Thursday, December 29, 2011

New Year's Resolution, Decisions, Advice, 100th DN Game

I know I'm slightly early on the topic, but I thought I'd talk about my New Year's resolution for the coming year. In the past I've always had the traditional resolutions that virtually everyone has such as losing weight, drinking less, spending less money, and what have you. It seems like resolutions are all about giving something up; why should I have to give anything up? This year rather than picking something that I know I'll simply give up on later on in the year, I decided that I'd pick a realistic yet meaningful one (at least for me), and that is to: play more Yugz.

I admit that sounds kinda funny, but again I wanted a simple one that I thought I could reasonably do. With my current workload and simply being married, I really couldn't/can't play all that much. About once a week tops with very minimal testing in between. I'd like to change this and say I'd like to play in real-life tourneys twice a week and utilize Dueling Network a lot more during the week. The primary alteration I need to do is simply bring my laptop to school and hop on DN in between classes. I still get a lot of joy out of playing this game, so why not enjoy it on a more regular/frequent basis? I won't allow it to get to the point of where I used to be when I played in tourneys like 4 days a week though; that negatively affected my school grades and stuff too much. I'll probably also do the usual crap like "lose weight" and "spend less money", but those are back-burner resolutions for me.

So last night I checked Uncle's websites to see if either location was going to be starting tourneys again. I noticed on the Valley one that they'll be starting them back up on Monday. What's really annoying is that this tournament is the exact same time and day as the Northtown one. Why can't one of them wise up and simply shift it a day instead of directly competing with each other? All that's gonna do is make the attendance of each tournament lower, since the likelihood of there being a unanimous decision among the players to play at one place over the other, virtually non-existent. You'll probably get a majority of people switch back to Uncle's, while the stragglers hold on to playing at Northtown because it's closer to them or whatever. Good job, instead of running potentially two 20-man tourneys during the week, there's gonna be one that'll be like 14 and the other around 6, struggling to get those last two people to hold a full tourney. See how this was even more problematic when BGN was around, who also had Monday @ 5 tourneys? Is there something about Monday that just screams "Yugioh tourney!!"? Speaking of BGN, I checked on their facebook page and sure enough they officially closed down on Christmas Eve but the guy is gonna have "Thursday Board Game Night" or some crap while he's trying to sell the building off. Such a shame, that store had a lot of potential to do really well but poor location (next to a used car lot with really nothing else nearby) and a poor business mind-set caused another closure of a game/hobby shop for Spokane/Valley.

So with that being said and trying to fulfill my new 2-tourneys-a-week resolution, I obviously have to pick between Uncle's and Northtown. Naturally this leads to a pro/con list. I'll continue going to Lightning on Saturdays.

Uncle's
Pros: likely to have more people, is much closer to where I live
Cons: more than likely Andrew will be running it, very close to where my wife works (ie if she happens to see me I'm dead)

Northtown
Pros: realistically no chance of my wife seeing me
Cons: farther away, may not have as good turnouts

I know I've talked a lot about my wife in the past, usually in a disgruntled manner, so I should probably elaborate a little. Long story short, as far as my wife knows, I don't play Yugz anymore and haven't for the past year + some months. When I was living in Texas she essentially forced me to quit and throw away (literally, in garbage bags into the dumpster) my entire collection (worth ~$2000 at the time), so now I simply play behind her back and hide all my cards/binders/etc. I didn't even really care about the cards themselves, but the one thing that had sentimental value to me, the team mat that I received the day before I went to boot camp, I had to throw away as well. I know it seems kind of shady/sneaky and it's kind of a terrible way to live, but she simply isn't a rational person when it comes to the game, or actually, a lot of things in general. I have never told her once that she couldn't or isn't allowed to do something that she truly enjoyed because it differed from my beliefs/interests, but I guess she thinks it's ok for her to do that to me. I could easily say "well I have no interest in going to church so you're not allowed to go anymore" but I obviously don't. I don't cheat on her, don't hit her, don't gamble all our money away, not an alcoholic or anything like that. I pretty much wait on her hand and foot and do things a lot of men in general will outright never do, so she doesn't "have it bad" in the slightest. So for me, it's not about doing anything out of spite and "playing behind her back", it's simply "doing what I have to, to do something I enjoy." I don't have the widest range of interests and hobbies, never really have throughout my life, so this is why I have to put so much focus and worry on her randomly seeing me at these mall-based tournaments.

Pro-tip: don't get married. Women change almost instantaneously pre and post-marriage. I don't know what it is, but there must be some kind of built-in "nag" switch that gets flipped on when the ring comes on. Like most other guys, I too thought "nah there's no way she'd change like that, she's so cool and everything is chill". Uh no. Trust me that shit goes away in a flash, and it's obviously more than a coincidence when every other married guy I've talked to has said similar things. You even hear about these stories from time to time where a couple lives together for like 10+ years, very happy, then once they get married it all goes to shit and they get divorced. Wtf? It doesn't happen "just because"!!

