League of Legends
TLDR: My reflections on league of legends, I used to play it lot and now I will never play it again
Its crazy how a single video game has impacted my life so heavily. I started playing league of legends in 2013, as my friend at the time, told me I should try it out. I started playing it on my computer which could barely handle it, and didn’t care too much about it. Fast forward a year in 2014 I found myself with no friends and an entire summer, so I decided to start it up again. Soon enough I was on Skype all day playing with friends who I have never met before and people from other schools. I started to really enjoy the game and as a young 8th grader was determined to be pro. I remember watching bunch of videos everyday on certain techniques and practicing every single day to get better at them. Then I entered high school and didn’t know anyone that played League of Legends. However it didn’t matter to me because I had online friends who I played with religiously. I played a lot of games of League of Legends, like a lot, there would be days when I woke up and played league until I went to asleep. However I never regret a single game played. As a kid having no responsibilities I poured my life and soul into this game.
However this soon became an addiction. I remember I would be irritated if I couldn’t get a game in at least once per day. I remember I couldn’t help but playing games even before tests. So in 10th grade I quit for about half the year. However I relapsed pretty hard and started to play a lot more league. This ultimately led me in getting a C in one of my math classes, which at the time I thought I was going to die and the world was over. Looking back I was freaking out for no reason but I needed that C, which lead me to getting Straights A’s for my junior year. However after doing some reflection I hard quit league of legends. I deleted it (obviously), but I also banned anything league of legends from popping up on YouTube or the internet in general. I made sure I never saw league of legends at all. This was honestly the best decision at the time, and I am glad I made it. Shout out younger me. Then I didn’t play league again until 2020.
I soon was off to college and surprisingly met homies that played league and took it seriously. This was mind blowing to me as I never knew any league players in person and was excited. However one caveat, I also got a macbook because I knew it didn’t run games well and thus I couldn’t play league. I would talk about it, and watch it with the boys but I wouldn’t play it, because UCSD wifi was trash and my macbook would start sounding like an airplane. But if I didn’t play league of legends I wouldn’t have met the homies and who knows what my life would’ve turned out like.
I started to play hardcore again during 2020 and peaked Gold 1. After that I kind of lost all passion for league and was severely burned out. At this time I started doing self-reflection and realized that I was wasting time on league as I was no longer enjoying it. My homies switched to Valorant and soon left league of legends behind. During this time I started working out and thus my transition started.
As I started working out, I started to realize that I no longer enjoy league of legends and no longer enjoy video games in general. Me putting that effort into video games went nowhere as I wasn’t making money from it nor was I playing with friends. Additionally the homies around me started to take working out and physical activities more seriously. I started to work out more and naturally transitioned out of video games and stopped playing league all together.
League also lead me to becoming apathetic and super toxic. I constantly said toxic stuff in the chat, and made fun of other players. I became a keyboard warrior, doing a 1 v 2 Toplane and winning then typing “?” in the chat or honestly it was more toxic than that, like really toxic LOL.
Now I cannot enjoy video games because I see them as a waste of time. I can’t imagine putting that much time into a game and not gaining anything from it. I already did it once and I had my fun, but with all things in life you move on and I finally have. League of legends will always be in my heart, but never on my screen, still down to watch it live tho that was epic.
Thank you for reading, let’s grow together 🙂