I'm traveling to Denver because I'm competing in an international tournament. How cool is that? Oh? You didn't know it's for a video game? It's still cool, I swear!

I jest just a little. It's a LAN event, or in person tournament, for the game Team Fortress 2. During Covid a few years back I started playing competitive tf2, and I joined a team. Over the years my teammates became my friends, and now we use the LAN as an opportunity for us all to get together in person, since as a distributed group across North America, we don't get many opportunities for that.

Our first time actually seeing each other all in person was a year ago, at a North American LAN in Philadelphia. I had met a couple of them before when they visited the city I was living in, but there were a few I hadn't. This time around, we all mostly know each other (in person now, that is), except for one additional guy who couldn't make the event last year.

Our team is not quite good enough to place in the "Invite" bracket, for the teams that consistently compete in the best division. We were, however, allowed to participate in the open division. Last year, they split the groups up for 6 teams per division, and we placed 2nd in our division, which we were proud of.

This time is different, however. It's an international LAN. This is the first international LAN that has happened for the game in 6 years. So the stakes are at their highest as the best in the world compete. This had a trickle down effect where the teams participating in the open division this time around are much stronger.

There's 8 teams in the open division, and we're projected to be the 2nd worst. That isn't to say that we're bad. In terms of overall strength in the game, our team is probably around the 80th percentile. We're not the greatest, but we're certainly no slouch. So we're excited to try our best, and win as much as we can, even if the expectations are that we'll lose pretty handily in most of our matches.

But that's all we can ask for. We're competitive people, and we find fun in winning. So we're going to give it our all.

Backtracking a bit though, I wanted to reflect on what brought me here. I actually started playing competitive tf2 in 2014 on the Xbox 360. I was a young teenager, so I didn't really fully understand it, but it was fun. It was a tight knit community that although it had its problems, it was something in my life that truly helped me develop.

In leading a team, and playing competitively, I formed communication skills. I learned organization skills. And I learned problem management skills. How do you coordinate 12 people at a planned event? How do you handle it when teammates have disagreements? What do you do when you need two groups of people who dislike each other to get along?

The Xbox 360 TF2 community was small, so it had cliques and vocal members with strong opinions that could easily influence the groups. And yet still, I formed friendships with people that I had never met in person. I formed friendships with people that all I knew of them was a voice behind a screen. And over these couple years, the community died, and I eventually moved on.

Then I took a couple years off from competitive tf2. At some point, I got a laptop that could play the game, and if you don't know, the PC version of tf2 has a much larger player base. So I kept playing the game. It was my favorite game ever, and frankly, it still is.

So this brought me to Covid when we were all trapped inside. I needed something to do, so I signed up for a team. This time around, I was an adult, and the experience was even better. I actually learned how to play the game and get pretty decent about it. I dedicated a lot of time to this video game because it was a part of my life.

And long story short, now I'm here, about to compete in an international tournament. How did that happen? In college there was a time where I wanted to completely give up video games. It was only thanks to Covid that I ended up with this chance.

And that's the fun thing about life in general. Sometimes things will happen, and you have no idea where they'll take you. And while we often stress out about that unknown, sometimes we just have to let that path unfurl itself.

I know my life did.