"tbone, when did you lose your skill?"

Is what someone asked me tonight. It's really hard to say anything redeeming to that, especially when you just lost to someone who is meant to be far below you on the quake-o-metre.

Some of you older guys that remember me talking about quake non stop in all my journals circa 2002. I talked a lot of shit, but I was also really passionate about the game, and I did actually succeed in getting somewhere, the upper bracket in the SA community, almost touching the holy grail of Ph4ntom and the gateway to the international scene.

But Quake 3 pratically died after that, also co-insiding with me getting a job and a girlfriend (ewww girls!). I also sold my pc and travelled around the UK for awhile, and then finally came back. I bought a PC around the beginning of the year, started playing Q3 again, just to get in shape for Q4, which turned out to be dismal, and after 2 weeks of thinking it was bullshit, pushed most of my effort into my job. Recently I have started playing online again, just casually, for fun.

I just realised you can't really play for fun when people are gunning for you, when they want to prove they're better than you. "He used to be good, get him!" One of my faults is that I never alias, cause I hate people that alias, but maybe I should, I would get less shit from people... but it's too late for that now, my name is already tarnished.

So when did I lose my skill? My first thoughts are, fuckit, you're older now, you don't have time to play 4 hours a day just to prove to some teenagers that you still have what it takes. I mean come on, you live in Africa, no one cares how well you perform here. And then I think... well isn't that whats inherently wrong in your quake game? You let them get the armour cause you're too scared to die? You need to run because he's got better aim?

Take them on, one more time, don't give a damn about what they think, do it for yourself.

"tbone, when did you lose your skill?"

Time to find out.