EPTAs per usual I place my gate down on 12 supply and send my probe out to scout, much to my delight I scout in the correct direction and note a Hatchery at the Z natural. This comforts me a little, knowing they went hatch first means I'm not going to die to early ling aggression or speedling all-in. I proceed as usual, send in my hallucination scout. No hydra den, only roach warren and spawning pool.
Ok, so roaches, no problemo, just make immortals and defend for dear life. I manage that reasonably well and once I feel comfortable I move out to attack, hoping to finish them off. I catch a large roach force enroute and take the better engagement killing them off with plenty of troops left to continue my march to the Zerg's bases and to my probable victory.
Then the speedlings arrived, hundreds upon hundreds of them, I was out in the middle of the map, they were in my base, ripping it apart, I had no energy for a recall but given there were no roaches, I figured, pure ling? He must be running out of money, if I defend this I might be ok, he might tap out.
With my bases in pieces I try to rebuild a little when the next wave arrived, yet again a large swell of speedlings, I kill them and the few mutas that have appeared, mutas, it suddenly kicks in.
He isn't out of money.
I had to act fast if I wanted any chance of winning so knowing I had an army that could decimate bases pretty quick, I went for the basetrade, with no money to put other buildings out on the map I had to rely on me having more DPS than him.
It didn't work, he won the basetrade, my tradition of losing my placement match continued and my confidence took a knock because there was nothing I could do to stop the speedlings. Z just had too many attack paths that I couldn't cover with my ground army and I had made a lot of other mistakes throughout the game also.
Then came the ultimate confidence killer, my league placement.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FUR7X10.jpg)
From gold to bronze, I know it's the start of the season and last season I don't feel my promotion was deserved due to my record plummeting once I hit gold but I felt like I was genuinely improving with every game, I'd reached a personal milestone and was looking to cement my place in gold and I was pleased with myself.
My main problem is I'm extremely critical of myself, I beat myself up over mistakes and my confidence when things go wrong plummets to stupidly low so for me, going from gold to bronze hurts a lot, especially when I tried my hardest in that match. When I put my best effort in and things don't go how I expect irl or otherwise I get angry at myself. Stupid I know but that's just who I am.
Now I know I'm going to get 1 or 2 people telling me to stop getting worked up about this and play for fun but I'm weird in a way that playing for fun in my eyes is getting better at the game, understanding it more, building up a ton of knowledge on it. I'm like that with every game, I can't just play for the sake of playing, it's an alien concept to me and I can't really explain why.
