EPT
The next
I'm not even sure what my daily routine will be like yet because the conversations always consist of "let's talk in person" or "it's open ended".
I finally started packing a day ago, and have been pacing back and forth ever since - the move has turned me bipolar. I'm going to be doing my favorite thing in the world, and spending all of my time doing it which is extremely exciting. On the other hand...I am moving in with 2 people I only sort of know, in a city I've seen none of, halfway across the country, purely on a silly ideal and belief in an organization. It's terrifying.
The opportunity first felt necessary if only for its uniqueness, a fun story to tell at parties after returning to Wisconsin. I worked for Team Liquid I would say, we were the kings of Starcraft. In hindsight it's perhaps not so much a choice as an inescapable destination, a black hole my life is unwillingly pulled towards.
When I was 14 I developed a small thing for the girl that was my lab partner in science, a friend of a friend so we occasionally talked around school. One Friday after class she asked if I wanted to see a movie that night. I thought and thought, really considering my options, and eventually decided I'd rather play Quake 3 that night (you see, I had some friends teaching me the more advanced subtleties the game had to offer). It didn't occur to me what happened, that she had asked me out, until the following monday.*
Instead of summer jobs in high school I played MtG, traveling around the country making my way from place to place by abusing inflated card prices at tournaments. I put off college to play poker not because it was good money, I was (and am) terrible, but because I loved playing a game full time.
When I did finally start my undergrad my dad asked what my plan was. I told him I thought competitive games would become 'a thing' in my life and I wanted to be around that. I have no idea what I was thinking, this is months before I discovered Brood War or TL. This memory is now very weird, its clear the passion was there even before there was an appropriate outlet.
I made the decision to move 6 weeks ago, after a series of awkward conversations (it always begins with an admin asking weirdly personal questions with no context). The time since has been incredible, full of the kinds of debauchery I assume people only experience immediately out of college. The highlight was my friend's mom tell me she would miss me because she always had a crush on me.** Also I learned people in the midwest fall in love with you if you tell them you're moving to NYC.
Packing has been a fun experience. I moved all my things from Madison to Minnesota, as I have no family in Wisconsin to hoard things that aren't coming with. In the process I threw away about 60% of the things I owned, whittling my stock down to enough to fit in a medium sized SUV. Packing for NYC I then threw away about half of what was left, opting to rebuy most things as needed instead of bothering to haul. Fuck moving.
I threw away all my socks and sneakers. Friends told me that's weird, but let me explain something: I hate socks. Hate. Words cannot express how much I dislike anything that makes my feet hot, at a young age a doctor advised me to stay away from shoes because my feet sweat so much. It's unbearable. I'm flying so space is at an absolute premium, I refuse to waste valuable cubic inches on stupid things I hate.
When all was said and done I fit everything that is important to me in the world in a suitcase and backpack. I don't know whether to be sad that I care so little about things or proud I can ditch them so easily. Not having things is very un-American.
My mom apparently reads the website now. Last week at lunch we had a long conversation where I explained to her what I did and how the Starcraft tournament scene works. After a pause in the conversation she furrowed her brow, eyes focused far off in the distance as if examining some large truth. The silence finally broke with so tell me...whats the deal with Koreans? Why are they so good?
Anyway here I am. A dude looking to do some cool things. A lot of these anecdotes feel really strange on reflection, it feels like I've always known what I wanted to do with myself but never realized it. For many years I envied people who had the appearance of knowing exactly where they wanted to go in life, and now it seems as if I actually did but never admitted it. This is far from a career path but it will be fun to be passionate about my job.
I'm not totally sure what the purpose of this is. I'm hoping to chronicle some future odds and ends of my daily life in the office and perhaps others will enjoy that. I also have a self serving agenda; to create a record of my time in the city. I'm never going to experience something this quirky again, and in 10 years TL's servers are more likely to be accessible to me than a paper notebook. I have turned TL into a tool of my own narcissism, thanks R1CH.
*This story deserves a proper ending. A mutual friend convinced me hours later that I was being a moron, and we went out. Yes, I did not realize it was a date until 2 days later. I later lost my virginity to this girl when she said You know what we should buy? Condoms. Let's go do that while we were at the zoo or something.
**I have a weird relationship with that family. I hang out with 2 of them regularly (the brothers) and slept with their sister many years ago. I saw one of them last night the first thing he said was "my parents had their anniversary dinner tonight. One they almost didn't make because of you". Joking? You be the judge (he was).
