Trying to make excuses not to, trying to put it off.
This is, pretty obviously, not the blog about League. I can still try to make that later, though I have some slightly different thoughts there overall.

I admit, I don't know exactly where to begin with this.

Basically, this is something I've toyed around with blogging about before but never managed to form enough of a coherent thought on it and the more depressing aspects of it overwhelmed me anyway leading to my blogs being short ones where I noted I was feeling awful and couldn't blog, or something to that effect.

It does come from a bit of a morbid place; one of the things spurning on the urge for this blog was me thinking of "what if?" scenarios where I am about to die from diseases, and then more or less going, "why wait to be dieing to do that?".

I suppose I can start with this. I won't go into details to respect their privacy, but basically. My friend, who was my girlfriend for two and a half years, is dating the love of their life, and hearing about all the things their girlfriend does, it makes me realize how much of a failure I was as a girlfriend.

I definitely had the same love. My friend is never going to stop being the love of my life, painful as that is to me since I know I'll never be their girlfriend again. But what I did with the love, is where I more or less think the failure comes in--or rather. More or less. The lack of what I did, in that I didn't do anything. I never sent gifts. I never put real time and effort into figuring out a way to meet them in-person.

You might attribute that to differences in personality, of their current girlfriend just being that significantly different, but in many ways, from what I have heard, they have quite a number of similarities to me. They've done more to progress their relationship in less than two months, than I did in over two years.

On the one hand--that's amazing for them! That is awesome for them! That is really, really good, for the both of them. It is proof that the two of them were made for each other, more or less. They are really, really good for each other, they are better as a couple than I was as a couple with my friend. And because they are so good for each other, assuming that nothing catastrophic gets in the way of their relationship, I know that they will be tremendously happy together and that knowledge gives me a lot of happiness.

I do genuinely get happiness from seeing friends, especially this friend, happy. I want them, especially this friend, to be as happy as is humanly possible, and their current relationship gives them that more than I ever could, and I do genuinely think that is a good thing.

But, it does highlight my shortcomings. It does highlight all of the "what ifs", of things I could have done better, of things I could have done differently. Our relationship wouldn't have continued if I had done things better, if I had done things differently, mind you. The feelings they have are the feelings they have and the feelings they have are that their current girlfriend is the love of their life. Nothing I could've done differently would've done anything to change those feelings so they would still have ended up together regardless. (Which, again, I feel the need to reiterate--is overall a good thing! It sucks for me, but it is genuinely better for them and since it is genuinely better for them, is a good thing.)

So what I'm more or less getting at here, is. This is not regret of "if I did things differently, maybe we'd still be together".
No, this is more regret of, "seeing what their current girlfriend has done for them, it makes me realize what I missed out on", more or less.
I could have done so much better for them.
And I didn't--and as a result, I just feel like in comparison, I am a failure compared to what I could've done.

Basically, every time I hear what my friend's current girlfriend has done for them, I realize, it's something I didn't do for them when I was their girlfriend, which I could've very very very easily have done, but I didn't. I didn't even think of most of those sorts of things. I had the love, but I did almost nothing with it.

There were times where I considered doing more. But 'considered' isn't actually doing, and even those things I considered pale in comparison to what their current girlfriend actually has done.

And overall.

I just feel like.

Seeing the current relationship makes me realize why I suck.
I feel like a coward. Too scared to do anything. I feel like a failure. Not as a girlfriend, mind you, but more as a person, with the lens of my time as my friend's girlfriend just as a way of exposing the underlying fault I have as a person, if that makes sense.

To put it another way--I don't think I was actually a failure of a girlfriend and I doubt my friend would think I was, either. But I do think I was, and still am, a bit of a failure as a person, and it is realizing that I didn't really succeed as a girlfriend which helped expose this. (Again, to reiterate, nothing would've stopped the breakup; even if I had succeeded as a girlfriend, feelings be feelings be what they are. But that doesn't stop me from lamenting the lost opportunities that have passed me by, things that we could've done while girlfriends which we can't do as friends. I could've done so, so much more than what I did, but I didn't. And that's a failure on my part.)

Like I said.
This blog is really, really hard to compose properly.
I'm still not sure my thoughts, feelings, are being properly conveyed. I'm worried that they aren't. That the wrong message is being sent.
I feel like the part about thinking their current relationship is nothing but positive, is clear enough; I feel like the part about me knowing nothing would've stopped them from entering into their current relationship, is maybe clear enough, and as per above, that this is a good thing.

But I'm not sure I'm really getting my point across.
That I feel like looking back.
If I were less incompetent as a person, then on both ends, there would be more good memories from the relationship. More for them, more for me. (There's plenty of good memories, mind you. But I mean, so so much more than what I gave. To reiterate, their current girlfriend has given them higher-quality memories in two months, than I did in two years. And what I mean is, if I had been a better person, if I had thought to do more, then we'd have had much more, I guess is what I mean. I still feel like this is poor wording to get at the concept.)

I identified the main problem, at least I hope so. It's that I was way, way, way too passive. Just as a person. And I am still way, way, way too passive. I've more or less, just been...waiting and waiting, rather than controlling, planning. I feel like I am pathetic, that I am a coward, held back by my fears (no matter how justified or not they may be), always held back by an endless number of excuses, usually procrastinating endlessly.

