After a lot of thought, I've decided to take a step back from speedrunning for a while. It wasn't easy coming to this decision, but I think it's for the best.

I've been incredibly active over the past half year or so. I started running Celeste and saw some pretty significant growth. I've pumped out a lot of videos in that time frame.

If you've followed my tweets however, you'll know that the success has come with a price. I've grappled with my mentality a lot over the past few months. It's taken a toll on my mental health.

My first thought was to speedrun more. If I got in more practice and did more runs, I'd get over the mental hurdles and get more accustomed to it. Clearly that did not work. The speedrun practice streams fizzled out relatively quickly.

Despite that setback, I was intent on keeping up the pace of improvement I had been seeing. I was getting new PBs in Celeste ILs fairly regularly, but they weren't enough. I was always chasing after the next goal, the next PB.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. It's natural to want to improve, especially in speedrunning. But it was consuming me to the point that I wasn't even taking the time to celebrate my PBs that I was getting.

My approach to it was vulnerable to toxic thoughts, and I think part of me knew that. I didn't want to do anything about it so long as I could say I was producing results. Some things fell by the wayside along the way.

My progress in Super Metroid is a good example. Did I make progress? Of course. But it wasn't nearly as substantial as Celeste. I'd expect my growth in a new game to start off a little faster, but I ended up neglecting Super Metroid in the long run.

I still don't know how I'm going to handle the negative thoughts that creep into my mind while I'm speedrunning. What I can do is limit how much of an effect speedrunning can have on my overall mood and emotional state.

Celeste ILs were really appealing because of how approachable they were. I could sit down and do attempts without having to plan a chunk of time in advance. But that meant I was spending a lot more time doing runs and therefore opening me up to the bad emotions.

Part of my plan to dial it back is to stop doing runs on weeknights. I want to focus on my backlog and other streaming projects as well as keep my mind clear. I'm not going to stop speedrunning completely. At the very least, I don't want to get rusty.

I'll probably be keeping speedruns to weekends when I'm not busy with anything else. I'll be devoting a few hours max per week. My primary goal will be preserving my current level of skill and not relentlessly chasing after PBs.

Not sure if I'll stream attempts or not, it'll depend on how I'm feeling. This thread has gone on long enough, and I'm not sure I've fully expressed everything that I've been feeling recently. But I need to go to bed now so I'll wrap it up.

I'm not giving up. I'm stubborn to a fault like that. But I am going to take the time to figure out the healthiest way for me to continue doing this without the emotional strife. Thanks for bearing with me and supporting me.