Abar · @Abar_HS
23rd Mar 2023 from TwitLonger
Leaving Blizzard
Hello everyone!
Yes, I am leaving Blizzard once more. I’ll be staying within the industry. More news to come on that soon. Over the last couple of months, I trained someone else to manage HSE, and I have faith that he’ll do a good job.
This probably doesn’t come as too big of a surprise to many of you. I’m not about to go flaming anyone as I walk out the door. Honestly, no one deserves that. But I do think it’s fair of me to say that what I got wasn’t exactly what I signed up for. And that’s fine. I’m disappointed, sure, but no one owes me anything.
One thing I want to make clear is that nobody pushed me out the door. Even as the esports program was gutted, there was a genuine attempt to create a new path forward for me to be professionally successful within the company by some of the people above me. It just wasn’t what I wanted. There was too much baggage. I needed to move on.
The biggest reason that I wanted to write this post was that I never got the chance to properly thank all of you for how much kindness you showed me personally after the announcement of this year’s program.
There’s always going to be some number of people who blame me or other Blizzard employees for things entirely outside of their control. As a general rule/reminder for all of you, if you know who someone is and they take the time to communicate with you on social media, through forums, whatever, it’s basically never the person you’re actually mad at, so do me a favor. Be kind to people. I know I’m not alone in saying that internet negativity really emotionally drains me sometimes.
But overwhelmingly, my take away from the response to this year’s announcement was that I didn’t give you all enough credit. I expected it to be way worse. The vast majority of you showed a depth of kindness and maturity that I was truly grateful for. It gave me the chance to mourn alongside all of you rather than doing so alone, and that meant a lot to me. So thank you.
I’ve been pretty happy lately. I wanted to share that too. I’ve had several people check in on me the last few months just to see if I’m OK (which is amazing and I love you all for it!), so I just wanted to let people know that I’m doing pretty well. It’s important to notice when we are happy.
For years, HSE was my purpose in life, really, but I’ve picked up others. About a year ago now, I restarted salsa and bachata dance practice once COVID mask mandates were lifted. I dance almost every day, and I’ve seen great progress. In fact, I just recently auditioned for and was accepted to the Orange County Salsa advanced dance program! I’m going to be rank 1 NA before you know it.
I didn’t realize just how much the COVID-induced solitude was negatively impacting my overall mental health until I was allowed to rejoin humanity. Damn did I miss people. I have a lot of close IRL friends now for the first time since I moved to California six years ago. I think what I love the most about dance is, the better I get, the more power I have to make people smile.
For most of my life, I have struggled with feeling unloved. It’s better now, but I did not have a healthy relationship with my parents as a kid. My home was the place on earth where I felt the least safe and accepted. I had zero success with dating, and then when I finally got lucky once with my ex-wife, well, her current title tells you how well that ended. And there was more heartbreak after that too. And there’s a good chance there’s more to come still. And yet, I will never give up.
I had come to a logical (but inaccurate) conclusion that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. That I’m just not one of those people who was meant to be loved by another person. Yet, my heart has always been so full of love for others. I feel like dance allows me to express that.
I’m having the most fun when I dance with the highly skilled followers, sure, but I’m feeling the most proud when I can dance with a beginner and, if only for a moment, make her smile and believe in herself. And through the process of doing something for someone else, over and over again until the action becomes a habit, I think I’ve started to understand what it means to love myself, and to finally start to genuinely believe that I’m the only person whose love I’ve needed all along.
So often it is not our realities that lead us to suffer in life, but rather, our desires. There are many things that I wish were different. I wish I had started dancing earlier, and I wish COVID didn’t make me have to wait two years to continue progressing in it.
I wish that HSE would have stayed like it was in its glory days forever, and that I could have spent the rest of my career at Blizzard running it. And I wish I could see you all again at a big LAN where we all scrubbed out and wandered around some random city like hoodlums and got KBBQ and then collectively popped off for whoever won in the end.
I wish that in 7th grade when Amanda Blankenship shut my locker and I told her, “you’re in my way” and she said, “oh yeah, what are you gunna do about it?” and gave me the look, I wish that my response wasn’t to say, “I guess I’ll go to class without my books” and nervously walk away and make her cry. There could have been something there.
And I wish that I could go back in time and tell 13-year-old Alex that he’s good enough just the way that he is. And 17-year-old Alex. And 21-year-old Alex. And especially 25-year-old Alex.
But there is only what is. I have found a lot to enjoy about life with things just the way that they are. Over the last few months, it has warmed my heart to see how all of you have too. I’m proud of me, and I’m proud of you.
Thanks for everything,
Abar