Those things weren't specific to my relationship, but realizing what a better girlfriend I'd have been if not for those things is what I am getting at, basically. That's what I mean. By seeing the current relationship my friend has, it revealed to me that as a person, I am passive, a coward, too timid, too afraid, making excuses (I made so many trying to avoid this blog!), always endlessly procrastinating.

Lamenting the "what if I had those qualities" of the past for what that'd have meant, doesn't do me much good though. (It is what made me think of this blog in the first place, in tandem with the bucket list, but it is not productive to dwell on.)

But what it does give, more or less.
Is motivation.
It is reflecting on that which lets me see. "Bree, you didn't have those good qualities back then, and you have all these regrets now as a consequence...so why not make the changes now, so you don't have them in the future?", more or less.

Realizing a fault I had in the past which made life less rewarding than it could've been if not for the fault, basically. Serves as motivation to move forward in life trying to fix the fault, so that in the future I won't have regrets due to the fault. That with the fault fixed, I have no further regrets from the fault. (The regrets from, in hindsight, realizing I had the fault and what would've been better if not for it, will never go away, but having fixed it helps a lot.)

This fault will be very, very, very hard for me to fix.
It won't be an overnight improvement.
I will have to fight every. single. step. of the way to put it down--and worsening it is that the fault will fight back at every single stage.

Do you think having fears combined with excuses combined with procrastination, is a combination which lends itself to trying to correct itself? No, it's a combo which tries to reinforce itself, and every time I will be trying to push those traits away from myself, they will push hard in resistance.

I am always afraid. I am always a procrastinator. I always make excuses. I am so good, such a natural, at them. And every time in the past that I have tried to fight back, they have managed to reinforce one another as to keep me passive, keep me stable, keep me unchanging, keep me immobile, keep me rooted down, grounded, stuck, in place, not moving forward for stupid fear of being catapulted back.

In fear of losing it all, in fear of losing my life, I have lost (out on) things I easily could have not lost (out on) if I was less afraid, if I didn't put them off, if I didn't talk my way into taking the path of least resistance. Which is precisely why this is so. damn. hard. It is the path of least resistance to be passive. It is the path of least resistance to do nothing. It is the path of least resistance to do as little as is humanly possible and rely on others.

I am not happy with that.
Mind you, nothing really makes me happy right now, depression does that to you, but I am dissatisfied with the idea that I am not going to have any progress in my life.

I'm not going to proclaim something along the lines of. "That changes now!". Or "that won't happen anymore". Of overnight success, of overnight suddenly becoming somehow, mystically, magically, on track.

Like--I don't even know what I'm going to do yet, specifically, to get out of this funk. I have some very loose ideas (see below) which are progress, if I work on them, if I progress on them, but like. I don't have a plan here. I kinda wish I had one because I think it'd help me a lot, but one of the excuses I made for not trying this before was precisely that, not having a plan.

So screw a plan, I'm still going to try.

It's not much of an immediate change--but an eventual one? I am setting an absolute, hardest of hard, absolute LATEST deadline of January 23rd, 2023, for coming out as a girl publicly in real life. Everyone online has known for over six years. I don't want it to be over ten. More than that, I don't want to reach thirty years old and still be trapped in the living hell of my current life.

And to reiterate this--that's the latest point. Latest. As in. "No matter what. No excuses. Nothing. No amount of fear. No amount of backing out. No amount of cowardice, second thoughts, hesitation. No matter how awkward it will be, and it will be awkward, come out, period, end of discussion." That'll be very very tough to do, but I refuse to let myself not do it.

Preferably, I move that deadline up. Within a year, for instance. But this is a date which I felt was a good starter, because it gives plenty of time for my fatass of a dad's poor health habits to inevitably kill himself (after which I could immediately come out), while ensuring I don't wait 20 years for something to happen.

I am willing to wait two years to be myself. I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that it is very realistic that he could die in that time.
I am not willing to wait twenty years to be myself--while I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that he won't live that long, it is still a considerable chance that he could, especially if he (shock! gasp!) actually cleaned his habits up. (He won't, but if he did...)

So I am setting myself a decent deadline, so that I can actually hold myself accountable. I do have this more or less planned out. Day before, shopping for girl clothing, next day, wake up early to make the announcements publicly online on places where people in real life can see it, go to the Y and talk to them there, while there text my mom, come home with her, and face my family.

It is a plan which I can adjust closer to the time I do it.
I can do it at any time, too.

The main reason I'm not doing it sooner, I suppose.
Is.
I guess.
I want to exploit the safety for a bit longer.

I don't want to be passive with that safety.
But in a sense--I want to practice, so to speak, with that eventual outcome, by pushing myself now in other ways.

Granted, said practice could just be me failing, me not doing anything, in which case. Maybe I move the deadline up.

In fact, that actually sounds like a neat idea. I don't have any clue how to implement this. But a rule of more or less, "The more I fail to be less-passive now, the sooner I force the lack of passiveness". As in, the more I fail at my current endeavor, the more I push up the date of the coming out.

The less use I get out of my current life, the more I push towards changing my life.
Right now, I am not getting anything out of my current life--so if not for this being a change I'm making literally just today, I'd be pushing the deadline to be much much sooner.

Right now, my plan is to commit to trying to make something, screw the excuses.
I want to commit to making something.
Truly commit to it.
At work, I threw around two ideas. One being a webcomic as a safer/easier option.

The other was Phyrra and Cyrus.
I have made oh so MANY excuses to put off working on my pet project there. And some of them are probably valid. I don't have a wide enough voice range to voice every character so I would need voice actors, and I probably cannot animate things on my own (though I will be looking into that).

