If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s Tetris.
I am not contest good, but I am definitely very good. When I play regular Tetris, I usually play half-distracted by a TV show, and I deliberately stack up a bunch of tetrominoes haphazardly because I get bored by how slow it is at the beginning. I started playing Tetris 99 on the Switch, and despite not playing Battle Tetris since high school, in the first week, I unlocked Tetris 99 Invictus, the game version that’s only made up of CPU bots and previous Tetris 99 winners.
I often have a hard time recognising how good I am at certain things, but I’m confident that I’m good at Tetris.
Here are some things I’ve realised while playing Tetris 99:
1.) When I lose a game, most of the time it's not the other players, but me.
2.) Sometimes it’s better to just make a decision and work around it instead of taking a long time and trying to find the perfect spot.
3.) If you don’t pay attention to your surroundings, it won’t matter how perfectly laid your plans are; there’s no point in constructing a plan for three Tetris in a row if you’re hit by twenty garbage rows you weren’t expecting.
4.) As a Good Tetris Player, I usually come in the top 20. If I don’t even breach top 50, that means I have really fucked up. Anyone can really fuck up, and it come in at any time.
5.) When I play Tetris, I enter a sort of meditative trance, and as soon as I notice and start paying too much attention to how I play, I lose it. (Should I try to meditate to the Tetris theme?)
6.) Surely the ultimate anxiety daydream is compartmentalizing your fears so well that they disappear.
7.) There have been many times in Battle Tetris where I’ve reached a point where, in regular Tetris, I would just restart, but am able to make a miraculous comeback; I shouldn’t give up so easily.
8. ) And if it turns out I don’t make a miraculous comeback, it’s okay; miracles don’t happen every day, and you can always start over.
9.) So if I’ve had a really bad morning, it’s okay, I can still make a comeback; I can still start over the next day. Or after this one quick match of Tetris.
10.) There’s no such thing as a ‘quick match of Tetris.’ Whether I reach the top 50 or top 10, sometimes it takes all of March and there’s still 60 other players, and sometimes you blink, you’re in the top 10 and it’s May now.
11.) Haven’t I been playing Tetris since high school? Shouldn’t I have learned some of these lessons by now?
12. ) What does it mean that my brain is so unfocused that I can’t even watch a Youtube video without bringing up a puzzle game?
13.) I am better at Tetris than I was in high school, but am I better at taking care of myself? Am I better at noticing my mental health patterns and stopping myself from self-soothing with Tetris 99 till four in the morning?
14.) When does self-soothing become self-sabotage? Is it the thirtieth game? The three-hundreth? Or deciding afterwards to write out your anxieties until 3AM?
15.) I am good Tetris player. How many Tetris players can reach the top 30 while trying not to sob too loudly?
16.) Sometimes things look bleak, but then suddenly you realise you’re way better at doing a t-spin now, and you’ve just cleared 16 blocks right when you thought you were down and out.
17.) Maybe I can reframe this. I know why this is happening. And putting my anxiety into a nicer frame is something, isn't it?
18.) Sometimes you think you’re about to lose and then all of a sudden you’re in the top 3!
19.) And sometimes you’re so close and yo just fuck up and spin your wheels and remember that anyone can fuck up at any time and fuck fuck fuck why can I make a goddamn decision?
20.) Sometimes you spend a lot of time wondering how you fucked up so hard, and sometimes you look back and realise that you made it all the way to TOP 2, so maybe your brain needs to chill. Maybe you fucked up, maybe it’s RNG. That’s okay. There’s always another match to play.