Benjamin deMunck · @BenjiL0L
24th Oct 2014 from TwitLonger
my thoughts on my past year in the amateur scene
first and foremost, i respect the fuck out of the few fans that i do have, and im grateful for them, and im sorry ive disappointed you by not making summer LCS2014.
So, I've been playing League for like 4 years, right when Kog came out is when I started playing. The game was a lot different back then, I played it with friends, I played it for fun. I was like 13 at the time, and enjoyed it a lot, and when you enjoy something while also trying to get good at it, its a lot more productive. Used to be the kinda person where I saw the pros on my screen at events and thought "these people ain't shit i can do better one day". I used to be the type of person to queue snipe a pro, hoping id get on the other team so i can shit on them. id have their stream in the background of my 2nd monitor, not to ghost, nah, i wanted to see their reaction when i shit on them, outplayed them, and won the game for my team. 90% of the time they aint say shit, but when that one pro is like "damn this guy outplayed me", that shit fed my ego the way i wanted it to. I was always lookin for a break into the competitive scene. i was only a year yunger than pobelter and i saw him travelling to events and i knew id do the same one day soon. thing is, i made some poor career choices that got me nowhere fast. one shitty team after another after another after another. then all the sudden LCS came around and i wasnt old enough, so i sat there patiently watching the clock watching the calendar waiting for my time.
but as time went on, my skills kinda withered away, i didnt realize i mighta been at my peak all those years ago and i might never hit that skill level again without the exact same mentality i used to have, and it was at that time that i was so confident i could be a top level player, that i committed my life to league. its hard to keep playing when you see literally no reward though, and no reward is even guaranteed in the future. Youd think that would make me want to play harder, but instead it just made me feel a bit depressed. every team i played on, especially lolpro, in the back of my mind, i always thought "this isnt gonna be it, its never gonna happen for me. altec got an offer the minute he turned 17, and im sitting here playing on team lolpro getting 4th place in every tournament" thats cause he deserved it though, and i didnt. he continued to put the work in, he continued to keep that same cutthroat mentality that i used to have and gave up. i wont specify what it is that made me feel this way....
truth of the matter is, i may have shown up decently in some tournaments, but i personally feel like im playing like trash in most other situations, scrims, soloq, etc. i just imagine to myself, what if i played like i did in tournaments every minute of the day, what if i played solo queue like that, what if i got myself top10 and was proud of it, what if i was smashing people in scrims. but i dont, and havent for a while, not like i used to when i played adc pre-lcs..
then thinking about that stresses me out; i lose a lane in soloq to someone and all i can think is "2 years ago, i woulda smashed this guy and carried" and it just makes me wanna stop queueing and go to sleep, because im so fuckin stressed out at my level of play. but when i sleep, i do it to forget about everything, and sleep as long as i possibly can, usually around 12+ hours. its a vicious cycle thats really difficult to get out of.
But the fact of the matter is, I put every single chip I had into being a success at league, i quit school last year, tried to do it online but gave up on it too because i lost all my interest in school (so basically i lost all my passion/motivation in both school AND league). I dont have a choice other than to get good again and be somewhat successful in league. and thats what imma try to do. this next month is gonna be different. i hope. imma try my ass off to play consistently good as i used to, and impress myself again. probably wont stream much cause im too self conscious when i stream, but well see. gonna try as hard as i can, thats all i gotta say, i really hope i can show up hard when it matters this next tourney.
pz