EPT*Note* It's been about 5 hours of nonstop writing with very little revision. As always ideas towards the end become more and more rushed and shamelessly presented but it's almost 5 AM my time, so please forgive me. Happy Birthday to TC as well (April 4th).
As I write this, I'm dreading the fact that my journey's course will inevitably set sail regardless of my doubts and insecurities. Time waits for no man, and I think it's about time that I accept its challenge. I often times feel paralyzed by the expectations of those around me. Almost as if I've been temporarily downsized and scrutinized under the fine lens of the public's microscope. My thoughts, words and actions are here to document my journey. They hold me accountable to my failures, my successes, and my hopes. It's well past midnight and I'm willing to let loose all my eccentricities. Please support me by following me on twitter @LiquidFLUFF.
Past and Present
The greatest frustration of this past year was my inability to reinvigorate the flames that roared so violently just one year ago: 2012. "Why was it that I couldn't even match a proportion of the passion and desire to succeed?" This question lingered in the back of my mind like a sharp chronic pang. After some careful consideration and introspection, I've determined that I need to take a step back and understand my past before I move on with the future.
The Past
Major goals, influences, and strategies I took last year:
The Clockwork Project:
This was my very first undertaking under blind passion to pursue my dreams. The document, 42,000 words long, summarized my hopes, ambitions, and dreams. Completely and utterly unabashed, I took my first steps towards actualizing my goals. Its goal was to both inspire and demand the cooperation of my future teammates looking towards The International 2. It's hard for me to imagine ever conceiving something so powerful ever again.
Socially Networking:
Prior to making it my prime goal to attend the next International, I was extremely introverted. I never reached out to any players outside of the teams I formed, nor did I care to make any casual friendships. My goals demanded that I was completely immersed in a strictly-business mindset. This lead me to often feel alone and unable to replace the many teammates that came and went. After a year of carrying about as a recluse, I decided it was time to perform a U-turn.
I began to value absolute choice. I wanted to have an ocean of players to choose from instead of a small pond. I wanted to explore as many options as possible before I dedicated myself to the journey itself. Thus I made every effort possible to connect with any potential teammates or positive influences. Day in and day out, I tirelessly worked to weed out the negative influences and to surround myself with benefactors. This went on for months and months. All of my efforts had succeeded and I had finally arranged the most dedicated players I could find. I had complete abundance and choice, the bullshit of scarcity had finally faded. Each and every person I was in contact with had what it took to compete, but very few of them had the drive to commit all of their efforts.
Pushing My Limits:
In the past I was deathly afraid and nervous to compete with or against our community's competitive players. I would go out of my way to avoid their inhouses even though I got invited regularly. The issue was that I undertook an inferiority complex about my ability as a player in comparison to others. I wanted to make the right impression, so I withdrew myself from any situation that sparked anxiety. I was determined to acquire the, ever elusive, prowess that every competitive player had over me first, then I'd be ready.
However, at this point in my venture, the idea that my self-concept would dictate my successes bothered me. Very slowly, as time went by, I realized through several different processes that I WAS enough and that there are no secrets but hard work and environment. Much like treating a phobia, I decided to jump into the very environment that I feared the most: Inhouse Leagues.
During this time, IRC-based inhouse leagues were where the majority of high caliber players played their games. My initial goal was to develop my ability to cope and "hang" with these players. Some of them, coincidentally enough, included both Korok and Bulba. Korok and Bulba had both been proven competitive players from our community and they made me anxious (Korok still makes me anxious). I pushed myself to play in these leagues in order to overcome my fears and insecurities as a player. In doing so, my paradigm had completely shifted by forcing myself to do whatever it took to reach my goal.
I realized that there were no gimmicks or special tactics that made these players great. I took many players off of the pedestals that I had put them on. My perspectives of these players changed, I realized that they were human too. I saw them express happiness, anger, frustration, jealousy and friendship. Once I had understood that none of them were cut from a different cloth, I began to fill my own shoes. I started feel more comfortable and able to talk and play with all of them. I started opting to be the captain of my teams and draft for them. I took an active role and was quickly recognized by various players.
I remember reading forum posts and private messages praising my efforts and recognizing me as a threat in the upcoming year. It felt truly empowering and it only furthered my desire to face my fears and challenge everything. As my ambitions grew, so did my confidence.
The Past Summary:
In this time I set multiple goals for myself and challenged every insecurity that I had about myself. It seemed as if every single week I was making progress and reaching several goals at a time.
The Present
So, with all of that stated, I'm sure it begs the question "What about now?"
