And I know it's a bit weird to be talking about your personal life on a forum like this, but I thought I should ask you guys since it's related to this community in many ways.
First of all, I must tell a little bit about my financial and life situation. I'm 17, I have high-functioning autism, and I grew up in a middle classed family here in the state of SC. My parents are divorced; my dad lives here in SC and my mother lives in OH. To put it simply, my family here in SC is middle classed and mostly responsible people with college degrees, while most people on my mother's side don't have college degrees and aren't as responsible, and are more lower class citizens.
So let's describe myself a bit here. I do indeed live in a middle classed, responsible family, but I'm more like my mother's side in that I don't really do anything bad or evil necessarily, or things that specifically are meant to hurt other people. It's just that I can never get my act together completely; I have very little motivation to do the things in life that would get me to be successful. In other words, I have very much a "loser mindset;" if life just allowed me to sit around and TAS all day and be on the internet all day and eat junk food all day and never have to socialize with the people around me, I may be as happy as can be. Unfortunately, this is not how life can be, at least not for me. My family has tried to push me to do the right things with my life, such as getting through the driving book, and getting schoolwork completed on time, among other things. I mean, sometimes I do well. It's just that I am 17 and haven't even taken a driver's test yet, I don't turn in ALL of my work on time, but just enough to not get D's and F's in my classes. So basically, I'm an average student as far as grades go.
Now let me explain something that's completely new to me. I now feel like all this wasting time I've been doing is getting to me. See, I do want to do something with my life, so that I can be an independent person. But I'm literally lost now, I still have little to no actual motivation to do these things I need to do. I have a lot of work not just on driving, but on other projects as well.
Apparently, as people have told me, I'm a likeable person, but I have so much anxiety and inexperience in the social world that I just don't really talk to people all that much. It's like all the people around me can just start socializing and they feel free to talk to whoever they want in whatever ways they want, and I'm just stuck not doing anything with it. I mean it's not like I don't have any real life friends, it's just that I don't go out of my way to make them, in fear that something embarrassing will happen. Don't take this the wrong way, but I think a lot of people in this TASVideos community have similar social issues.
But here's the thing. I can do the things that I'm supposed to do. In fact, I think I will try harder now, because I realize I want to become independent. It's just that my mind is in a confused state right now. There's a new conflict in my head right now. The new conflict is that, even if I actually do these tasks that I'm supposed to do in the way I'm supposed to do them, and all the way like I'm supposed to, like school and driving and the other projects. But here's the thing.
My dad has known about my interest in the TAS/speedrun community for pretty much all the time I have been. He pretty much hates the community, he thinks it's a big joke basically, a huge waste of time and that "pretty much the entire world would not even care if the TASVideos community was shut down for some reason." And he's told me this so many times, and has (attempted to) take away the privilege of TASing from me so many times (even though I snuck and still did it anyway in various ways). Maybe bad things are just being drilled into my head, and maybe "ignorance is bliss" is actually a good policy. See, I really like to watch TASes, do TASes; it is one of a few things in this world that makes me happy. Although now I realize that this is not getting me anywhere. Like, I can't get anywhere socially with this. No one will hire me for a job after putting "I TASed the Foster's DS video game" on my resumé. Doing this doesn't really help anyone out necessarily. It won't get me a scholarship. It's certainly not helping with my irresponsibility.
TASing requires a massive amount of what many people call grinding. Taking loads of time out of your life to make it as perfect as you can get it, and then finally, after a year or whatever of making an hour long TAS, you can finally show it off to the (relatively) few people who will care. Obviously it depends on the game and such, and the entertainment in it, but really not that many people care honestly. I mean, this community is relatively really small, and not THAT many people even know about TASes. A lot of people have seen them briefly, and I do mean a lot of people, but very few of them in my eyes actually really get to the point where they understand the concept. With the TASing community, there aren't even any meetups, like there are with the speedrunning community (correct me if I'm wrong, but I have never known of any, so there must not be).
Anyway, the thing that I'm getting out of this community is that it makes me happy. And I'm not going to quit. But where is it getting me? Why should I feel glad that I'm here, and doing what I'm doing? I mean it is just a hobby, but something about it makes me feel insecure, of less worth, etc.
Could someone help me out here? I guess, in a nutshell, these are the following questions I should ask you guys, since that was a shitton of information:
1.) How can you justify TASing? Why is it okay for me to be TASing if it makes me happy? What good things are it really getting me? What's your philosophy behind that?
2.) Asking from the experience of others, how can one be successful and all that in college and high school and everything else and still be a TASer on your free time? How should you go about that?
I thought maybe if I asked the entire community, I'd get many different viewpoints and meaningful answers. Thanks so much.
PS: I wanted to add that I'm sorry if this seems like complaining, but I'm not trying to whine so much as I'm trying to look for advice, so please understand.
Could someone who speaks Japanese please translate this to English?