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So I figured I'd start making a blog every season outlining my goals, and where I would like to be by the end of the season. I feel as if goals are an extremely powerful tool for motivation, especially when written down. This is how I've progressed through leagues from season to season, I started bronze, and I'd set goals for myself at the start of every day/week/month, and I'd attempt to achieve these goals in a set time frame, whether it be making more workers, playing 40 games in a day, or not doing stupid illogical all ins and actually thinking about my play, I'd usually work hard at achieving these goals. I can still remember the first time I got into GM on SEA. I worked my ass off over summer holidays, and eventually I made it. The feeling of achieving a goal, especially in Starcraft for me, is one of the best feelings I've ever felt, and nothing else, no drug, no other thing can replicate that exact feeling, and that's why I play this game.

So anyway, this season may be quite uneventful for me, as it pretty much lines up to the end of my Year 12 exams in High school (So keen to finish). But I still hate studying, and Starcraft is generally more important to me than getting super high grades, so Starcraft is still played quite a bit, but studying is still there to do. I finished this season as rank 70 GM on sea, as well as 1500 points on NA, with around 1000 games played over different accounts for the whole season. This is quite acceptable for the end of the season for me, and I can continue to grow from this. I've decided I want to play mainly NA, since usually the quality of the people I play on SEA, as well as the queue times, does not suit me, if I didn't get such terrible ping to Korea, I'd play there. There are a few things I want to change about how I sit down and play this game.

- My mindset sucks when I go into games. I'm continually thinking "Holy shit I should allin him now, I did a bit of damage!" or "Oh god, I've lost a few workers, I better allin" even when sitting back is the logical decision.
Another thing I want to change is how I react to losses. Sometimes I'm in quite a good mood, and I'll lose and be as GM as possible, and be all fine and dandy with losing, but other times (most of the time actually) I'll leave the game without gg'ing and just instantly queue for another game. This solves nothing logically, but when emotion comes into it, I'm angry with myself for losing, and I continue to think about what I could have done, rather than just getting on with the game I just queue'd for. Not only is this not fair on my opponent who beat me fair and square, regardless of what happened, but it's not fair on myself, and the efficiency of my learning. It's much more efficient improvement if after the game, with a positive mindset, to check the replay, look for mistakes, and write them down, and write what i could have done to improve.
These are the two major problems with my mindset I'd like to rid myself of this season, the first one is just about decision making, so I need to play more passively more often, and make the correct decisions. The only solution for the second problem is to simply GG out of EVERY game, and force myself to do this. I'd hope people who see this blog could help me with this if they ever meet with me on ladder and I lose. Grill me about it after the game, and refer to this blog, to remind me if my emotions get the better of me.

The way I play each matchup changes over time, and generally, I don't want to change exactly how I play these matchups, but I want to refine timings, and react to specific builds better, especially zerg builds, since usually I'm that guy doing 2 and 3 base allins (I hate broodlord infestor with a passion pretty much) . Playing a mix of macro and an allin style is extremely important, and I practice that allin style quite often, so I need to be able to have a solid macro build, and a solid game plan for late game situations.

Finally, in terms of numbers, I want to finish this season within the top 500 of masters on the NA ladder. I was within the top 1000 last season, and it's an incremental goal I should be able to achieve especially if I'm playing the NA ladder exclusively. The amount of games I play should also go up. I feel as if I can play around 1500 a season, but I slack off all the time, I should attempt to motivate myself more so I can get those extra games out, because when it comes down to it, mass gaming is what's needed at this stage, and a little bit of thinking and strategy.

Anyway, thanks for reading if you read the whole thing, hopefully some of this can relate to the way you play the game, and your mindset, so you can better yourself as a gamer.
Malice