But a lot of the excuses, I just.
I'm sick of not doing what I want to do, because I have the thought of those things causing failure. I know it won't come out perfectly, but I want it to come out. I know that I could do this better with planning--but past a certain point, excessive planning which I can't complete, just...doesn't do me any good.

I have put it off, saying I need to plan more.
I have put it off, fearing that it'd fail.

I don't know how, exactly, I will manage to make it so that I don't.
But I am not going to succeed if I don't try and right now I'm not trying. Talk, no action.

I do have a very, very loose idea of maybe a way.
I have tools readily available at my disposal to help me.
I have had many many many times where I am watching streams and gone, "I want to watch this, but I want to do something else at the same time" where I was pseudo-bored--still invested in the stream and wanting to watch it, but wanting to do something in addition to the stream, and I did nothing or might as well have.

There's stupidly obvious things I could do.
I have boatloads of art supplies.
I have an endless supply of most things I would need to try, and if I am watching a stream I can open a tab to look at any artistic reference I want. I can draw.

Granted, yes. I have made a very strongly-standing excuse which I don't have a workaround on, not really anyway, of.
I can't scan my drawings into my desktop.
And even if I could--I don't have an art program beyond paint on the desktop.

But the thing is.
I don't need to put the art on the computer.

I just need to make the art, actually make it, stop talking about it, and do it, and then see where it takes me.

Do art while doing the stream. Concept art. Or storyboarding. Just. Working on it.

I have the tools. I have the skills, and if not, the ability to learn the skills. Like, one thing that I don't have is a video editing program or whatever would be needed to make the final version of Phyrra and Cyrus and even if I did I don't know how to use one--but these are things that a quick google search would fix.

I can literally solve one of those in less than thirty seconds, and the other can be found in the same amount of time (albeit, presumably, as a youtube video or something, taking time to watch, and practice, and such).

I made the excuse of not knowing it and it being something I won't be able to do.
Ignoring that it is something I could learn to do very easily.
And there's no excuse not to.
I've been lazy.
Not doing it when I could have.

I don't know what order I will be doing things.
I don't have a schedule, not a plan, not yet.
But I am getting started.

Because I feel like if I don't start trying to make something of my life.
There won't be anything in my life.
I was okay with not doing anything in my life when I felt like I could live a life of a nobody and be content--but I'm not happy with that anymore.
So why am I still doing what I was doing, when I was in that mindspace? Why am I still doing nothing, when doing nothing was a byproduct of a mindset that I am no longer in? Doing nothing was something I was fine with when doing nothing still allowed me to be happy, but right now I am not happy and doing nothing does nothing to make me happy.

I am sure I will invent a myriad of excuses in the future, so future self, screw you for being a self-sabotaging prick.
But right now.
I don't have those excuses.
So I am going to put in the work that I can.

...Because I do have a lot to say, some big things there relevant to my recent games, but like.
I had a six-hour high-stress workday because I am overly paranoid that I might be a carrier for the coronavirus due to the possibility I was in the same building at the same time as the 43-year-old square dancer who died from it.

I got only about five solid hours of sleep.

I have an identical shift tomorrow, only worse due to extra patrons and thus less breaktime.

I am tired.

But I do really really want to talk more about something.

I may have found a refined version of my playstyle but it needs talking about.

To  be fair.
I am depressed--that makes tiredness worse.
I never get a full night's sleep on Saturday nights due to working Sunday. (Admittedly, I set my alarm to have over six hours, but I don't think I slept through all six of them. Especially since I woke up COLD, and COLD means poor sleep.)
I worked a seven and a half hour shift. (Minirant: I would rather work five days a week and shorter shifts, than three days a week with each shift being longer than five hours, but oh well, I'll live.)
I haven't napped.

So there's multiple reasons why I should be tired, that explain why I am so tired.

Butstill.

Tired.

​Need sleeppppp.

I just feel.
Worthless.
I don't know why.

I just.
I just.

I'm very very obviously. Depressed.
I don't know why.
Just.
Feeling like trash.
That I'm not good.
That I've wasted every opportunity I've had, to do...anything.
And just.

Have withered away into being.

Nothing.

I feel like I am nothing.
I feel like I am nobody.
And I feel like that's not okay--which makes the feeling even worse.

I can rationally think of logical counters to that.
Logical reasons why being nobody wouldn't be bad; I've blogged about the benefits of it before.
Less than a week ago I had someone tell me how much of a difference in their life I made, without me knowing it, just from something I happened to have long-since forgotten about having been something notable at the time.
Less than a week ago, I had people point out my contributions to having done something significant.

So rationally I should be able to counter those feelings.
Rationally. Should.

Should, not can.

Because those feelings are more or less.
Caving in on me.
With me just.
Feeling.

Like I'm not.
Anything of any good.

I just have lots and lots of regrets right now.
And they're getting worse and worse and worse.
With no way of getting better.

I just.
I want to be happy.

Right now the best I've managed is to numb the pain, to dull it out, to keep myself entertained--by doing things that are fun, by doing things that kill time, by doing things that are mindless. Watching streams. Playing Minecraft. The like. Those things help push the feeling of sadness, despair, away, temporarily.

They do not remove the feelings.
Just keep them at bay until moments like this, before bed, when I don't have the time to do any of those things productively. And then. The feelings just.
Come rushing in.

I want to feel happy.
I want to feel actual, real, legitimate joy.

