Dear ESReality and especially the people that still support me as a player.

I'm not saying you should care about this post. I know most of you won't give a shit and that's totaly fine, but I know there are some guys out there who might be interested in hearing what I have to say, since to this day I still get friend adds everyday from people who ask me questions about the game and when I'm going to start playing good again.

After hearing DDK's and Zoot's very kind words about me on stream, and afterwards being raped on the facey I felt like I needed to get this off my chest. I always hear the same thing. 'Baksteen, he was good and a rising star, but suddenly dissapeared'. It has become like my default stream-introduction everytime I play a tournament (yes, I always watch back my games that were streamed). But actually, I never really dissapeared. I'd like to try to explain what happened and perhaps it's usefull information for people who desperately want to improve.

After a long while, I discovered that to be able to play at your best, and to improve rapidly, you need to have 2 things: Loads of love for the game, and a motivator, something that makes you want to set goals for yourself and achieve them. As soon as these 2 things are gone, your skill will magically decrease. Well, this is how it is for me. For example, in the early days I used to improve extremely fast, because I craved the respect from top players. I remember meeting dem0n (I already knew him as a very good player, among with all the other 'gods' that I saw on IEM tournaments) on a server that had t9 (house of decay) running, I gave him a good run for his money and he told me I could become a top player in the benelux (NL/BE) scene. Things like this gave me so much motivation that I could almost effortlessly improve very rapidly. For a while after that I was a decent player for a while, until the Adroits LAN in the Netherlands was anounced, and I decided to attend and use that as a motivator. Up until that point I'd never come further than quarter finals in Zotac cups, but all of a sudden after a few weeks of dedicated practice, I ended up in 3 Faceit finals in a row, winning 2 of those. During all this time I also really loved quake. Even when I wasn't playing, I would often catch myself thinking about ways to outplay oponents. U could say I was sort of fascinated with the tactical/philosophical aspects of quake. Even though I've never been a good aimer, I still managed to play very good versus good players with much stronger aim, all because of my love for the game. After the LAN,
my performance suddenly got a lot worse and for a long time I didn't understand why, as I had changed nothing like settings or practice time. But after a while it became clear to me that it's because of the lack of a motivator, and unfortunately also because of lack of love for the game.

Ever since I realized what was wrong I've been struggling to get these 2 things back. But I realized it's nearly impossible at the current stage of life I'm in right now. It's typical for me. Without these 2 things I can play for 4 hours a day and not learn a single thing. I'm going to take a break from playing tournaments,
I'll play some practice games for fun, but until I find some long peroid of quietness, and find something that really motivates me to play and love the game again the way I used to, I know I won't ever come close to the level I used to be at.

So, to all the people trying to improve, ask yourself if you have these two things.

I'd like to thank all the people who to this day still support me, even though I haven't done anything remarkable in at least 1.5 years. I've really enjoyed your support and I'm always happy to help you, in fact, probably the most joy I get out of quake these days is when I'm helping others that are seriously motivated to learn. If you are one of these guys and want me to guide you, don't be scared to add me and say hi.

</attentionwhoring>? nah, just felt like some of you might be interested in this. :-)