves it can be really refreshing. Instead of giving out candy last night, Aubrey and I both had a on of crap that we had to do. She's been grading essays like a madwoman and I was trying to get my crap together to apply for that caster position with IPL. Once we got all that worked out, we played some Amnesia: The Dark Descent together. That game is freaking scary. I know it's kind of an old hat now and has been around or a few years but we really enjoyed ourselves.

Also, it's November now. That means Thanksgiving is coming. I love Thanksgiving. I love the food. I love having the days off. I love playing the video games I generally play on said time off. I love the leftovers. And family. Totally love spending time with family too. I have a blog post from a couple years ago entitled "An Ideal Thanksgiving" that I'm totally going to repost here and I'm really excited about it. Also, my old roommate proposed to his wife on Thanksgiving in a hot air balloon a couple years ago and Aubrey and I totally saw it on the way to buy rolls at the store or something. Also, it was that same day I ate like 7 slices of pie at Aubrey's grandparents' house and I've been well-liked ever since.

Anyway, to be a little more current. I finally got some good casting experience in practicing with some profession replays. It was amazing how addictive it got. Also, it was strange how much I felt like I was noticing now that I was actually looking for things to talk about. All and all it was a lot of fun and definitely a learning experience. I'm totally going to switch to Random now when I ladder so I can really have a better grasp of each race. That's going to be awesome.

Tomorrow I should know if I made it into the running for the IPL job. I'm super excited to see how it goes. And I'm looking forward to keep on playing and casting even if things don't work out. Then I'll be ready for the next time. 

I hope everyone is having a great day!

Positive Experience #1

I'm reading a book called The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. Here's a TED talk by the author. The purpose of the book is to inform that people become more successful when they are happy and not the other way around. I know I've gotten stuck in the mindset of "When [I've finished school] I'll be happy" or "When [we pay off student loans] we'll be less stressed." While those are good, positive things, science shows that there are active, measurable activities that people can do that will make them happier people. Those happy people then proceed to perform better in work, school, and in their personal lives than neutral or depressed people. I'll do a full review once I finish it, but up to this point I highly recommend the book. 

One of the things that improves happiness is to be grateful. This includes take a few minutes to write down three things you are grateful for each day and another idea is to write for 20 minutes three times a week about a positive experience you've had. My wife, Aubrey, and I are already doing the first one of those. We even bought a fancy little journal that we write in each night. I want to start doing the 20 minutes thing too. And it just so happens I have a blog! So for the time being, I'm going to start taking 20 minutes three times a week to just throw something that made me happy down in my blog. I might start to ramble from time to time, but I'm going to try and make it about one particular experience as opposed to just a bunch of nice random things. I'm planning on doing this on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Also, they will generally not be proofread because this is supposed to be a quick exercise. Sorry if that hurts your brain.

Positive Experience #1
Today I pulled off my very first blog giveaway! I'm pretty excited about that. Sure, I think I may have only gotten one new reader (if that) but it's exciting to see that people actually notice some of the work you do. And I got to give them cool stuff for free! Maybe I should start practicing to be the next host on The Price is Right. I used to watch that show a ton when I was little (and to a much lesser degree, The Young and the Restless, which came on right afterward) and it turns out giving stuff away to happy people is a blast. One of the DOTA copies went to a good friend of mine, so I look forward to getting to do that with him. Additionally, I might have ended up with three copies of DOTA 2. So I might have another one I get out there to the people who entered. That'd be awesome.

Turns out I might not actually people able to write about that one topic for a full 20 minutes. But I'll keep going the best I can. So yeah, the giveaway was cool. I really enjoy doing this blog. I know most of my page views seem to come from bots or Adsense checkers or whatever but it's still a good outlet. I remember when I was a Freshman in college (7 years ago) and finally learned that the key to being a good writer is not following a highly-structured guide but just putting down whatever you were thinking and making sure your grammar is good enough that people actually understand it. That was a real brain-opener for me at the time. Aubrey teaches high school English and she's always trying to help kids understand that. It's too bad that so many people write off writing (lol) as just a hard, stupid thing they make you do in school. It's actually pretty fun. Not to mention a great way to get your thoughts out there.

Speaking of positive things about the blog. I totally set my mom up a cooking blog that you should check out. She's in her 50's and has raised five very weird children. But we all seem to be doing okay at least. Now that we're all good and out of the house, she's decided to go to culinary school to learn some new skills. She's already a great cook, but I'm super proud of her for making an effort to keep learning. She's way older than the other people in her class, but so far it sounds like she's doing great and really enjoying herself. The website is cathyscooking.com. It's pretty blank at the moment because...well...I keep forgetting to tell her how it all works. It just updates through blogger but she called me with a question like a week and a half ago. I should call her back. (Note: I call my mom and dad every Sunday. This just didn't come up the last time.)

Speaking of things I've mentioned on this blog, I am so super exciting to apply for a full time SC2 casting position with IGN. Sure, I'm totally not going to get it. I casted my first couple games the other day (which I've been putting off a long time. It's really nerve-wrecking to get started!) and they were definitely not professional quality. I'll have to keep practicing on that. But the fact that there really are jobs like that out there is so awesome. I really need to keep practicing so I can get into that one day. I like programming, for sure. But I would LOVE to be a SC2 commentator. Can you even imagine showing up to work and getting paid for that? I can't think of anything else I would want to do more than that. I think that comes from a few different areas of my brain though.

I really like playing video games. Duh. Particularly the kinds that require some thought and planning. And then you get to see your plan pay off. That's a great feeling. Secondly, I really like helping people learn things, especially if it's something I'm passionate about. Commentating Starcraft 2 is synonymous in my mind with teaching Starcraft 2 thanks to watching Day[9]. So getting to have a job where I do both would be freaking amazing! It makes me so excited just to apply and motivates me to keep up practicing and keep up this blog because it might actually amount to a sweet job in the eSports industry. I'll admit I was pretty pessimistic about the whole thing at first. Aubrey convinced me that I should just go for it. She says that because she thinks I'm a lot smarter and more capable than I really am, but it's still nice to have someone believe in you so much. And I figured the "rejection" wouldn't be any worse than the buttheads on the internet now a days that just ask you to send them a resume and you never hear even a peep back. That's totally crap.

Anyway, we're being positive here. My twenty minutes are up and I hope that everyone has a great and happy day. I'll cast some more Starcraft games later. Hopefully I start to improve drastically with practice!

Feeling Ambitious!

I'm going to apply for this: IPL Starcraft II Caster Search Contest!

Sure, it's a long, long shot. But hey, I gotta start trying at some point, right? I'll be trying to put together a good application package over the next couple days and I'll keep you updated! Maybe we can at least get some more readers for the blog, right?

Also, news broke today that Heart of the Swarm will have leveling and cosmetic rewards incorporated into the ladder system. Exciting! Now let's hope that they put in separate ladder ranks for each race. So it's not all wonky with matchmaking if you want to change things up. That would make me happy.

Finally, DON'T FORGET about the DOTA 2 giveaway! More info here!