May 19, 2024

Yeesh, today was just horrible. It wasn't totally bad, but it was just a pure "yikes" from me.

It started when I updated everything on my Windows drive very early on in the morning. When I opened the Riot Games launcher, I saw a few of my RC friends playing Valorant and I quickly rebooted to Windows (from Linux) to play the game. I joined them and we had a pretty good 3 games, at first. I was consistently the bottom frag because I was still new to Valorant. I've played Valorant over the years, but it has never been my thing. I don't use Windows as my PC's OS (I use Linux all day, everyday) and changing my entire workflow just so I can play 1 game was stupid. So I barely played Valorant, I was genuinely a noob at this game.

This is where the annoying condescension starts. I repeatedly told my friends that I was a pure noob at Valorant and they seemed fine because it was unrated. But then when 1 guy from our group took up Phoenix, I had no other character to play. I just chose Viper for whatever reason and it was my first time using her. My teammates were kind of flaming me for not knowing how to use her kit and abilities, as if I actually knew how to play the game. We still won that round and won the next one after that. But by our 4th game, things got really hard. It was 2 a.m. and we were faced up against a team that did really did well. I was the bottom frag with 0 kills by the halfway mark and you can feel the silence in the call. They were getting really focused and annoyed at me for whiffing. It was annoying me as well because I was supposed to leave while we were up 3 from that good streak, but no, I couldn't stand my ground for whatever reason and just kept playing with 1 more game. We lost the last game pretty hard, and it caused my friends to play another game entirely.

I uninstalled Valorant after that. I deleted my Riot Games account as well. I don't have a single gun skin in there anyway. Plus, the times I played it with anyone but Rachel, like with Nate and Ane, or the RC, my friends were completely toxic. Absolutely fucking toxic and just vile, even though I did pretty well. It was disgusting and I hate this game for that. I've been with toxic teammates before in online games, but never with my personal ones as bad as it did in Valorant. I'd rather be with toxic randoms in Overwatch 2 than with my own toxic friends in this stupid game. I just played Overwatch 2 after that, but even in there, I was unlucky. I just called it a night after a few games.

After this, I'll make a solid vow to not play these sweaty competitive games with my friends ever again. And even if we're just playing some chill game like Stardew and they get tilted, I'll cut them off.

When I woke up in the morning, I was in a good mood because I had a long night's rest. My morning and afternoons just passed by with nothing much happening aside from me playing a few rounds of Overwatch. By the evening, however, I just remembered that I had to buy things for this Friday's company team building. So I hastened to get out of my house. On my way to the mall, though, I was messaged by my friends that they had something to say. I immediately felt rushed to go home because we were supposed to play and it was the final leg of the weekend.

I quickly got to the mall and bought the first thing on my list: Vans classic slip-ons from the Squid Game show. I, somehow, intentionally left mine after last year's team building and it's my turn this year to redeem them again. Plus, I missed having perfectly-white shoes. That went quickly and I was on track to getting home quickly. When I got my groceries and items, I had a really big issue at checkout. My payment method was somehow down and the stupid service doesn't work at all. I couldn't withdraw money from it, use it as payment, or anything. I had to go rush around the mall to several ATMs just for them to reject my card. I had absolutely no cash to pay for my groceries and I was so worried about leaving them behind, even though I haven't paid for it.

When I exchanged my digital money for some physical bills, the cashiers were gone and my groceries had been returned. It was absolutely horrifying. I talked to my friends and they told me to just go home, but I wasn't having any of it. I quickly tried to get all of the items and pay via cash. When it was time to get home, I had to book a car instead of a motorcycle going home because it was the only vehicle I could get. It made for a more comfortable trip home, though, but it took a lot of time.

By the time I was able to get home, it was around 10 p.m. and I was exhausted. I still invited my friends to play Sons of the Forest with me. We had a very awkward 1 hour of playing and we didn't really explore anything big in the game. She just went to sleep at around 11 and we called the day off.

Honestly, I felt choked today. It was kind of insult to injury because I had the most stressful grocery trip of my life. Factoring in everything, like the RC getting mad at me, having the worst grocery experience, and a horrible thing at the end of the weekend, this day just sucked.