Billy · @NutriLoL
19th Sep 2016 from TwitLonger
Why I'm still in eSports (Long post)
It is truly important to acknowledge your ability to learn and do whatever you desire. We are all more capable than we are able to see due to numbers quantifying all of it for us grades, academics, tests.
Let your own sense of achievement, self worth, as well as your true understanding of a topic carry your feelings about your ability, don't let the numbers tell you, and equally, strive for a complete understanding and a higher level of ability be worth more to you than those numbers.
There will likely be times where the numbers either do not justify or represent your knowledge/ability and also times where specifically having lesser numbers will develop your understanding and ability more. I would say one should always strive for the latter over the former, but that is a truly hard belief to apply
To truly stand up to everything you've grown up with, your desire to please and be successful in the eyes of others rather than yourself, that will come first for most, and that's completely understandable and unsurprising. I am not faulting anybody for taking those lines, they're very safe pathways and often make that individual happy, but for me that is never enough, it never has been and it likely never will be. I often have friends or aquaintences asking me why I've sunk so much time into things for small monetary gain, invested so much time in to certain things only to sporadically switch to something else.
Ultimately, there are three reasons why I do eSports/Metal sports.
1. Happiness/Satisfaction - I need to have a currently existing passion for what i'm doing in order to excel at the rate that I do, if that passion goes or waivers, so does the rate of improvement, it's often an obstacle that massively trips me up right as I get to a high threshhold, typically at a level just below professional (3 instances of this: 4G/UoL/Choke Overwatch) However when this passion does exist and I am chasing it, Bliss is the only word that comes to mind to describe how I feel about my day to day life.
2. Results - I need to see results for my efforts and I also need to meet my own expectations. The fun part of this is that I never really meet my own expectations and there have been so few times that I have been completely satisfied within myself about a performance in-game. However, as-long as I am competing at a top level or progressing to that point at an acceptable rate I'm usually feeling okay within the results department in my head, the positive rewards for doing well or performing my role within a team (often monetary but also pride of being #1 etc) are a big reason that I continue to pursue the things that I do.
3. Rejection of traditional life paths - This is likely to be the part of myself that will cause the most polarising results, I will eventually either completely flop due to this rejection OR be more successful than I ever could've been without this rejection. That's the most exciting part of eSports for me, I feel like most people who are wise about what they do understand the risks and as a result make back up plans - but what if your back up plans are other things that would also usually require back up plans? What if you have no safety net to fall back to? That's the game i'm playing and I don't regret it for even a second. I don't think I ever will, either.
Putting yourself into competing and trying to make a life out of it requires an extraordinary amount of self belief. The belief that you are capable, the belief that you will perform under pressure, the belief that you will develop and adapt at a faster rate than your competition. Regardless of results, regardless of whether or not things come to fruition, this belief needs to be there for you to even have a chance. Self belief is really the only thing that should matter to anyone striving to compete to live. If you don't go into every game believing you can win then you shouldn't play the game competitively.
This post isn't specifically about myself within League of Legends, but more so my desire to compete within any game as my profession for as long as I possibly can, hopefully forever. I don't know why I wrote this out and plan to post it publicly, perhaps it can be of use to anyone aspiring to do similar. I really don't have much intent here other than to give an insight into a few of my thoughts around why I've been trying for so long and haven't stopped, and why I won't stop. Ultimately game switches don't mean much to me in the grand scheme of things, eventually the pieces will come together and I'll find my place somewhere. That's what my self belief tells me at least.
To anyone who took the time to read this, I do hope you can forgive the awful formatting, I had a desire to get some thoughts typed out and did't put too much thought into how it'd come out. Also thanks for taking some time to read about how things are for me and why I do this. It's by no means anything close to the complete picture for me but this is a fair representation.