I want to be happy right now.
But all I feel like doing is crying right now.
Because there's nothing which can give me that happiness long-term.
At least.
Nothing that I can think of.
Nothing that I can do on my own.

I just.
Feel powerless.
Worthless.
And like.

I don't know what to do.
​Just...going to get bed prep done and go to bed I guess since I do work tomorrow.

...And in this regard, I was highly successful overall! I still have three, lengthy, videos to watch (one is two hours; two are each 45 minutes), but I watched about ten videos today to get entirely caught up there. There were a bunch of things I needed to get caught up on, though, and...I was...less successful elsewhere.

In Minecraft I did do some work but had the tilting experience of zombie death losing my experience and risking my items...again. And now I wasted a bunch of time for what amounts to nothing.

In Teamfight Tactics, I needed to play five games for the orb of enlightenment and play enough games to get the four quests done--this also contained extreme tilt of either lousy luck in the earlygame and by the time my fortunes were turning around...being eliminated by those who had the amazing luck earlygame and were just strong enough to beat me before I could make a comeback...

...Or godly good luck earlygame, but which was severely soured by the lousy luck lategame where I would spend 100 gold and not get a single T3, not get the key T2 that I was after, and in many cases, not get the 5g unit I needed to make my comp transition into the lategame, where I knew I had the earlygame crushed but I knew that I needed to go to a very specific comp to not get outscaled...and couldn't because no matter how much gold I spent in spite of being the requisite level and literally nobody else running my comp, the unit just. wouldn't. spawn.

Which lasted until I got a few games I considered passable enough. Still didn't complete the latter two quests but considering one of said quests requires me to play nine games to completion and each game is like 30-60 minutes long, an average of 45 minutes...that...didn't happen.

Then in League I had multiple misfortunes. I had my Ashe stolen from me; that game went predictably badly. I was assigned a game of jungle. I said that I don't play jungle, recommended a swap, nobody took me up on the offer, but fortunately when one of my teammates noticed that my champion locked in was Ashe and asked "can Ashe jungle" and I bluntly said 'no', they dodged. (I generally assume that most of the people who dodge have alternate accounts or aren't willing to play games that they know they'll lose. I do not have alternate accounts and I will play games that I know I will lose, because I figure that they might give me a learning experience.)

Then I got a game where I accidentally took the wrong runes--the runes I took were runes I use on Ashe, but in that specific game, I really really needed Sorcery, and yet I was stuck with Fleet Footwork. Sorcery would've allowed me to get a ton of kills that game that I didn't get, because I took the wrong runes accidentally due to the Vlad game. Even if it was winnable, it became unwinnable when two members of my team dc'd.

And then I got a game where my team did flame me for my build--to be fair. I was 0/8, but in this case, that legitimately was not entirely my fault. My "support" was Tryndamere. Tryndamere can be played in 4/5 positions, like Ashe can--top, jungle, mid, even in the right circumstances adc. (With Ashe's four being top, mid, support, and adc, obv.) He is very much not a support in any way shape or form.

He didn't take a support item--which meant that whenever he last hit, he was stealing my cs. Because he was stealing my cs, I had less gold than I should have had. He also took fights that would be fine for him to take, between his ult and his spin--but he criticized me when I went in and criticized me when I didn't go in because while he has tools to escape from death...I do not. And he was expecting me to have some magical get-out-of-a-2v4-situation.

Because, yes. We were 2v4'd. Repeatedly. Given that it was a 2v4, I did fairly well given the circumstance. I could burn my ult defensively and summoners to escape to safety, and did so repeatedly, which kept me from dieing like four more times than I did, and at least two of my deaths were due to me getting collapsed on by 3-5 people when I didn't have vision on them and thought that they were somewhere else. (Those are at least partially my fault, yes, but when caught out by 3-5 people, I'm dead; there's no escaping that.)

He wanted me to engage in fights that were 2v3, even 2v4. I could not, and when I tried, I died. He wanted me to engage in situations which I knew I wasn't in position to engage in--he has a spin he can use for a gap close; if he spins into a fight when we were previously together...I can't get in range to help in time because Ashe is much much slower than Tryndamere's spin.

Not helping was the fact that my toplaner lost hardcore and my jungler was also in on the flaming (the jungler and "support" were the ones doing the flaming), in spite of my jungler himself having done pretty terrible. And it reflects in their scorelines, too. I had the second-lowest number of deaths in the game, but only by one. (Somehow, the jungler had one less death than me.)

It was all-around incredibly frustrating. Ashe can engage in all-ins, but she is primarily a specialist at dealing poke damage. She is the queen of kiting--of hit-and-run. Hit, retreat. Hit again, retreat. And only after the enemy has been whittled down sufficiently, do you engage...preferably still with enough ability to leave room for a disengage or a finisher.

Being asked to engage engage engage without kiting, to go purely on the offensive especially when we were behind in every lane with only one player on our team doing even close to remotely well, is the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do on Ashe, especially when behind.

Heck, even the enemy team had a member who recognized that I wasn't the problem. And I believe it was my midlaner who shared that opinion, mentioning that Normals are a good place to practice or something to that effect, with at least one person in the game who wasn't the jungle/support saying that I could be pioneering a new meta.

Maybe they were sarcastic, maybe not, it's hard to say for sure, especially from vague memory, but if they were sincere in giving that benefit of the doubt then they were giving me far more than my own team did. (Plus at the beginning of the game I am fairly certain one or two members of my team dropped the N-word but since I was too busy playing the game I couldn't look up who it was. I have two very obvious suspects tho.)

