Thoughts/Reflections/Emotions on recent times and moving forward ♥

Hello everyone. I’m beginning to write this (on May 22nd 2017) with the knowledge of the fact that I’m most likely going to be kicked from Gale Force eSports and honestly I feel like shit. I know there’s been a lot of drama surrounding GFE in the past and I want to establish the fact that this post isn’t looking to create any of that whatsoever.



I’ve been wanting to write another long post for a while now, as I have done in the past a few times with basically just my thoughts and emotions about my HotS career/life. I hate that the next motivation to vent out emotions is because of these circumstances as opposed to happier ones, but here we are, so bear with me for the ride if you so choose. This will probably be very long – you have been warned.



April 16, 2016. One week after the roster of myself, Michael, Fury, Akaface and Roflcopter was formed, we beat Cloud9 to qualify for Dreamhack Austin, which would be my first ever LAN tournament. At the time that was the best day in my life, by far. My dreams of becoming a pro gamer were finally starting to become real. All the hard work and countless hours, everything was paying off and I started to cry after we won and qualified. There was this barrier between the amateur and profession scene that I was stuck behind for so long, and finally breaking through that hit me like nothing I had ever felt before. I will always remember that feeling, sitting there, leaning back in my dorm room chair not even caring that I was crying really. The feeling was so pure.



Dreamhack Austin was amazing, I was able to see my girlfriend at the time – which was the second time we had been together in person since we met online. I was also able to meet another very close online friend of mine which was awesome. We ended up placing third which we weren’t necessarily disappointed in, but we wanted to do better. Which is exactly what we did after we qualified for the next regional tournament by beating Cloud9 once again.



Winning that regional at the ESL studios in Burbank and holding up that trophy, for the first time quickly took over as the best day in my life, as well as another extraordinary memory that I will never forget. Holding up that trophy and hearing the crowd cheer was so surreal. So quickly I had grown from just some random kid who had a dream to play video games professionally, to literally being the best in North America.



A large reason why I compete is because of the people who influenced me to pursue this dream in the first place. I looked up to those players and thought that what they were doing was the coolest thing in the world. Doing what they love, competing and genuinely inspiring or just giving joy and entertainment to other people who enjoyed the same game, or maybe they didn’t even really care about the game – but they cared about those players.



I wanted to be that player. I wanted to be the one that people watched because they enjoyed it, and to genuinely inspire other people. That’s my biggest drive. I think to some extent I’ve achieved that, and I’m so glad I’ve been able to have an impact already on some people. Honestly though, call it a character flaw or whatever you will, but I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied until I inspire as many people as possible. I’m always striving for more, for better, and I place an extremely high value on improving, no matter what it is in life.



Tangent aside – Winning in Burbank helped me to start accomplishing that dream. That’s summer I streamed a lot and was able to raise $1000 in about 10 days to help buy myself an actual pc, instead of using the laptop I had (Which I used to qualify for both tournaments) and there was so much support in those 10 days it meant the world.

As you all know, after Burbank however, started the decline of results within GFE. I really don’t want to focus on the negatives right now, but many of you know the story already. If not, I’m sure you can bits and pieces out there, from tournament results to roster changes and more.



I feel like theres so much I want to say – because theres so much good that happened since then as well as some of the not so good, for example attending Blizzcon, even though we barely didn’t qualify, were some of the most amazing days of my life. GFE did a fan meet up, and at that point obviously I realized we had fans and people that we’ve inspired and looked up to us, but meeting some of them and just seeing how excited they were to meet me, if only for a moment. I probably felt the most appreciated and respected I ever had in my life and I’m honestly about to tear up right now even recalling all of it.



I wanted to thank each of my teammates since I’ve been on GFE, since day 1. I planned on doing this individually but I’m pretty emotionally exhausted right now, but I think I can say for all of you – Thank you. For everything, we’ve shared dreams and goals together, achieved some, failed at others, but I have the utmost respect for all of you. I’m glad to have to shared a jersey and sat next to each of you and called you my teammates.

Also thank you to Mavnis. Without him, I wouldn’t have been here, but I trusted him and I don’t regret it at all. Without him, I don’t think most of you would even know the name Gale Force eSports. And a lot of you probably don’t know that – How much time and effort he’s put in to make GFE what it is today.



Thank you to the rest of the GFE Management and Staff.



And the biggest thank you to everyone who once believed and still believes in me.

I really want to be able to post this as I’m writing it, but I’m going to wait for the announcement before I do so, maybe I’ll go back and add/edit more. But I’ll likely just keep it as is.



Oh, remember the bit about not being satisfied? I won’t be until I’m a much better player than before, until I remember what victory tastes like again, wherever I end up.



Thank you for taking the time to read all of this.



Thank you for the support.



I love you all ♥



P.S. – I’m writing this immediately after my stream/announcement on May 23rd 2017 and thank you all for the support during my stream today. I’m looking for another HGC team and very much still want to play competitively so that is my #1 goal and focus right now. It sucks that this happened, but I’m trying to keep my hopes high that it’ll work out ♥





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