I have several confessions to make accompanied by several solutions and goals moving forwards:
The first thing I want to get off of my chest is that I haven't been able to sustain the level of passion that I had in the previous year. Part of the reason for this is because I was burnt out by the whole journey and took an extended break. The second reason is because I was unable to answer several of my own questions and ruminated over them without pause. I was baffled and also threatened by the idea that this might not be what I actually wanted: to play competitive DotA 2. I honestly wanted to give up because I couldn't spark any of the old flames that fueled my passions.
+ Show Spoiler +
Competitive DotA 2 is what I want to do. I love this game and I love the way it makes me feel. There are no doubts in my mind, nor regrets for choosing this path and I don't want to give the impression that I have any.
You see, my head is always in the clouds. I often marvel at the idea of my own fantasies and self-delusions coming to fruition. Perhaps what I had lost, going into this year, was my capacity for action, for actualization. There is a certain level of complacency that accompanies all forms of success. In this case, I felt that I was above the process somehow, that I was special. I believed that I had the ability to formulate strategy from thin air and execute untested ideas with supreme confidence. This, in turn, had taken a huge toll on my teammates. Day in and day out, practice had led to frustration and unanswered questions. I knew that I had to step down and let TC take over at this point. The agony of leading without example nor answers left me feeling powerless to contribute to our teams overall growth.
After a lengthy deliberation earlier today, I feel that I have finally found the answers to some of my question. The answer is: The Past.
The reasons why our team succeeded in the past was because of all of the steps I took towards actualizing goals. After being recognized as a competitive player, forming my team, acquiring a sponsorship, and attending The International 2, I never looked back once. I never looked back at the reasons why I got there in the first place.
I'll explain taking the examples that I gave above: The Clockwork Project, social networking and pushing my limits.
The Clockwork Project 2
Admittedly I never shared this document with my new teammates. I always thought it was never worth sharing because if I wanted to share something like this with them, it had to be completely new and relevant to them. Again, here I am overwhelming myself instead of reforging old vows and retracing the steps that I took to get here. The Clockwork Project is a piece of work that they deserve to see and undoubtedly it will strengthen our bond as a team. It needs to be reread, rewritten and given new meaning. I can't believe I've overlooked this for so long.
Social Networking and Limiting Behaviors
In my experience, I've gone through tremendous periods of personal growth as a result of desiring something I don't yet have. In the past I consistently worked to strengthen myself in order prove my worth and to develop a strong sense of self-acceptance. These are extremely key concepts in order to maintain a healthy and successful team.
So what does any of this have to do with Social Networking? Well what happens when you finally get the team you've always wanted, the sponsors to back you, and you've reached your ultimate goal of attending The International? For me, I lost sight of the importance of maintaining relationships with people and making new friends. There were several occasions where I began purging my friends list of people who were no longer relevant to me. I stopped playing pubs and adding people who I genuinely saw talent in and I discontinued long conversations about strategy with outsiders. I stopped playing inhouse leagues and I stopped being the best player I could be 100% of the time. I began to lose sight of the value in each and every person I met. In one word: Complacency.
"Complacency, complacency, complacency that's all FLUFFNSTUFF ever blogs about these days", these are the words I'd imagine a critic would utter.
And he'd be right, because I've gotten a lot of complacency jammed up my arsehole from repeated success and not enough adversity. Though I try to stay humble, my ego has, indeed, grown far too out of proportion for my liking. I've always explored the idea of complacency at a competitive level, but never on a personal and pub level. It's almost as if I had decided to forgo steps A and B to reach step C. Everything that I listed up there was wrong. I should've never stopped and I should've kept going. I shouldn't have let myself believe any less in the values that I had instilled so deeply.
I guess that my mentality went as follows, "I have a team already, so I don't need to make new friends since I won't need any new members.", and perhaps "I don't need to do all of those things anymore because they aren't competitive or important for my growth."
What makes these things so important?...
"Genius!"
"Genius!" I've gotten this a couple of times and so have a couple of distinguished captains for their ability to innovate strategically or to do something differently. Obviously it's an overstatement for many of us, myself included, but there is a major misconception concerning the word's usage in DotA: A genius is far and few between.
I was so caught up in the act of genius. Genius, for me, is a highly fantastical term that I relentlessly aspired to. I would think of ways to embody "genius" and part of the fantasy included being a master of strategy. I had always referred back to the successes of team FIRE and compLexity and our strategies. I wholeheartedly believed that I could replicate the same style of drafting with Team Liquid, however I forgot the processes which lead to their creations.