And, heck. At the end of the game, I ended up with stats that were still some of the best on my team and I could tell that in teamfights where I was able to kite away from the enemy I was actually dealing significant damage, contrary to my teammates' claims of my build being worthless for damage. I was less than 400 damage away from dealing the second-highest damage on my team and I had the sixth-highest damage in the game; I did more damage than the enemy adc. I was one of the only two on my team to damage a turret. I earned more gold than our toplaner, which is an impressive feat mind you since, again I must reiterate: my "support" was stealing my cs so my gold income was halved. I was one point off of having the second-highest vision score on my team, and also one point off of matching the enemy adc.

I had the highest minion kill of my team...and had an exact tie with the enemy adc, down to the last number, for being second-highest in the game. The only player who killed more minions was the enemy toplaner. (Who, being Mordekaiser when Mordekaiser even post-nerf is kinda OP...was. Well. Mordekaiser.)

Are those good stats to have? No, not particularly. They are still not great. It still means that overall I was a little bit sucky. But in spite of my team having placed the blame on me and my build...I genuinely don't think that it was my fault? Like...toplane lost hard against a champion who can and did 1v5 us. Hard, HARD lost. Midlane was the best of us but even they in spite of getting the kills they did were barely going even with their counterpart and were losing against the enemy toplaner and losing when outnumbered.

My "support" didn't take a support item, took half of my cs (when I am already not good at csing), entered into areas we had zero vision of and expected me to follow, took fights that I couldn't engage in, took fights that I couldn't disengage from, and sure enough had the highest deaths in the game.

It is not an uncommon belief that in games, supports are the main difference between winning and losing--a good support might not win by 1v5ing the enemy team, so much as they win by setting their team up for success. A bad support directly loses their team the game, by setting them up for failure.

And, hey.
I didn't place blame on them in-game.
I never flamed back.
I never asked them questions about their rather-questionable tactics.
But I feel like I have the right to believing that that game was genuinely just not my fault? Like, sure. I admit. I made many, many, many mistakes. I did get genuinely caught out of position multiple times. I should have been smart enough to recognize, "I can't engage on that." I should have been smart enough to ping my teammates not to engage on that. I should have pinged when I was trying to engage on something.

And I made many misplays. Missed most of my ults. Missed many volleys. A ton of my volleys got minion-blocked where one minion (or if I were lucky, multiple minions) ate all of my arrows, meaning none of them connected. I did legitimately play a bad game, and I feel they had room to call me out on the mistakes I did make.

But they were calling me out on things that I genuinely don't think I was responsible for. Ashe needs lifesteal? I had it. I didn't have the full 12% because I couldn't farm it out, couldn't get champion kills, but I don't think that my inability to do those things lies on me. Ashe needs damage? I was dealing considerable damage when I wasn't instantly deleted. The only thing that they called me out on which I feel has merit is that Ashe needs crit, for a stronger slow. Crits double her slow and deal increased damage to slowed targets; my build didn't have the crit yet.

But honestly--in that game, I cannot think of a single time a crit giving increased slow would've made a difference. I was building defensive items that are designed to help keep someone alive, and which just so happen to on this build give me extra damage and a bottomless supply of mana. Would a stronger slow have allowed my team to kill an enemy who got away? No occasion that I can think of. Would a stronger slow have allowed someone to survive in a situation they didn't? Not when the slow would be applied to one enemy champion when someone is being dogpiled by three enemies. A stronger slow applied to one still leaves two in kill range.

I am fairly certain that there was no way I could have slowed them and made a difference.
But I am also fairly certain that I couldn't have done more damage with a different build.
The problem was that I kept dieing before I could deal the damage. There's no build in the world which can deal damage on Ashe when you're dead before you can so much as proc Ranger's Focus. If you get to only launch one volley and maybe one autoattack and are dead before you can launch a second auto...there's no Ashe build in the world which can get her a kill there. She can't oneshot like that.

And the build I go for is actually one of the best possible builds for trying to prevent being killed. It's a hugely defensive build with a metric ton of armor and a ton of MR in it as well. I was still being killed before I could get a full combo off, because I didn't have my teammates taking the damage for me. They were dead, they were fighting elsewhere, they were unable to stop the enemies from bypassing our frontline to focus on me, our backline. All three at different times.

I don't think there was any build I could have done. None. Which could have prevented that.
And sure enough.
I had a final game I played where I ended up hugely popping off.
I do admit--I had an incredibly competent support, and my midlaner won lane. I think my jungler and toplaner actually lost lane tho? I mean, I remember almost all of my deaths were in the earlygame and yet I wasn't the one who gave first blood; it was my toplaner. And I recall my jungler having died early, too. Might be mistaken tho.

And I will fully confess. Even if we didn't all play well early. There wasn't a single weak link later in the game. (The closest was us having an uncoordinated assault on the enemy base where when some of us were dead, the others were attacking, and when they died, the others who respawned tried attacking, but that was a collective int from everyone including me making miscalculations.)

So it's not like I singlehandedly won my team the game. I had the most deaths on my team and the lowest kills to my name, but almost second-highest kill participation in the game. (Highest was my support, second-highest was my midlaner, by a slim margin--they had one more than me. Though I admit, I only had one more than our jungler or toplaner who both were just one behind me. Suffice to say: we teamfought a lot and worked incredibly well as a unit.)

