“My Happiness”

Something I really enjoy is modern stackers. Modern stackers are my happiness. They provide what is good in a game. A sense of accomplishment, a competitive factor, and intensive game-play. If I couldn’t play my modern stackers, I wouldn’t really know what to do in my free time. 

The competition is intense, especially in the higher skill brackets of the game. I’ve never participated in such a tournament before, but I have been slowly rising the ranks to hopefully be a part of one someday. I feel accomplished when I win a game, and the game-play only gets more intensive as you rise the ranks.

Even when the game-play isn’t so intensive, in the lower skill levels, you can still get a great sense of accomplishment from defeating an enemy. This kind of reward made me continue playing from my originally average starting point. 

I first started playing my first modern stacker about six months ago. I started playing on probably the best looking version of modern keyboard Tetris, Tetr.io. This website provided just about everything you needed from Tetris, online rooms to play with strangers, a 1v1 function, as well as a Tetris 99-esque quick play. It had the modern stacker functions, a queue to see your next pieces, a hold piece, and instant drop. 

I quickly got ranked through the 1v1 function and was ranked somewhat low. B-. It was relatively low, as it was only five ranks from the lowest rank, D-, and about ten ranks from the highest rank, X. However, the skill gap in the lower levels was far less apparent. After a few YouTube tutorials on a special function of modern stackers, the T-spin, and a period of attunement, I ranked up rather quickly. However, despite the fast speed of ranking up, I felt fulfilled and happy every time I moved up.

It took only about a week to reach the A ranks. It was likely due to my small amount of prior experience. After reaching the S ranks in about a month, progress became slow for me. I adjusted my settings around this time, in order to increase the speed of my game-play, and make it easier for certain things to be done. It took me about a week or two to increase my rank. The journey toward SS rank was even harder, taking me two weeks to go from S+ to SS. Then, the journey to where I’m currently at, U rank. It took a couple months. However, I have reached a higher echelon of players only one rank away from X rank, the rank of most competitive and top ranked players.

However, to a main point, I guess you could say that modern stackers are my happiness, my sky. I keep reaching for it. I get a little closer every time to my goal, which is the peak of modern stackers. The game’s nature keeps me fulfilled and happy. I wouldn’t have been able to speak so much about the game and my journey on it if it wasn’t something I loved. I’ll keep reaching for my goal, at least until the sky turns gray and dull.

“Conspiratorial Forum”

Someone once told me they used to be really up to date on the news. They seemed like someone who had a lot of time on their hands, so I thought they might have just kept track themselves. But they said they just scrolled around on a conspiracy forum to find the news. I imagined it a bit like this.

Sitting at a desk, a middle aged man was scrolling through a forum while drinking a cup of coffee. Many capitalized words flashed through his eyes. Things speaking of the blatant military plans of China, to how the American government was controlled as a puppet. The man silently scrolled through it all to find the sources of these recent posts.

“Always up to date huh…” The man muttered to himself. He continued scrolling up to the source. It was just an article about a Chinese company going international. The government puppet conspiracy was simply derived from some corruption in the government; an official being bribed. 

The middle aged man sighed as he thought, “This place is the best for getting up to date on news.”

“The Cat”

On the occasional walk, I encounter people, and always some animals. Dogs barking at me from the sidewalk, some older women walking down the street. Maybe even the occasional jogger, or pair of young adults. At night, sometimes I find myself exceptionally afraid of what would typically be normal people. Of course, no contact was ever made with any people or animals found along the way. 

Until one day, I walked to the very edge of my neighborhood. In the rundown driveway of that house two houses away from the main street, I saw a wonderful animal. A cat. At first, I only stared at it from afar due to my fear of basically everything. However, I heard it meowing. For some reason, this emboldened me to move closer to it. I lightly reached out my hand to it, and it slowly walked towards me after stretching.

After first contact, I began coming back to that location often. Although it was not very exciting to come over and pet the cat, it certainly gave a fulfilling feeling.

“Open Cage”

I remember one night, I was simply lazing around in my room. My mother was calling my father for just about no reason at all. She just wanted him home, although it wasn’t really that late, and he had come home later before. When someone else picked up his phone, she got quite agitated and started shouting for him. It was quite crazy.

When my father finally came home she simply sat in bed and wasn’t acting reasonable. My father however confronted her instead of ignoring her. It turned out that she didn’t like his partying. She also said that she felt trapped, as she had no friends and rarely went out other than for work. My father had none of this and simply said that nobody was stopping her from going out to make friends and party. He even mentioned he invited her to go with him before. My parents continued to argue about something this meaningless for a while. 

In my head, the situation was clear. My mother was crazy for arguing about this kind of thing. He could go out, make friends, and party. She could go out, make friends, and party. I wondered why she was so fixated on not going. In my mind, she was making a fuss about nothing.

“A Choice”

On this street, there sat a house that was filled with greenery. It was clearly distinct from the other houses nearby. Its driveway was rough with vegetation and there were a couple lion statues out the size of two people. The sidewalk in front of the house was covered by a canopy of greenery, and the insides seemed wholly mysterious. I dreamed of that place once.

There I was, walking down the street, when I was pulled into the home by a strange force. Deep in the vegetation, I saw spiderwebs and lizards. I kept my head down as I continued walking into the home in a dreamlike trance. Inside, a crystal ball lay on a small rock pedestal. I dipped my head inside it. There, I saw a new life. A world where I was thriving, truly living life to the fullest. When I came out, a note was on the ball. 

Make your choice.

A world of my own conception telling me, telling me I needed to make the choice. The choice between putting myself out there and becoming successful after facing challenges, or staying closed off to the world. Naturally, I made this decision quite easily.