Playing with FIRE:
+ Show Spoiler +
Our strategies always revolved around trends that I noticed and placed value in through reference. My references were often given to me by the friends that I made and my experiences with them. I, now, realize that I believed so much in my strategies before because of reference experiences. I saw these heroes and combinations being used by the everyday players around me. Two examples include: Force staff Skeleton King destroyed me in a pub and I instantly fell in love with it. Rhasta was becoming extremely high value because my friend (Sulli) assured me of his dominance and the hero shined in the Inhouse league circuit. From there TC's mid Rhasta became a huge threat to many teams and we often first picked the hero while no other teams valued him. As I mentioned in previous blogs, this combination lead to a ridiculous strategy that we practiced nonstop to achieve a near 100% win rate for 30 matches.
The successes of our strategies lied in the fact that I had several resource advantages: A fully dedicated DotA 2 team, the environment to test my beliefs (inhouse leagues/pubs), and the experience. It was not my ability to create and invent strategy out of thin air, but my ability to assimilate all the references I had with my own ideas.
What ended up happening with compLexity, towards the end, and Team Liquid was that I'd have ideas that I came up with randomly instead of having references and they would very quickly falter. When I had a good idea we'd win some games but then slowly give up on them after losing once or twice. The reason for this was because the ideas weren't fine tuned enough and I couldn't feasibly test any of my ideas outside of the scrim environment, where our time was limited. So many strategies ended up going to the "strategy graveyard" and I lost a lot of sanity because of this. I started looking towards different heroes and different options instead of the ones that I valued before because they had failed me.
I was notorious for running the Offensive Chen trilane in both matches and the inhouse league and the one thing that never stopped changing was my idea of the ideal lane. I practiced it and practiced it and drafted it and drafted it some more. The result was that I had figured out the ins and outs of this lane combination and I became a master of my strategy. I can't say that I've ever been a master of my strategy since compLexity's Defense 2 Championship title. I know that a big reason for this was from my disconnect with my community (NADotA).
There are so many bright minds and powerful ideas that get thrown around consistently, which I have overlooked. Some of these players don't have the opportunities, that I have, to make their strategies and ideas a competitive reality. Two people who really stick out to me are Brood Star and Clairvoyance. Both of these people are extremely smart, in my view, but do not have any prospects for making it to TI3. They let their creativity go in two very distinct ways: Clairvoyance through Reddit Articles and Broodstar through NADotA forum posts. Both equally viable and voices that need to be heard or, at the very least, observed.
I'm a fool for discarding all of the fundamental reasons why I've met strategic success. I will take and abuse everything that I encounter from now on. My fantasy was the idea of a genius strategy, but my reality was that of assimilation and combining references with resources. With all of that said, I'm going to take a few steps back because it was a good direction, after all.
+ Show Spoiler +
It is not to discredit all of the hard work put into forming these teams and working through our problems however.
Shattering Stagnation
For too long I've let ideas overwhelm me. I'm fully prepared to take the necessary steps to achieve my goals. Actualizing these goals through action, rather than thought will put me through a lot of pain and frustration, I understand this. However, I think it's about time that I regain the confidence that I need to assume my role as the leader.
I am going to start playing IXDL and using my main account to play pubs from now on. I will also be looking through a different frame to analyze my own strategies and understand the strategies of others. I know that I am in a weak state right now and I fully expect to fail for the first couple of days, even weeks. However, I have goals beyond the short term and these sacrifices are almost certainly going to give me the answers I've been searching for all this time. I need to constantly challenge myself and continue working through ego death after ego death.
Hopefully this time round, I'll incorporate all of the lessons I've learned along the way and Team Liquid will reach new heights.
Taming FIRE
Fire is something that really resonates with me. As a child watching TV shows and movies, fire was always associated with things like power, leadership, red, passion and anger. All of which have unconsciously become a part of who I am today.
Power: Fire reminds me of the hard work I put in to strengthening myself. A fire may dwindle, but it also has the potential to grow exponentially and incinerate anything in its path.
Leadership: Fire reminds me of the inner strength and mental focus that I need to make a decision in the heat of the moment. It is intense, unrelenting and all-consuming.
Red: Just my favorite color :D.
Passion: Fire reminds me of a burning desire that leads me to constantly want more and more. The fire always burns me when I fall into complacent icy stagnation.
Anger: Fire reminds me of the anger that I utilize to lead my team. It fuels the tonality of my voice, the decisiveness of my words and the belligerence to compete.
All in all, I want to really explore this idea that mastering old concepts will contribute to peak growth. Those steps I took, once unconsciously, will be controlled.
I will tame FIRE.
-FLUFF
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Ceej8WX.jpg)
)