I had better stats than most of the enemy team and better stats than the enemy adc across the board, and overall I did incredibly well. My team was friendly, supportive, we worked together well, coordinated reasonably well enough, and even when we inted, we usually got something out of it. Securing a drake even if three of us died (not exactly worth), securing a nexus turret even if most of us die (probably still worth), the like.

And this brings the total games I've run this build in on Normals, with the runes and items, up to five. I thought it was more than that, but I could only find five in my match history. Three of them have been victories. Two of them have had teammates who hard-flamed me in the form of some combination of {jungle, midlaner, support}. 

I blooged about the prior defeat before, and this is my blog about the defeat here.

But so far I still maintain my conclusions thusfar.
It feels like the build's success/failure rate has less to do with the build itself, so much as it does, the team I am on. If I have teammates who are making plays that are blatantly mistakes who then flame me when those plays go south...it doesn't work, but I don't think any build would work for those games for a player of my skill level, which is to say, not very good. I will fully admit to being a trash-tier player and a significant portion of my losses are due to mistakes I made so I will own up to having been a significant contributor to the loss.
(Though, as I said last time: I feel like I am in the right to justifiably not take exclusive blame for the loss and that my teammates played equally as large a part in the loss, at a minimum if not more of a part than I did.)

If I have teammates who are chill, work well with me, synergize with me, are willing to own up to "whoops, that was my fault" when they make a mistake, accept me saying the same, and who have a plan to recover rather than running in and doing the same thing we just got killed trying to do...it tends to work. Mind you, I admit: given those circumstances, probably any build would work.

And I do confess, this game I had a little bit of an extra edge; the enemy team was all-AD (a fact I didn't recognize until midway through the game; I probably should have built tabis in hindsight, or rather, since I didn't notice the enemy team was all-AD until midway through the match, sold my Ionian boots for Tabis), when two of my items give some of the highest armor in the game. Frozen Heart gives the highest armor in the game (100 armor), and Iceborn Gauntlet is in the top...I think six? Maybe it's only top eight, but it still gives a ridiculously large amount of armor. (I did let my team know about this fact, which they found useful to know, because apparently I was the first one to realize the enemy team was all-AD and none of them had realized it until I pointed it out, so that was a good contribution of mine. I mean, not sure it made much of a difference; the two members who built armor were two members who are already tanks, and a third who was maybe building into tank is also sometimes albeit not always played as a tank, so it's hard to confirm for sure that their itemization was due to them taking note of the full-ad enemy team after I noted it, but hey, I'd like to hope that I made a difference in helping them.)

Obviously, in terms of games to run the build in...a build where the enemy team has some difficulty bursting me down (though Pyke could still deliver killing blows with his ult, annoyingly enough, because many times where I thought I was high enough HP to survive, I received a nasty surprise that I didn't realize would kill me until it did) is going to be a bit more successful than a game where they can kill me even if I got to full-build easily.

And obviously, in terms of games to run the build in...having two tanky frontlines who have excellent tools at protecting their backline from being accessed, preventing the enemy champions from getting on top of me (with a third who, at least with their itemization, was also a tanky frontliner that had excellent tools at protecting me), is pretty much the dream. Gnar was building tank and he can toss people around; Sejuani has multiple ccs/slows in her kit; Leona has some cc in her kit and a gap-closer (admittedly, one-way--towards her enemy. But if the enemy bypasses her and she has the ability up, she can use it to again place herself between them and me).

I played it not as well as my other two wins, which is reflected in my final gold score and to some extent champion damage and similar stats. In spite of this being probably the best comp of my three victories for the build, it was my worst performance with the build of my victories.

But that wasn't the build's fault, that was me being tired, tilted, and making multiple misplays. I would've been those things with any build. In fact I would again argue: using any other build other than the build I used, would've resulted in me being the LVP, least valuable teammate, of the game, because any other build for this game would've had me still be tired, tilted, and making multiple misplays, but with a build not suited for perfectly working with my team's comp, to perfectly counter the enemy team's comp.

Overall, my faith in the build isn't being shaken by anything.
Briefly, in the game where I was being flamed for it.
I did consider it.
Of, "is it actually not that good in spite of my insistence otherwise?".
I did.
But after that consideration.
And upon reflection of looking at how that game went, the scoreline, how that game felt to me as a player, with how at the end I did feel like I was doing the damage I was supposed to be doing, how most of my problems were due to mistakes I made as a player with my team certainly not helping, and looking at the postgame to have an intuitive feeling for what my instincts had told me about my team. (My instincts told me that my "support" didn't have a support item; my instincts told me that my support and jungler weren't really playing well; my instincts told me that the enemy toplaner had hard-stomped due to how strong he was compared to the others on the enemy team.)

I just have the feeling that it really wasn't the build's fault we lost that game, no matter what my flaming teammates might believe. And feel like I am rather justified in that belief.

I feel like the build is working for me.
Heck, even if it's not a build which works for other players.
I think it is a build which works for me. And if it works for me.
It feels good to run.
My successes feel like a large part due to the build.
My failures don't feel like they're due to the build.

Then I feel like it is the right build for me.

But I digress.
I've been writing this blog for at least an hour; I suspect it is closer to two. It's 3:48 am right now, the game I finished I believe finished at 2 am? I don't think that I went straight from it to here, but I certainly didn't do much after it before coming here to the blog.

