VERY LONG TWEET, but I just wanted to take some time before regionals & to talk about what the journey has been like so far. A few years ago I started my competitive journey with no goal in sight, strictly for fun. In fact when I started playing apex in general I never wanted to be a pro player. After I got day 1'd 3 times in cc in year 2 I tried to give it a chance again in cc for year 3 to see what I could do. After trying hard enough I ended up getting top 12 and making PLQ in split 1. We made the MP final of split 1 PLQ in Y3 and ended at a heartbreaking 1 point off pro league qualification. Lost the tiebreaker to 2 teams that both ended up getting invited. After that I knew I had to keep pushing myself for more. I continued to push myself but after that result, I didn't see the same success I was seeing before, failing to make finals of LCQ. Regardless of the struggles when it came to making it count when it mattered most I kept pushing. Y4 PSQ came around, but unfortunately I didn't make the top 4 or win any weeks. Then cc came back around. We did good in CC made PLQ with flying colors. When PLQ came around once again, falling short of making matchpoint finals. Once again, I didn't let my failures stop me and kept pushing. Qualified for the LCQ of year 4 with ease but then came the worst result I had seen in CC for the first time ever. I got 38th in LCQ, we didnt even get close to the matchpoint finals this time; it seemed like I had taken an enormous step backwards. I was completely ready to give up, thought that I was just stupid for trying so hard and not getting anything from it. BLGS gets announced and I ended up deciding it might be my last tournament because why not. I end up making the regional finals and finishing 10th, which wasn't insane but we actually made money from it which was good. That result alone reignited my passion and pushed me on another year and helped me make the change I desperately needed. I finally picked up on the role of igling, and spent months trying to perfect my craft before year 5 PSQ. After finding my team, for the first time ever I saw a small bit of success, tearing through PSQs finishing 4th, qualifying for pro league and qualifying for the ALGS Open in NOLA. Pro league was an insane learning curve for myself and my team at the time and at the start it looked promising, finishing 5th on our first matchday. Unfortunately a lot of our days didn't look like that result and we ended up doing worse than I expected, but I wasn't too down about it since we still had the open to play at. At the open we played through almost every possible round, and ended up making it all the way to elimination finals, falling short of making MP finals finishing 27th. Honestly, for 160 teams 27th wasnt bad. I was quite pleased with the result based off our lack of high level and LAN exp, outplacing some previous LAN winners and high profile players. Unfortunately it was all downhill from there, after playing the rest of pro league after 1 split I had been relegated. We finished 24th when top 22 stay in the league and the bottom 8 go to PLQ. Once again, I had to play through PLQ which I thought would be a breeze since I just came out of PL and the Open doing better than most. We made it all the way to MP finals but once again, fell short of the requalification. I was devastated that I had done so well just to fall right back to where I was for years. My passion hit an all time low and I had to LFT and play cc with an entirely new team. I went through rostermania hell in cc, swapping teams and getting my teammates stolen from me. We eventually came back together and qualified for the year 5 LCQ. Fortunately this time we did 10x better than ive done before and we made MP finals. Unfortunately once again, we finished 7th which was outside of the Pro league invitation spot and missed out on going to Sapporo. After LCQ, I didnt play apex for months waiting on Y6, when Y6 got announced I came back and was preparing to do another PSQ that I had previously done to get into PL last year. Unfortunately stuff with my team didnt work out so I had to LFT 1 month before the PSQs giving me not much time to make a decision. I ended up going with the team I currently have and I could tell right away we were going to do great in PSQ. We ended up getting 2nd, 4th and 1st place, winning the 3rd PSQ which was my first ever PSQ event win. This qualified us directly to split 1 of year 6. After we made pro league, we got an amazing offer from an org, my passion for the game was finally peaking again. We constantly were either winning PL scrims or getting top 5, performing good. Come gameday our first 2 sets were devastating, we ended up getting 17th on our first day. I was beyond disappointed in myself for letting this happen and started to think I was going to repeat the same mistakes from last year. Our next matchdays weren't insane but a little better, getting 8th. We once again saw poor results making me think that I was just the problem and that I wasnt getting any better at all. This slowly ate away at my confidence as an IGL. Finally, for the first time in a year I got my first breakthrough in the difficult split it had been placing 4th in one of the matchdays. This helped me recollect my thoughts about myself being bad and showed me how I have the ability to do good still. Unfortunately our next matchdays weren't anything insane and we ended up finishing 21st, but this time we didn't get relegated. Technically that was small but gradual improvement from last year. Coming into split 2, our org had parted ways with us and I had to watch once again, another LAN without being able to go and play. It made me question what I was doing and how I was so stagnant for so long. I thought that I had peaked and was never going to get better, and I ended up taking a big risk swapping my input from MNK to Controller before split 2. This gave myself more motivation to get better and push myself because I didn't want to seem like dead weight to my teammates, so I decided to stop wasting my time and go all in. PL starts and our first matchday we finish 4th. Our second matchday starts and we finish 7th, week 2 comes around and our 3rd matchday 4th again. Matchday 4 comes around and 7th again. This level of consistency was unheard of from me. A lot of people assumed we would be the same players we were in split 1. We quickly shot up the leaderboard in PL placements and eventually landing ourselves 4th overall, out of 15 spots for split 2's Vegas LAN. Matchday 5 rolls around and we achieved our greatest result as a team; 2nd place, losing by 8 points to TLAW. This pushed us up to 2nd overall in pro league, right behind Visions, the most consistent team in the entire split. Unfortunately our final matchday wasnt that good but despite having 3 points in 3 games, getting 30 in 3 more and almost getting top 10 after a bad day was no where near bad. But on a positive note, for the first time ever, I have qualified myself for an official apex playoff LAN. (that wasnt like the open, since the open was kinda a handout LAN) I understand this tweet is probably WAY too long and that not many people are probably going to read this or understand why I quoted this specific tweet but I just wanted to tweet this to prove to other people out there that as long as you don't give up no matter what it is, and keep pressing on eventually you will get where you want. In my case I wanted to qualify for pro league and a LAN, and now I can confidentially say I have done both. Am I satisfied yet? No, I still haven't made it to champs yet or made an EWC or won anything big. But you can bet on it that I will keep on pushing myself to see the best result possible. I am beyond grateful for everyone who has supported me on my journey throughout the years and hope they can be just as proud that I've been able to make it this far. I always thought I was letting everyone down for not doing good but for the first time ever I feel like ive finally done something worth mentioning. I am going to try my hardest to push myself to get my best result yet going into vegas & regional finals. If you dont give up you cant lose