Spifflet
Regular
Hey everyone! Hope y'all are well.
I'm sure we can all agree, Speedsolving is ****ing cool.
In winter 2014, when I first saw what cubers were doing and what was possible, a fire had lit inside me and I knew this was going to become something I loved. So by Christmas I had begged my mom for a bunch of cubes and started to practice. Very quickly cubing became my life's blood. I ate, practiced 3x3, and slept. And dreamt of practicing 3x3. This was my way of life for the entirety of 2015.
People at school started to recognize me as "da cube guy" because all I would do during lunch and even class to an extent is practice. I learned all of OLL from scribbling all of the cases down in my notebook and drilling algs during lessons. There was so much passion there that I just couldn't stop, there was so much to learn and immerse myself in that it felt insurmountable. This kept me engaged and gave me a constant feeling of improving. It felt so good to get faster that it fed the fire inside me even more.
So I learned and I learned. I improved and improved. My sub 30 goal became a sub 25 goal. Sub 20 became sub 15. The more I improved the more sub 10 allured me.
When I would get sub 10 singles I would feel so elated, I would involuntarily jump out of my seat and shout "JYEAS!" from pure adrenaline and ecstasy lmao
It felt like all of that practicing, all of that passion was paying off, leading somewhere.
Cubing as a whole had truly become a place of community and belonging for me, I made friends and we would skype and cube, talking about how we were improving and try to one up each other.
I started to feel like I had built up a reputation, not only in real life but online as well. People in the cubing community started to recognize me on youtube and watch my videos. It felt so encouraging to get positive feedback from people I looked up to on videos of my solves. It felt like I was becoming someone, like I was proving to myself that I could do anything. So much so that it began to feed my ego.
I had been cubing for a little under a year when I realized that fire that had kept me going had gone.
At the time I had a 13 global average, 12 being achievable but not sustainable. If I was averaging sub 13 I would consider that "good", and if I was averaging 14 and above I was failing. I would tell myself that anything above 13 wasn't acceptable. I had gotten this far by sheer passion and elbow grease. Surely I could just try a little harder and my times will get better. I'll just turn a little faster. Maybe my cube just isn't fast enough. I developed a crippling Maru lube addiction. I'll put everything I've got into it and I'll eventually have a breakthrough. Sub 12 isn't hard, look at all of the people who are averaging better than me, it looks so easy to them, why not me?
Cubing started to become frustrating. Getting bad times started to become stressful. I deleted more and more 14+ solves from cstimer. Getting good averages started to feel stale. If I'm not getting closer to sub 10 then what's the point? I dabbled in other events more and more. I wasn't great at bigger cubes, and there was no fire to drive me, so I didn't get very far. I learned CLL and EG-1 on 2x2, but I didn't have a real goal or motivation to improve, and 2x2 is a meme, so I forgot all the algs. I learned skewb, but we don't talk about skewb.
All of my focus was misplaced. I didn't take the time to realize where my solves were lacking or where I could improve. I didn't want to spend time drilling targeted practice for cross+1, fixing my inefficient f2l solutions, or being able to solve pairs with muscle memory instead of looking at them.
I didn't want to analyze my solves, I wanted instant gratification.
So I plateaued. I didn't put in the work necessary to improve, so I didn't. The only thing driving me to continue cubing wasn't a dream of becoming sub-10 anymore, it was the feeling of being better than everyone else. I wanted to continue to leave my friends and people on the internet in the dust. I wanted to see myself improve only so I could view myself as above or better than other cubers. I would always view myself relative to others, and vice-versa. And when I realized that I wasn't better than others, my ego turned inward. I started to spite myself. My 15 year old angst-ridden mind was too short sighted to see the big picture. I was genuinely too emotionally immature to improve any further. All of these feelings quickly manifested as a lack of interest and I eventually put down the cube for the last time.
A lot can change in 5 years. Life happened, and I've gotten to know myself and mature over that time. My passions jumped around, my fire moving to other things I found interesting. On a whim this last Christmas my Mom got me a Rubik's Connected Cube. I thought it was neat, a really cool concept that was incredibly new to someone who hadn't been aware of what had been going on in the cubing community for so long. Magnets in a cube? What an interesting idea!
I should've known that once I picked up that cube, I wouldn't be putting it down for a long time.
It turns out that after 5 years you end up forgetting a lot of muscle memory. It did surprise me just how much I still had stored in the back of my brain somewhere, like 2 random advanced-ish OLL algs and maybe like half of PLL. I had to re-teach myself a lot of the algs I already knew and basically had to relearn almost all of OLL and most of PLL. After around a week of solving, I knew I was addicted again. This time though, I have a MUCH better grasp on what I personally need to do to improve, and how my brain learns things. So I got a Gan M Lite (why didn't I get an SM???? same price!!!! uuuUGUHGHhh im an idioooot) and I'm back to grinding with a much better mentality and practice regimen.
Approx. 2 weeks after picking up the cube again, I'd achieved my first sub-10 ao5 with a 9.97. From that day on, I've made it my goal to try to get a sub-10 average daily. Most days I can eek out a rolling average, and my pb ao5 went down to 9.72. My global went down to a low 12, and I'm improving every day.
This is just my feelings on mentality in cubing and on improvement in general. I hope this provides some sort of insight or value to someone out there and isn't just a wordy essay that reads like "me me me me me look at me" lmao
Thanks to anyone who read this, thanks for maintaining cubing as a fun hobby and a great community. This community will always have a special place in my heart.