I have work tomorrow.
I get up at 8 am for a shift starting at 10.
And, oh yeah.
I still have a bunch of stuff I need to do.
I got some stuff caught up on.

I got most of my stuff, not.
Like, I still need to get caught up on my emails and to send one to my boss about trainings. They said that the ones available were full, and that they were "looking into" options. I need to give them a reminder of, "Hey, I uh...really need this?" Because trainings are a Big Deal to keep up to date on.
And I still have a ton of daily chores to do that I haven't done yet.

I half-considered writing a blog today saying "god I am pathetic" by listing all of the things I need to do, which I promised I would do (I promised to do judging today, after having previously promising to do it on Monday and failing to deliver on that promise), because...well, when you think about it.

I really kinda am pathetic.
I watched videos instead of attending to those matters.
I played games instead of attending to those matters.
I wrote this long-winded blog post that amounts to little more than a ramble ranting about my delusions of having a good build and complaining about teammates calling me trash when I believe that they themselves more than qualify for that term themselves, something which even if it is true leads to a dangerous road of me not acknowledging my own faults. (I try to take responsibility for what was in fact my fault, but if I think that it isn't my fault and is my team's fault, even if that is true, it can lead to me thinking it isn't my fault and was my team's fault...when it isn't true. And I want to avoid that.)

I basically started today thinking, "today will be a day where I get everything I need to, done...or close to, knocking out almost everything on my immediate to-do list!".

I ended up realizing that while I did do some things and while nothing I did ended up in a complete and total waste...
...Due to tilt, I ended up doing just about none of what I set out to do. Some, I did! Most I did not.

So yes.
I do suck and am a piece of utter garbage for failing like this.
No wonder I prefer to focus on writing the gaming entries like on League.
Because at least on those I feel like I am writing about things I'm not​ a failure on.

...Not a very good one mind you but it'd have been a bit lengthy.
But I had a long workday followed by dance and even if I didn't.
I've been dead tired all day for god only knows what reason.
And I have work tomorrow anyway.
And it is surprisingly, alarmingly, late.
So I am going to go to bed.

It wasn't really a good blog entry in my opinion anyway. Would've been lengthy, sure, but just me rambling on some more nonsense.

Yesterday I got caught up on almost everything. In Minecraft I knocked out most tasks I had set out for myself; I got caught up in videos; I did a bunch of stuff, not that I remember it now (it was a full 24 hours ago and I am already immensely tired), but I remember yesterday being an incredibly productive day.

Today I've done nothing.

I played one game of TFT, but I didn't feel like playing even that one and certainly not playing more than the one--I still have a quest to complete. Heck, I accidentally cheated myself out of 25 beta pass points by not realizing I hadn't played 5 games and had only played 4 and I need to not do that again.

I don't remember doing anything productive in minecraft.

And I've done literally nothing else.
No videos.
None of my duties (aside from a quick check-in and answering a question, but I was supposed to attend to something today but it'll have to be done tomorrow).
No progress on my secret santa gift.

A big.
fat.
pile.
of nothing.

Nothing to show for it, and no clue what I was really doing. There wasn't any stream I was watching to distract me/make me think I was more busy than I actually was. (Okay so there was earlier in the day, a charity stream, but that ended like six hours ago and after that there wasn't any streamers I was following online at all.)
There wasn't some game I was playing.
There was just...nothing.

I know I did have a slightly busy day. Work and then family night. But while work was my morning and afternoon (a 5.5 hour shift), family nights I basically automatically tune out and ignore, so family night is not an excuse for me having gotten nothing done today.

Yesterday I was doing so well.
And today I slacked off and ended up getting nothing done.
​And any day that I end up getting nothing done, is a day that I end up falling behind during.

It's actually been rather successful, but there's so. much. stuff. to do that it'll take me a while to get literally all of it done. I signed up for a secret santa event and today I finally started the project. It's...a little less than a third complete, but hey, before today, it was 0% complete! And I've still got five days to finish it, so if I work on it the next few days the same amount as today, should be done before the deadline.

I believe I caught up elsewhere on that site as well, for the most part. And in minecraft I knocked basically every single item off of my immediate to-do list. Some items will require a lot more resources to complete (eventually, I have the end goal of making the main pathway in my strip mine have smooth stone slabs as the path with railings on top and after I look at a tutorial on minecart railings, with the appropriate extras--this will take a lot; eventually, I have the end goal of making the main pathway in my strip mine have entirely stone brick surroundings, which will take a lot; eventually, I have the end goal of having every major point in my strip mine network be appropriately signed and marked by railings, which will take a ton of resources and time), so I still have those to do.

There was one project which I have the resources to do, I just need to spend time and pickaxe durability on actually doing, but which I didn't actually get done; another thing which I want to do is to stock up on emeralds which requires getting resources that the farmer in the nearby village will buy, which takes a ton of resources to get even close to a reasonable number of emeralds. (I think, for instance, it's something like 10 wheat for 1 emerald? And while I have a rather extensive wheat farm network, it aint extensive enough; I get like 2-3 stacks of 64 when ideally I'd get 9-10.)

Also, when I made my latest wheat farm I neglected to actually put the water into the central port so I need to stop being lazy and actually do that, but that's a small thing.

