~2007: saw 'meet the...' videos for the first time on my classmate's phone, played on offline server at my friend's house but had no internet plus no orange boxes in our area so forgot about it quickly

2010: found orange box in some random store, spent money given me on b-day, came home and straight away installed tf2; I remember my first game it was scout on doublecross (I decided to try every class from scout to spy), was fun but I sucked

~2011: after reading a shitton of guides on my computer class I tried tf2lobby for the first time, I had 147 hours and already decided on my main which was soldier, I finished with k/d 4:20 or something and was rly stressed coz people werent happy with that; before that I tried to get into trading but forgot about that quickly

august 2011: been spending lots of time on tf2 thread on russian 4chan, some dude wanted to make a team, me and a bunch of other guys met at irc and thus my first team ever was made

s10: get rolled in d6, started my dmix group, was prolly the best time I've had w/ tf2 ever

s11: get rolled in d6 but got more into playing dmixes with other guys from that thread plus got to know other people, mostly played lobbies and dmixes; p much the same thing as s10 plus 20 times more memes

s12: didnt play that season, was playing lobbies and mges for most of the time, played some hl along the way but the interest started to fade plus there was a new game by valve coming out and I started to peep at it more and more...
2012: almost all my friends went to that new game, dota2 for those who didnt get it, so I stopped playing tf2 for like a year or so and played dota, occasionally I merced for my friend's team and played some hl once in a while but thats all

~2012-2013: I decided to start playing again, spent half a year on pubs then tried to find a d5 team (at that time it was kinda big deal for me at least), found some nice people that mentored me a lot, helped me with my setup, sens, jumping, fov etc (yes only at that time I realized I can play with sensitivity that is not 3 cm/360 and on fov <70), it was the time dm servers started to get more popular so I was grinding those 24/7

2013: a series of unsuccessful attempts to find a team, got along with a bunch of nice people but from then on I decided not to play with russians ever again

winter 2014: got into d4 with really nice people (s/o to [T-A!]) but we didnt live up to the season, was an essencial experience nonetheless; I got picked up by our 'allied' team and so I played my 1st season in mid, was fun as hell even tho I was shit; irl stuff got into way so I was downed for a while

2014: grind grind grind, attempts at finding a nice team, got to know lotsa good people that Im still in touch with, got into circlejerks and playing dmixes and pickups, improved my english by a wide margin, watched i52 and just enjoyed my time with the game

2015-2016: got to play with some unpleasant people, a series of failed projects, questioning my abilities, stagnating which ended up in me never getting out of mid and losing great deal of passion to the game, also was the time when I mostly enjoyed the spectator side of competitive such as spending whole night in twitch chat, spamming in recposts, memeing and hanging out in mumble with pals, etc.; overall I wasted lots of time on nothing but on the other hand had a lot of bad experience with wrong people; also had fun but not directly by playing the game rather than talking about it; another thing is I got to manage team stuff more and more, leading and organizing people and teams wasn't easy but I still think I was at least okay at it; plus that helped me irl so thats a W

winter 2016-now: I stopped caring about tf2 more and more, acknowledged my wasted resources and finally settled down, although it was the time I got A LOT of mentoring from other people, got to know how exactly the game works and analyzing it from different angles etc.; none of the team I've been analyzing the game with lived up to the season; eventually I got overburdened with studies (uni's 3rd year and now 4th doesn't give u much time to spend on computer game, now that I think of it there's a lot of youngsters in prem and high divs these days but when I was their age I always thought u gotta be really old and mature in order to get to the top; well I was wrong, perhaps shoulda played 10x times more while I was in school) plus MyM killed all my dreams and hopes for tf2 finally getting big, eventually I merced for my friends on s24, tied on official against russians and uninstalled the game that night; I installed it back once for trying MM (biggest mistake that got me depressed for one week straight) and just playing casual with friends once or twice

it was a great time but looking at it now I still see more negatives rather than positives BUT that doesn't include people who I met because while playing tf2 I got to see some of the coolest dudes in my live (and I only heard voice of most of them), I met some of them irl couple of times so I'd say I'll remember the game probably for that fact of getting to know a lot of great people at this period of my life