Guardian Tales: Overheat

 

A week later after my break, I had decided do to something interesting in Guardian Tales and that was to try stepping into the Top 100 of Colosseum, since my team was already strong enough to deal with most players' lineups and because I wanted to chase someone. It was none other than our former guild member who had left us a few days before the World 10 patch due to a joke gone wrong, I honestly felt betrayed by what he did since he wasn't hitting T100 with us in Expo-but he was hitting T100 on his current guild. So I decided to chase him, only to end up losing and not making it into T100 and I admit that this has caused some stress, but I didn't mind it at first.

But then, I realized that I was nearly hitting rock bottom once again when I accidentally lashed out due to arena stress. And that the toxic feelings were back once again, as I was stressing out over a video game. There, I realized that I had overexerted myself by being too engrossed with trying to chase that former guildmate of ours in the Top 100. And because of this, I admit that I had to really apply what I have learned in my burnout and make concrete decisions before something terrible happens (read: another burnout).

Now, I have decided that after this raid season, I will be relinquishing my role as Expo's Guild Master. It has been fun leading the guild in the past one and a half month, but I admit that being a leader also needs a healthy mindset and that's something I don't have right now, especially since I started 2020 on a mentally unhealthy way. I also decided that chasing PVP isn't for me, so I'll probably just stay within Diamond rank since I don't think an additional 200 gems is worth my mental well-being.

Again, may this be a lesson to all of you-2020 is certainly a draining year due to calamities, the pandemic, celebrity deaths, uncertainties and many more. These are some of the reasons why people are turning to video games to de-stress themselves, but when video games start to be an addition to the stressors of life, maybe it's time to take a step back and realize that at the end of the day, it's just a game.

Ecclesiastes 1:14

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Lessons:

• If you're leaving a guild and are planning to join a new one, it won't hurt to tell your GM about it.  Leave gracefully and don't burn the bridges between you and your former guild (unless of course, if they mistreated you)
• If you're struggling with mental health issues and exhaustion, it's best not to overexert yourself in competitive gaming. Keep your expectations realistic and doable, because a fictional rank is worth nothing if your mental health and loved ones suffer for it.  Also, don't get too engrossed in Gacha aspects. The dopamine kick you get from gacha won't solve your issues, besides RNG can make you cry in joy or in pain, so it's best to just expect nothing. 
• In short, if you have mental health issues-it's okay to play games, just keep very clear boundaries, so you don't get burnt out.
• Leave toxic groups and don't join too much game related discord servers, it's best not to know everything rather than deal with toxicity itself.
• Focus on other Guardian Tales aspects other than PVP and collection (such as Kamazone, Orbital Tower, the other Towers, Guild Raid, sweep functions, story and Expo itself) and don't focus too much on the meta. Gacha meta quickly changes due to power creep, so it's better to do things on your own pace than get easily swept up and spend so much money.
• It's best to tell what you feel rather than to keep things bottled up
• And lastly, Guardian Tales is fun-but at the end of it all, it's just a game and not your entire life. Kudos to the Dev team for making such a wonderful game though!