In TFT I completed a quest--I didn't really feel like playing TFT today (shocker! The girl who plays TFT nearly every day, actually had a day she didn't really want to? I know, right?), so the one game to complete the quest was all I did. (Surprisingly, it was a game where someone midgame stole my comp and I finished seventh as a direct consequence of them stealing my units. Incredibly tilting also was getting two Braums with giant's belts but for the whole game, not getting a single third Braum to make a T2 Braum with Warmogs. Incredibly tilting game where everything which could've gone wrong, did...and yet I didn't feel like playing another game? That never happens, I always feel like continuing until I get a game I'm satisfied with, but today I just...didn't want to play so completing the quest was satisfaction enough.)

​In League, I haven't played a match today yet so I still need my win of the day. And the ongoing event has three unfinished quests (which TFT games also count towards), which getting a win of the day helps with. There was also a new patch which went live, which was disappointing for TFT (remember when I said I was expecting the new lunar trait to either be nerfed or cause both electric and assassins to be nerfed? Yeah, well...Riot went with the latter rather than the former, and to add insult to injury, the lunar trait isn't live yet and won't be live this year from my understanding), and which vastly nerfed dragons and dragon souls in league.

Which, honestly, I am rather fine with. The only time I hold no accountability for drakes is when I'm a toplaner (where I'm instead accountable for rift), basically. (I mean that's not exactly true, toplaners can and do have an impact on drakes especially post-laning phase, but IN GENERAL, toplaners are mostly responsible for the top half of the map, not the bottom half. My friend if they are still into league at all could probably rant at me for my portrayal here and I'll just say, YES I KNOW, let me just talk it out a bit.)

WHAT I MEAN BY THIS, is.
I am a trash-tier player.
We almost never get drakes in games I play in, because I am meant to play a key part in securing them. Midlaner, botlaner, support, my job as any of them is to help out there, and that is something which I consistently fail to be anywhere remotely competent at helping with. If we go for a drake and come out behind, I am safely the one who bears the most blame. Yeah, maybe my teammates make mistakes as well, but their mistakes are compounded by my own and my own are usually worse than theirs.

So drakes being nerfed?

Helps me a lot because my team rarely if ever gets them due to my own incompetency, meaning the enemy team gets less from having secured them so easily.

So the patch helps me in league by virtue of me being the one who was getting more hard-crushed by drakes being secured. Which helps me play and will make me want to play more and which might mean my team flames me less often. 

Most of the catchup I need to do though is still videos. I did a fair amount...was it yesterday? It was either yesterday or Monday. But I need to do more today. I have at least six to watch, though probably no more than ten. Most of those videos average ~10 minutes each so that's about an hour minimum, though because one video is an average of 45 minutes (give or take 30, being as low as 15 and as high as an hour 15), that bumps my estimated total up to about two hours to get caught up there.

There's also still the art blog I want to make--I could make it now I guess, but while I have plenty of time to do so, this...is actually plenty long enough a blog for today? I mean, I can and have made blogs which were ridiculously long which switched subjects midway through and people probably end up missing the content as a consequence thinking it's entirely the one thing when it transitions to the other. (Trust me, I know this because it's happened to me; when searching my own blog for specific things, I had trouble finding them because I started reading an entry thinking it was the one thing, not realizing it transitioned into the actual thing I was looking for later.)

Heck, this blog itself while it is fairly coherent and mostly on the same sort of subject line (about my efforts to catch up on stuff with small quick updates) has already been like that a little, having mentions of things which would themselves normally be individual blog entries. So I don't really want to blog about it now, even though I realize there's the very real chance that I never end up blogging about it because when that happens I often never do.

In the eventual future I'll also need a real-life thing of signing up for a training, but that's more of a thing which can be done last-minute and the closer to the due date the better actually, within reason. (Basically there's a training I need to do for my job but I want to take it as close to the expiration of the original as is possible.)

So basically.

I'm kinda sorta actually staying on top of things?

Not as much as I'd prefer.
Not as much as is ideal.
And I'm really not doing much in my life at all (among other things I'm not doing, not really spending time with my friend and hanging out to do things like watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, One Piece episodes, have me play the third Danganronpa, and such, though that is at least partially due to how busy they are right now and also how they have others to spend time with than just me so they have not only their own real life to try and stay on top of but also others in their life they try to stay in contact with other than just me which I recognize eats up their time).

So it's obviously not the maximum optimal situation.
But.
​It's pretty darn close?

Well today was also work, so I didn't have much of a window to actually make a blog entry today. I did have a small one after work and before my bedtime (which will be after I eat my dinner), but I spent it on doing some work in Minecraft on my mine. I'm working on expanding the top stairs to be 7 blocks wide from their original five, and the bottom stairs to be 5 wide from their original three. All in stone.

Something I eventually want to do is to maybe line my mine with one strip of redstone blocks because of how much redstone I have, to use them aesthetically. I'm thinking like...maybe keep it almost all stone brick blocks, but keep at eye level a continuous line of red on both sides? Maybe with the occasional lapis lazuli to break it up artistically.

​I've got the idea, just need to figure out how to execute it more precisely.

...And even if I didn't have a nightmarishly long hellish shift tomorrow which starts early and goes fairly late at a high traffic time (the one hope of it not being high traffic is maybe MAYBE the hope, HOPE, that the day after a holiday will be reduced traffic).

Which mind you, I do; I need to go to bed for that.

Even if I didn't have that.

I am already dead tired from today.

I've been feeling exhausted since the moment I woke up and it hasn't improved during the day at all.
I'm tired, I need bed, I have work anyway, so all those things which need to be done, won't be done.
Sucks.
​But it is what it is.