My Eleven Table Tennis rating is 2400 points. And my world ranking is around 2000th. The thing I deserve the most praise for today is that instead of just mindlessly playing matches, I actually practiced. I studied why my backhand isn't as powerful as other players', and how I could increase my power and spin. While hitting cut balls against the AI table tennis player, I realized you need to properly combine spin with forward momentum, and I figured out how to carry through a smooth swing. When I first started learning table tennis, I went through the ranks step by step -- 7th division, 6th, 5th -- but I never made it all the way to 1st division or the competitive tier. But in the VR world, I'm experiencing the satisfaction of gradually building my skills and climbing up.
When you start caring about your rating, playing against lower-ranked players becomes scary because you have a lot to lose. But you shouldn't avoid them. Avoiding means you're not confident in your current rating. If you're at 2400 points, you should be able to beat 2200-point players. If you can't, it means your real rating is far below 2400, so you need to keep working hard.
Growth comes when you accept and acknowledge your current level, and move forward.
I used to make excuses whenever I did poorly on a test, lost a match, or got bad results. Luck plays a role too, of course, but instead of making excuses, let's humbly accept the outcome and focus on thinking about how to do better next time.
If I lost to someone ranked lower than me, that person isn't a lower-ranked player -- they're better than me.
Exercising in between study and work sessions clears my head, and I feel much more focused on tough tasks and studying.
Joby stock has gone up a lot recently, and I sold it but then bought it back. I keep checking the Toss app, so I'm going to delete it and treat the money as if it doesn't exist until next July. If it goes up, great. If it drops, I'll buy more. I believe it's a company that can only go up from here.
Today I'm going to make a lot of progress on CKA. And in the evening, I'm going to try translating this diary entry into English and Japanese!
And I've got a new goal: to climb my ranking on LeetCode. Or CodeForces.