Retiring from League of Legends professional play.

It probably isn't surprising on why I have decided to retire considering that I announced 4 months ago that I want to study in university. Before joining Axolotl, I wasn't sure if I want to play LoL part time and go to university or quit League fully. And no, I am not quitting because of people in Axolotl (XD). Honestly I didn't expect this but I really loved playing with these guys. Even though in terms of skill Italian league is the lowest skill level out of any League I've ever played in but we almost made EU Masters, just 1 bo5 away. I would even say that this is the second best team I've played in in terms of teamwork after my 2018 EULCS split in GIANTS.

I am 23 years old and I can say that I got over my video game addiction this year, 4 months ago during off season. I was feeling bored and instead of playing video games I actually started to enjoy reading books first time in my life. Yes I have been a video game addict for 16 years, playing every day 8-14 hours.

During off season in April/my split with Axolotl, I have discovered bunch of new things that I am interested in that is outside video games. Going into the future, I will spend my free time learning and studying about these subjects. I will give a small list so you get the idea: investing, cryptocurreny, economy, finance, history, human psychology, programming.

For people reading this, I want to give you an idea about my thought process and how my mind works and why I'm quitting League of Legends. In 2016 and 2018 I had a winners mindset and what I mean by that is I was really obsessed with winning, I wanted to win really badly and set insanely high expectations for myself and when I failed to meet them, I was overwhelmed by negative emotions. During my 2018 split with GIA (this was actually right after my famous 0/7 Zyra game, go watch it if you haven't seen) I developed a present focused mindset, meaning that I will put in a 100% at every single moment and accept the outcome, win or loss. This mindset helped me save from a lot of emotional pain from losses and up to this day this is still my mindset with everything in life. Also during my time in GIA when we got 6 losses in a row I realized we might not make playoffs so I updated my mindset. Focus on the present, accept the future and improvement is most important thing even more than short term winning. Esports/life is a marathon, not a sprint. If you lose in the near future but keep improving, naturally you will just win more in the long run.

I accumulated knowledge and improved so much in GIA mostly thanks to Kubz (this individual deserves an entire paragraph written about him). I would even go as far as to say that Kubz is by far the most impactful person I have come across during my esports career and helped me improve so much. With this new and improved mindset and after my split with GIA, I was ready to make a comeback to EULCS but the future was not what I expected. Every team I have played in after 2018 have left me deeply unsatisfied in terms of improvement. I have felt "stuck" in every team meaning that we might win or lose but I still feel like I'm not getting better and therefore I will not get back to EULCS/LEC. People might be wondering why I left BIG in 2019 when we won 2 Premier tours in Germany and were top 2 team in EU. Our team was insanely talented but I felt that I wasn't improving to get to LEC.

I have felt empty in every team since 2019 because every team I joined, I wanted it to be like 2018 GIA. But teams are not like that, my best split was once in a lifetime opportunity. I have looked for that kind of team/environment for 3 years now and I have come to realise that what I am looking for either doesn't exist or I was looking in the wrong place. I believe the latter is true and it no longer makes sense for me to look for improvement (winning in long term) in my esports career. Once again I am choosing the path of least resistance just like I did in 2013 when I was stuck in Diamond 4 and role swapped to support to climb even higher or in 2014 when I was stuck in Diamond 1, became Janna one trick and got to challenger in 1 month and rank 1 next year or in 2017 when I dropped out of university to become full time pro in League.

It's hard to quit League but for the first time in many years but I am not feeling empty or stuck anymore. I am taking the path of least resistance or as I would like to call it "following my heart" and from 30. August this year I will start studying mathematics. People reading probably don't know this but I am very talented in math (not as talented as in league of course) and love everything related to math. Honestly I'm not even going there for a degree, I am going there to experience new things, meet new people, improve myself and see what life is like when I'm not playing video games 24/7. I might not be playing 10 hours League every day but that doesn't mean I will stop gaming altogether, gaming is for life.

There are so many people I worked with and so many names so I am not writing them out individually but I want to thank everyone who I worked with and who I crossed paths with. I learned something from each and every one of you.

I guess I should make a proper ending for the gaming community. Good luck in the future, I hope you do really well in esports :) .

:axolove

P.S. Deidara why you spoiling my retirement in your twitlonger???

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