This is not a farewell to PO.
During the last days, something strange has started to happen: everyday I set a time to get to PO and ladder, because I fear decay; everytime I lose points due to hax, I feel frustrated, and I sometimes become so enraged that I end yelling at the first person that crosses my way, even irl. I go everyday to check if people has answered to something I posted, and I feel pleasured if I got positive comments, and sad otherwise. I even feel stressed if for some reason I cannot get on PO due to connection problems, and I become like "damnit damnit damnit, I MUST find a way to go ladder!"
What is this? I have never been such a person, I had never given so much importance to something competitive, and for sure not to a videogame. PO has become one more job for me, that adds to lots of other stuff I already was busy with. I WORK to get better at it, I THINK ABOUT it, I GET ENRAGED if something goes wrong.
It wasn't like that. It shouldn't be like that. Then JcpDragonX came and said "its people like you which frustrate me about majority this community's suspect contribution." just because I said something he disagreed with. And the scary thing is that I CARED ABOUT IT. I felt sorry for posting a stupid thing, then I felt furious to Jcp for being so rude. Then my clever side, that was asleep under a thick barrier of ladder points and suspect discussions, suddenly woke up and said "Goddamnit Marco, you are caring about the opinion of a guy that lives on the other side of the world? That you will never see? What madness is that?"
And I understood.
Tears in Heaven is becoming my main self. It happened also to K', my alter-ego when I played the guitar in a rock band, and to number 23, the pivot of the local basketball team (yes I played basketball for a while). I stopped playing basketball, the rock band does not exist anymore. Because an alter ego that I use to enjoy an hobby MUST NOT become the dominant self.
Yet I cannot leave PO, since it is something that allows me to share a lifetime passion with people from worldwide. So I shall revert to what I used to be, to what I LIKED being: from now on I will come to PO just to chat, have a good time, help newcomers, report infractions to auths (No more zeroality to PM spam, but now I have Luck>Skill... *evil laugh*) and take part in tours from time to time. I won't delete my ladder teams, so that if any of you needs to test a new team and doesn't want to risk his/her ladder points, just challenge me, I will be happy to be the "Pros' punching-ball" :). This will give me the opportunity to use more of my free time for the thousand projects I am working on, most of which I share with people I met on PO. What a valuable axperience has been and still is PO for me!
So well, this is actually a farewell: farewell stress, farewell frustration, farewell addiction to competitive battles. From now on PO shall be what it was supposed to be, the most beautiful of all the hobbies. I am gonna fully enjoy my time, and help all the people I can to do the same. So now it is time to get to work, the still-to-do list includes an italian translation of my guide, new contributes for Rexblisar's forum, a theme for PO and a wider project that I am not gonna reveal yet. About this, I have an announcement: if you have an ability involving art and/or computer graphic and/or programming and/or music and/or writing stories, or simply if you are a passionate trainer tired of the same battles, please contact me AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. You know where to find me.
Thank you for reading this lines, I love you all. :)