I'm going to be honest: as much as it's very cool that I'm in AGDQ, and I'm very happy that my work on a legendary bad game like Virtual Hydlide has paid off...
It doesn't come even slightly close to the manic and gleeful unreality of qualifying for the PT for the first time. Or the second. Or the third. I don't know if I'd feel much of anything qualing a 4th time, with the system being destroyed, other than at least being able to stand with some of the new crowd.
I don't know how to ever feel anything like that ever again. I don't know how to commit so much of my being to something like that anymore, because Magic was a unicorn in providing constant feedback and drip dopamine, constantly changing, constantly difficult, where I could try despairingly to grasp at competence and have it avoid me through variance-dominated but not variance-only scenarios in ways that, frankly, significantly hurt my mental health. And the system has changed so much that what I could do then is not enough now. I can't stay sane while going to local rptqs. There's not enough there to be worth it.
I didn't have support when I ran at it the first time. I wouldn't have the support in anything I tried. Even with a second runner, and some diehard kuso fans, Virtual Hydlide has been something where I've had to put my own drive to the test and, frankly, it's not high enough. Why would it be? I'm the leading VH scientist now. That's not likely to change. We might find the perfect seeds before the end of the year. I am moving towards a space where there will be no real competitive drive there, maybe a year or two out. And where nothing compares to Magic.
I am faced with the fact that I will never feel the third and second strongest emotions I've ever felt in my life again. And the first-strongest are pretty unlikely too. How do I grasp at strength now? How do I fill this hole in existing?