I finally got in my 100th Rated game of DN today. I know that isn't really a feat or anything since so many people have hundreds upon hundreds of games, but like I've said in the past, I can only tolerate that shit for so long until I just have to log out. My win-loss ratio is 72-28, which I'm happy with since I've always wanted to maintain at least around a 3-1 ratio. Some of those losses I had to incur upon myself when I was playing and my wife almost walking into the room so I'd have to exit out without hesitation. The last time I did that I Trish'd and was +3 on him, obviously going to win that one, but had to exit out in a heartbeat. That and losing to some crazy OCG shit, or other random lucky OTK crap. I've gotten quite a few wins off scrubs too so it probably all evens out in the end. Oh DN, how I love to hate and hate to love thee lol.

Still waiting on Turbo Pack 7 reveals which were supposed to happen today. I'm sure we'll be getting them within the day or so. Anyways long post, but hey that's nothing out of the norm right? lol. Happy New Year to everyone and stay safe :)

8 comments:

  1. Good for you. Way to play the game you love. I think you're doing the right thing.

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  2. I wish there'd be a more permanent solution as opposed to "not get married"

    does your wife go ballistic over it? only that would warrant playing behind her back and all...

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  3. Stand up for what you believe and love!

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  4. I read your blog a lot. It is one of the better blogs out there. I want to offer you some advice. I don't know all the details but if you are hiding your Yugioh habit from your wife then you are asking for trouble. If she made you throw away $2000 worth of cards then you have a serious problem. A spouse should be supportive of what your interests are. So I'd amend your pro tip to say if you get married marry somebody who is supportive of who you are and your interests. Getting back to topic hiding this from her is going to come back to haunt you and could easily drive a wedge between you. If she isn't down for who you are as a yugioh player then how can she say she loves you? It's part of who you were before she met you. A lot of young couples make the mistake of thinking they can change each other. (note I'm 41) The truth is you have to accept each other for who you are without compromise if she is unwilling to do that then she doesn't really love you she just loves the ideal of being somebody's wife. I'd recommend preemptive counseling so that you can have a 3rd party explain to her that Yugioh is a harmless trading card game and not a form of devil worship.

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  5. Thanks for the comments.
    @Thurge - I agree with everything you said and it's stuff that has come up before. Before I met her, I had always kept my card-playing hobby to myself, away from all my past girlfriends. She was the first person I told and she said that she had no problem with it at all, so at that point I was like "wow, she really does like me for me". When we were in Texas, we had been fighting a lot (more than just about Yugz) and she revealed that she in fact wasn't OK with me playing cards in the first place, but had just said that to make me happy. So basically the whole time we were dating could be seen as it was all built on a lie. I admit I was pretty heart-broken to hear that she didn't actually feel that way.

    We actually did go to counseling in Texas, but the counselor we got (assigned to us by the military, but a civilian) was basically one of those "anti-man" types. At the moment that she heard that we were fighting about cards she was like "oh no no no, you've gotta stop doing that, right now". After I explained it from my perspective, how I've been playing it since I was a teenager, how some months it was the thing that helped us pay our rent and whatnot, and that I was genuinely good at it, she was like "OK, well I can see why you enjoy it and it's a part of you" and pretty much changed her whole tune. The counselor's recommendation was for me to quit slowly/a little bit at a time, but that pretty much wasn't good enough for my wife and thus making me throw it all away. In the follow-up session I explained to her that she had gone against her recommendation and made me quit cold-turkey, my wife got kinda scolded, but then we moved on to talking about other stuff that we had to deal with. After that the cards thing never came up, at that point was when I said to myself that I'd just play in secret.

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  6. im sorry a guy as awesome as you has to deal with such a problem i hope and pay you can work hins out so you will not have to play in secret, even thou i know thats a lot harder said than done

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  7. @mike_jeezy this is not about yugioh. This is really about you standing up to her without putting your relationship at risk. A marriage is a partnership. There is supposed to be give and take but not where she does all the taking while you do all the giving. As far as I see it she owes you $2000 in cards. You have to make her respect and accept who you are. Frankly, there is no way in hell you should have to hide something as trivial as a children's card game from her. Do you travel to go to YCS events? There was a girl I dated who had no interest in Yugioh but she would travel with me to Shonen Jumps. She made sure I had lunch and water and what not. She'd hang around for a few rounds and then go sight seeing. Perhaps if yugioh offered a means to do something she enjoyed then maybe she'd lighten up. I dunno bro I feel bad for your situation because if it persists you guys will probably split which really sucks.

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