EPTIt feels like forever since I began that 'push' for promotion, but it probably has only been a few weeks, a month at most. However, those weeks were long and filled with nights drilling away at the ladder.
I had a bad losing streak a week or so ago, when I felt myself burning out, which set me back a little bit, in both points and in morale. My MMR dropped to mid and low platinums and I even played a high gold one day. The streak was really minor though, as those couple of days were righted quickly after I took a couple of days' break from laddering so hard.
In the past few days I played more and more diamond players- some of whom I was actually slightly favored against, to my surprise. Ultimately, all my work, training, and ladder grinding has paid off and now I'm just so frickin happy. It feels like I just aced some final exam in school and now I'm totally free from everything.
I said that I would change my ID when I hit diamond, because I chose the ID that I've been using- BurndtCaek- in the beta when I didn't even think I was going to really get into StarCraft all that much. So, instead of one of my usual IDs, I came up with BurndtCaek... a sort of non-serious name to go with the non-serious approach I thought I was taking to this game.
(Burndt Jamb is the name of a Weezer song that I'd been listening to a lot then, and I've been intentionally misspelling cake as caek for a long time because it's fun... also, I had a small obsession with loaf cake a couple of years ago.)
So I changed my ID to VestreL as a sort of symbolic gesture, I suppose. I think it looks cool on my profile and is a worthy replacement for being a charred pastry. Now I won't get any oven jokes in-game but that's ok.
I know that some higher level players call Diamond League the 'you're kind of competent now, I guess" league, but this feels like a huge accomplishment for me, even putting the fact that I've been in Platinum forever aside. I've reached this milestone and now I'm celebrating and telling everyone and writing this blog and I don't care who hears me/reads this/whatever.
Also, I did it with Terran, because we're clearly underpowered, right? I did 1/1/1 a total of maybe 2 times, never bunker rushed, never 3rax all-in'd (...ok maybe once for TvT), never decided to resort to cheesing every game to earn my promotion.
Thanks to my clanmates for advices and coaching, and the nice people on my stream and on TL giving me advice and support. Not to sound like an awards speech, or anything. I really feel thankful for all of them and want to put it out in writing.
Obligatory screenshot:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lyife.jpg)
still plat TT.TT
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc15/Domining/Screenshot2010-08-0322_45_50.jpg)
