December 12 update.
I'm writing this at a weird hour (2:45a). Between the cold weather and other stressors -- mostly self-inflicted, like indigestion or not keeping up with stretches -- I tend to wake up a lot during winter midnights. I'm at peace with it, but I would like to start managing it better.
It ends up snowballing if I don't wrangle the things it leads to: using the phone in bed (bad for my hands and elbows), insufficient sleep (bad for most things), thinking too much (doesn't need explaining). I took a couple of Tums and figured I'd try to just put the thoughts out there.
Tekken has been going well. I decided to finally dive into ranked and see what I can do. I worked my way up to red ranks, which was a former 50th-percentile mark, but is now about 70th percentile or so. I assume this partially results from ranked-primary players generally being able to grind out development with more time, sometimes against players who pop in for a short time before no longer engaging with that mode, but it's presumably more complex than that.
What's important to me is that I was able to get over my anxieties about the mode (at least somewhat) and that I was able to develop a faster playstyle, start developing ideas about my opponent mid-match, and adjust what I was doing to attack perceived openings. This required a lot of things (knowledge, drilling, experience) that I didn't always have, but what I had reaffirmed is that character familiarity was essential. It sounds obvious, but you do really need to develop the muscle memory with a given character so you are not thinking "I should put out a low poke here", you are simply doing your low poke.
I say reaffirmed rather than "realized" because this is something I had already been told, both by players I play with and by people like PhiDX who discuss it in tutorial videos. Essentially, I had to develop playing my character reflexively, rather than consciously. Which meant that I actually had to stick to one character. Which is not something I tend to do.
Anyway, I set a goal, I put in the work, I reached that goal. That's pretty cool, and I'm proud of it. It didn't need to be a lofty goal; I'm not yet a lofty player. I'm taking a break from Leo ranked for now and will probably put some work into Leroy, or maybe Alisa or Paul or Azucena. But we already have a Paul and we got an Azu back on board, hopefully, and we also have a great player who has an Alisa. I'm not letting that stop me from eventually learning these characters, but I do want to bring something to the table that our group doesn't already have.
I haven't talked about them too much here but the group I play with and learn from really is awesome. The people are kind and fun, and they're frequently willing to teach or share what they know. It's chill. It's pleasant. It's been nice making friends, even "through online", and I really appreciate them. Would be nice to get to hang out some day, though I suppose we're already doing that.