SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

I know this is a few days late, but I'm basing my official SC2 new year to begin on the week of January 7th. I've been spending nice quality time with family since December 22. It'll be a while till I get a chance to hang out with them like this again so I'm enjoying it to the fullest extent. 2012 has been such a full year full of new experiences and blown minds. I feel it's exceptionally good timing that the 2012 ended around now, and eSports can take a breath to kick start 2013~



Health, family, SC2; the ultimate balance.
2012 has been a very full year of SC2 for me. Any time in the day that didn't involve work or family I was doing something SC2. I was watching streams, reviewing replays, watching VODs, reading blogs & articles. Even when I was working I'd usually have a stream in the background, where I'd glance or listen to like a radio. Because of this, my health has definitely suffered. Suffered in the sense that I was seriously lacking exercise.

Exercise was no longer part of my routine. It was more of a 'if I have time, I'll get there', but the problem was I never really had time. Well technically I did, but that time I gave to SC2 in a heartbeat. I know the importance of health; I use to be a mini health/gym junkie. I ate healthy, and went to the gym everyday including Sundays, had a steady schedule of cardio & weights. Of course this was before SC2 was in my life. 2012 was full of junk food, fast food, and lackluster/rushed gym sessions. I think I've gained a good 8kg over the year, and it truly is time to shave that off and go back to the healthy lifestyle. Diets do not work, lifestyle changes do.

Family is always the up-most number one priority in my life. 2012 my family has made a lot of sacrifices for my SC2 passion & me. They did it willingly, but I feel I could have spared a lot more time to spend with them. This really isn't an issue half as severe as my health issue, but it is still something of importance to me that I want to make a point of.

The most important part of this resolution is this: I plan to fix the time balance issues without taking away any time from SC2. I plan to spend the same amount of time on SC2 in 2013 as I did in 2012, if not even more. It comes down to time management efficiency. I foresee a couple of burnouts with this resolution, but I guess I'll deal with then when they occur~



Calendar management.
I use to be able to remember everything. Anything that I've come across that I make some effort in remembering I'll remember. 2012 I've found myself start to miss things. Perhaps it's the hectic fulls days that I live day in day out trying to fit more SC2 in, but my days often get jumbled up and I can no longer trust my memory 100%. Perhaps 95%, but no longer 100%.

Many times in 2012 I wanted to get a Google calendar going to track my SC2 events, but I always ended up getting lazy on it and stopped updating. I've never actually forgot/missed an event I was suppose to attend, but I've mis-tracked days I have left to train countless times now. I think I just need to admit defeat to the brain, and get that extra help. This way I'll also stop worrying about accurate information, as I can just glance it through the calendar.

Calendar management gets its own special category because I feel it's key to my previous resolution on life balance. I guess this is both a resolution and a method~



Tournaments.
I admit I completely toned down my tournament attendance in the last 2 months of 2012. This wasn't due to laziness or forgetfulness. I simply felt that the downtime of a tournament wasn't effective/efficient to my training. I believe I was correct too. By entering only select tournaments depending on the progress of my training, I believe I have now reached a point in progress where I wouldn't have been able to reach if I blindly entered all the available tournaments around.

Where I am now, I feel it's time I re-tune the ratio of tournaments I enter. 2013 will be the year that I start entering much more tournaments than 2012 and conquer the nerves along with learning the true art of a BO3+~



Heart of the Swarm.
I do have a beta key. My plans for HotS are quite uncertain at the moment. With SEACL #3 and IPTL Amateur league coming up, I think I have to stick with WoL a tad bit longer. Ideally I want to make the switch right about now but I’m giving myself a blind deadline of February to make the switch. I think I need at least 1 month with HotS to hammer down the basic metagame so I can take off training wheels when the official release hits~


eSports 2013.
I do have plans to put more time & effort into the other areas of eSports other than a pure SC2 player in 2013. Why this blog was delayed for quite some time was because I was trying to figure out what exactly it is I wanted to do. There are many ideas, but none has really hit the sweet spot. Ideas have been ranging from developing Hybree more aggressively, more constant blogging with a touch of life outside eSports, starting tutorials/guides, a new talk show, group coaching and many more.

I’m still in the brainstorm phase at the moment, but will definitely give a update when the storm calms down~


Short-term goals.
My short-term goals in 2013 are to make a run for GM on NA and KR/TW servers. I’ve never laddered on NA much due to 280+ ping, and working out of Taipei most of the year means my connection to KR/TW is 240+ ping. The main reason I'm switching focus to other servers even with the latency issues is simply that I've become too familiar with the players on SEA.

Currently on SEA I'm going through a dilemma that there are too few players online in my MMR range. No, my MMR is not so high that I'm having trouble finding games, but since around July 2012 all my SEA ladder sessions involved playing the same player 4-6 times in a 2-hour period. If I wanted to train with a practice partner I'd find one. I ladder because I want to be training against variety, and uncertainty~


2012 has been explosive; it looks like 2013 could be the same. Wishing a big GLHF to everyone’s eSports resolutions!! I hope our paths will cross sometime this year!~


gg glglgl!!


the fist pumping larva,
Reere.

ps. Another gift.