Hello there everybody! It has been quite some time since my lost blog (I believe post WCS Oceania come down) and much has happened since then!
I went to around Europe for 5 weeks and whilst I had an incredible time and did a lot of cool shit, I felt quite underwhelmed. For the first week or so I couldn't quite put my finger on what the problem was. I was getting drunk, meeting people, hanging out with friends, seeing beautiful sights and nearly as beautiful women, alas, something was still missing.
Shrugging it off I catapulted myself into Oktoberfest and had a great time drinking beer and buying whole chickens and devouring those poor little bastards straight from the spit (it's probably the tastiest chicken I've ever had in my life). However, shortly after the festivities and seeing endless amounts of women in short cut dirndls, Europe was still not a whole lot fulfilling. As the weeks went by and my time over there was still nice, something was definitely missing. It wasn't until Dreamhack rolled around and I was watching Targa slow ling all in his way to a top 4 finish that I realized the reason Europe wasn't engorging every fantasy I've ever had is because my passion and driving force for everything that I have loved to do for the past 2 years has been missing.
Growing up, I had an older brother, 6 years my senior. We used to play-fight, play sports together, do a lot of stuff together, and he used to always beat me. Naturally, this environment spawns quite a competitive side in a lot of guys, and I was no different. Winning, a lot of the time, was all I cared about, and to this day, still is, and it was in computer games, that I found winning, came quite easy. Sure, he still bested me when we played Hockey, tennis, table-soccer, pool, and various other things, but when i was 10 and we were introduced to SC:BW, CS 1.3, WC3 and the likes, he had no business claiming to be my superior.
Fast forward about 12 years, a Freudian analysis, life, school, and various other things, and it's no surprise that I thrive for competition. I ******' love it. I love the feeling you get when everything you've worked for comes down to this one moment where you prove you have the cojines to face off against that mother ****** who's trying to beat you, and tear his shit apart. Everything I had been doing for about 2 years was in the spirit of this drive, this very being of my core. Starcraft 2, and Bodybuilding. Whilst I was in Europe, I had neither, and my happiness and mentality suffered because of it.
The last week I was over there was probably the longest of my life. I'd listen to sc2 podcasts, read any tl thread religiously, try to catch a stream or tournament if I could. Whilst I wasn't on the net, I'd think about all sorts of possible strategies, what I could try out, how much I was going to practice, who I was going to practice with. A little kid on Christmas eve wasn't half as excited as me to get back so that I could continue to play sc2.
When I returned, I think I played about 250 ladder games that week, and how ever many other customs. I watched about 4 tournaments worth of replays, I had my builds, I was refining my play, and quickly became better than I had felt in my entire career. I was hooked again, after I had suffered a bit of a wane in enthusiasm post ACL Melbourne.
It was in this time that I realized there is really nothing else I wish to do with my life, right now at least, that doesn't involve sc2. So, it is with a very enthusiastic albeit slightly worried heart, that I will be trying to make it as a "pro" in the sc2 scene.
How am I going to do this you ask? What is going to set me aside from all the others who have tried and failed? The answers is: I don't really know, but I don't give a ****, and I'm going to make it work. Whether it takes a year or 5, I want to make this work because this is the best shit in the world, and it's what I love doing. It's what makes me get up out of bed (that and needing to take a massive piss), it's what I look forward to when I come home, it's what I dream about.
Now, as good as all that stuff is, I realize, I can't do it alone. And as any one in the TA chat will tell you, I won't stfu and stop bugging people for games. But I also need your guys help. This community has been great. I enjoy talking to everybody everyday in the sc2sea chat, and I hope up until now, I have given something back some form of entertainment to the community somehow.
But I ask, nay, I implore you, whenever I stream please tune in to watch. I swear a lot, get frustrated as ****, bag my opponents and bag a whole lot of other shit. I also like to think that the knowledge I have of the game is pretty decent, my strategies relatively unique and diverse, and am also a relatively entertaining guy if you have nothing better to do.
In the similar field of helping me out, please retweet my tweets that I put out much to infrequently, tweet about my stream, say how terrible I am, just talk more and spread the word about some dude called Kerry who often gets confused as a girl on bnet for the ID Kez.
Secondly, in the spirit of giving back to the community, every week I'll be writing a blog called "This week I learned" where we go over what I've been trying to improve in my game and how this impacts my "Laws" of sc2. The "Laws" for example being "You can't hold x build after y amounts of drones have been made". That's a very basic one, and a lot of them will be quite in depth, and I really look forward to sharing some of them with you, even if it might be to my detriment later on in competition!
Thirdly, I'll be offering coaching for 20 dollars an hour. It is slightly expensive I know, but I also feel my time is worth that much, and I wouldn't be offering it at that price if I didn't feel like it was worth it. I hope you simply give me the chance to prove it to you. To schedule lessons e-mail: kezcoaching@gmail.com
That's about if for the self promotion aspect. (Thank **** that's over with) Now on to up and coming things! Unfortunately, my team, Carnage, has also disbanded. This is quite sad as I was quite close friends with the guys in the team, and it will be sorely missed. So I am currently looking for a team! Fold your stiffys into the waist band of your jeans, let me finish (before you do) Just wait and see if you're still interested until after IEM. I have been practicing around 10 hours a day for this event, and hope to do well in it, and as a show of faith I want to prove my metal against some top competition. Of course, if I do terrible, feel free to ignore IEM and look at my gosu 4th place finish in last nights Masters cup :P
So that's about it I think. Since I heard about IEM SG and a possible open bracket, it's all I could think about for the past 3-4 weeks and have been practicing hard. I look forward to meeting everyone there, and wish me luck and tune in to see how us Aussies go!
We almost share an alias, so reading the thread comments is strange :P best of luck with it! Maybe one day I will be up there at the top with you and people will confuse us for each other (like Liquid`HerO and CJ-HerO).
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