Astrocats ✦˖°.

To round this thread up, I really wanted to open up again with the fact looking for any opportunities in the esports space, whether it be tryouts for a team, to coaching positions, to content creation, to collaborations, to playtesting, any position really at RIOT would be so cool. This weekend showed me how awesome a career in gaming can be, seeing RIOT Campus and how passionate everyone is, outweighs the negatives that laid a dark cast over the space for me for a while and I want to try to dig my feet into this industry in anyway I can. I love eSports, I love League of Legends, I love gaming, I love meeting new people, and it's always been my #1 dream to have a job I love through and through, that's why I have worked so hard my entire life.

Wow, that was one of the best weeks of my life. Going into this game changers, about 2 months ago, when we started forming our teams, scrimming, and identifying our strengths and weaknesses, I was a shell of who I used to be. Ever since January, when I parted ways with Cloud9, I felt like a failure in so many aspects of my life, in my pro career, in all my personal relationships, in my progression in life compared to my peers, even down to things like my appearance. This week wasn't just about winning a League of Legends tournament to me. Don't get me wrong, I loved winning, I still am and always will be competitive, I'm so proud of myself and everyone on my team. But the biggest thing I accomplished throughout this whole program was proving myself wrong. Proving all the hyper-critical negative thoughts, all the perfectionist tendencies that never let allowed me to celebrate plethora of achievements I've had throughout my life, all the times I subconsciously blocked out any praise/kind words anybody would give me. The second we blew up that nexus during game two, all the confetti, the monitors, the gaming chair, the lights, and the cameras all caved in to scream that I was wrong. Irrefutable, objective, tangible physical evidence that acknowledged how much I really can accomplish. It's still such a vivid image in my head, as I'm typing this, I can retreat back to this comprehensive landscape of a weekend. A landscape I'm going to need to retreat back to when I get in that negative headspace again, a landscape I'm grateful to have cause everyone who worked and participated in this event. I've made some life-long connections with the people I've met at this event, had such intimate interactions with people I never thought I didn't expect to, and made so many core memories.