Love you guys!
I'm sure we can all agree, Speedsolving is ****ing cool.
In winter 2014, when I first saw what cubers were doing and what was possible, a fire had lit inside me and I knew this was going to become something I loved. So by Christmas I had begged my mom for a bunch of cubes and started to practice. Very quickly cubing became my life's blood. I ate, practiced 3x3, and slept. And dreamt of practicing 3x3. This was my way of life for the entirety of 2015.
People at school started to recognize me as "da cube guy" because all I would do during lunch and even class to an extent is practice. I learned all of OLL from scribbling all of the cases down in my notebook and drilling algs during lessons. There was so much passion there that I just couldn't stop, there was so much to learn and immerse myself in that it felt insurmountable. This kept me engaged and gave me a constant feeling of improving. It felt so good to get faster that it fed the fire inside me even more.
So I learned and I learned. I improved and improved. My sub 30 goal became a sub 25 goal. Sub 20 became sub 15. The more I improved the more sub 10 allured me.
When I would get sub 10 singles I would feel so elated, I would involuntarily jump out of my seat and shout "JYEAS!" from pure adrenaline and ecstasy lmao
It felt like all of that practicing, all of that passion was paying off, leading somewhere.
Cubing as a whole had truly become a place of community and belonging for me, I made friends and we would skype and cube, talking about how we were improving and try to one up each other.
I started to feel like I had built up a reputation, not only in real life but online as well. People in the cubing community started to recognize me on youtube and watch my videos. It felt so encouraging to get positive feedback from people I looked up to on videos of my solves. It felt like I was becoming someone, like I was proving to myself that I could do anything. So much so that it began to feed my ego.
I had been cubing for a little under a year when I realized that fire that had kept me going had gone.
At the time I had a 13 global average, 12 being achievable but not sustainable. If I was averaging sub 13 I would consider that "good", and if I was averaging 14 and above I was failing. I would tell myself that anything above 13 wasn't acceptable. I had gotten this far by sheer passion and elbow grease. Surely I could just try a little harder and my times will get better. I'll just turn a little faster. Maybe my cube just isn't fast enough. I developed a crippling Maru lube addiction. I'll put everything I've got into it and I'll eventually have a breakthrough. Sub 12 isn't hard, look at all of the people who are averaging better than me, it looks so easy to them, why not me?
Cubing started to become frustrating. Getting bad times started to become stressful. I deleted more and more 14+ solves from cstimer. Getting good averages started to feel stale. If I'm not getting closer to sub 10 then what's the point? I dabbled in other events more and more. I wasn't great at bigger cubes, and there was no fire to drive me, so I didn't get very far. I learned CLL and EG-1 on 2x2, but I didn't have a real goal or motivation to improve, and 2x2 is a meme, so I forgot all the algs. I learned skewb, but we don't talk about skewb.
All of my focus was misplaced. I didn't take the time to realize where my solves were lacking or where I could improve. I didn't want to spend time drilling targeted practice for cross+1, fixing my inefficient f2l solutions, or being able to solve pairs with muscle memory instead of looking at them.
I didn't want to analyze my solves, I wanted instant gratification.
So I plateaued. I didn't put in the work necessary to improve, so I didn't. The only thing driving me to continue cubing wasn't a dream of becoming sub-10 anymore, it was the feeling of being better than everyone else. I wanted to continue to leave my friends and people on the internet in the dust. I wanted to see myself improve only so I could view myself as above or better than other cubers. I would always view myself relative to others, and vice-versa. And when I realized that I wasn't better than others, my ego turned inward. I started to spite myself. My 15 year old angst-ridden mind was too short sighted to see the big picture. I was genuinely too emotionally immature to improve any further. All of these feelings quickly manifested as a lack of interest and I eventually put down the cube for the last time.
A lot can change in 5 years. Life happened, and I've gotten to know myself and mature over that time. My passions jumped around, my fire moving to other things I found interesting. On a whim this last Christmas my Mom got me a Rubik's Connected Cube. I thought it was neat, a really cool concept that was incredibly new to someone who hadn't been aware of what had been going on in the cubing community for so long. Magnets in a cube? What an interesting idea!
I should've known that once I picked up that cube, I wouldn't be putting it down for a long time.
It turns out that after 5 years you end up forgetting a lot of muscle memory. It did surprise me just how much I still had stored in the back of my brain somewhere, like 2 random advanced-ish OLL algs and maybe like half of PLL. I had to re-teach myself a lot of the algs I already knew and basically had to relearn almost all of OLL and most of PLL. After around a week of solving, I knew I was addicted again. This time though, I have a MUCH better grasp on what I personally need to do to improve, and how my brain learns things. So I got a Gan M Lite (why didn't I get an SM???? same price!!!! uuuUGUHGHhh im an idioooot) and I'm back to grinding with a much better mentality and practice regimen.
Approx. 2 weeks after picking up the cube again, I'd achieved my first sub-10 ao5 with a 9.97. From that day on, I've made it my goal to try to get a sub-10 average daily. Most days I can eek out a rolling average, and my pb ao5 went down to 9.72. My global went down to a low 12, and I'm improving every day.
This is just my feelings on mentality in cubing and on improvement in general. I hope this provides some sort of insight or value to someone out there and isn't just a wordy essay that reads like "me me me me me look at me" lmao
Thanks to anyone who read this, thanks for maintaining cubing as a fun hobby and a great community. This community will always have a special place in my heart.
Love you guys!
