Life update (FFXI in the second half)
Jun. 8th, 2004 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserI feel like I never post anymore, though I suppose it's only been a couple days since my last one. I remember when keeping myself to three posts or less a day used to be a struggle -- what the heck did I write about?
I'm back to work this week; yesterday was my first day back. I actually did write up a post, but it was nothing but bitching about stuff, so I just deleted it instead of posting it.
While I still hate work, what's the point of writing about it? You all know the story: The AC is too cold (it's 58 outside and has been blasting inside for hours), the boss now works four hour days but gets paid for full time (my god, why can't I have his life?), I hate customers to death and wish I could stab each and every one of them in the eye with my pen. So there! A whole post's worth of bitching in one paragraph!
Unsurprisingly, sleep has become a major issue again. I got three hours of it last night, and four to five the night before. I go to bed on time or early, read before turning the lights off, then as soon as it's dark I'm wide-the-hell-awake. Why? I could very easily fall asleep at my desk right now (if I'm not careful and extend a blink too long, I can feel myself starting to drift off), so why why why can't I sleep at night? In the dark? In my warm and comfortable bed? It doesn't make one bit of sense, but it's killing me. (Probably literally!)
Walking, walking, walking. I didn't do it last week (vacation), but I'm back to daily now. It's funny how many people walk, though most of them are really old. Must be retired folks, though if I were retired I sure wouldn't be walking pre-8 AM! Sleep in, silly people!
Milk update: After two days without any dairy products (and no sickness at all), I tried having pizza last night. If it had any side-effects, they were very mild. Maybe it was a passing bug, or maybe only an excess of dairy causes it. This is a very good outcome, as without meat, cheese is a big source of protein for me. Losing it out of my diet would be very, very troublesome. (Besides, I like it!)
FFXI: I've not been playing much lately, though not for lack of time. I'm tired of the hoops that game makes you jump through. Every little thing you do is set up to have to be done the hard way. If accept a quest that makes you need to go from Area A to Area B to get something and then bring it back to Area A, the gamemakers will have positioned that object in the part of Area B furthest (or toughest to get to) from Area A. It's frustrating and annoying, and I need more of neither of those two things in my life.
(For anyone who has been reading my LJ a while, you know that that's about my usual experience with video games -- that's why I don't play them hardly at all. This is only the third one I've stuck with more than a minute or two, the others being Animal Crossing and FFX. Eh, unless you count Pokemon as games. I don't. :) )
For being a game with thousands and thousands of people playing it, it's an oddly lonely place. The few times I interact with people I don't know, they type so poorly that I decide being lonely is better. Why can't people type well? It's really not that hard...
I've used Raise a couple times now, but it's less satisfying than I thought it would be. Once the person was AFK, so I wasted nearly all of my MP trying to raise him for nothing (non-players: You need to push a button to accept the raise, you can't be raised without you there.) One person ran off without saying anything, and the last person did some sort of dance after being raised. Maybe he was trying to thank me, who knows.
Oh, crafting: Since I finally reached a profitable thing to make in leathercraft, I may just stop here. If nothing else, making items to skill-up forces me to check in as frequently as possible, to keep stuff moving at the Auction House. That means logging on and off three characters before work, when home for lunch, after work, and before bed. (MUSHers: Switching between characters is nothing like on a MUSH. It takes literally minutes to log off and back on. It's slow and annoying.)
No matter how all that may sound, I'm not dropping the game... I just no longer desire to be on it 24/7. A lot of the stuff that used to excite me (fishing, crafting, leveling up solo) now bores me to tears. I've seen much (though not all) of the in-game world. The newness of it all is gone. Maybe it'll come back later, or maybe this is caused by some mood/stress/lack of sleep thing within me. Who knows. Stay tuned and find out!
I'm back to work this week; yesterday was my first day back. I actually did write up a post, but it was nothing but bitching about stuff, so I just deleted it instead of posting it.
While I still hate work, what's the point of writing about it? You all know the story: The AC is too cold (it's 58 outside and has been blasting inside for hours), the boss now works four hour days but gets paid for full time (my god, why can't I have his life?), I hate customers to death and wish I could stab each and every one of them in the eye with my pen. So there! A whole post's worth of bitching in one paragraph!
Unsurprisingly, sleep has become a major issue again. I got three hours of it last night, and four to five the night before. I go to bed on time or early, read before turning the lights off, then as soon as it's dark I'm wide-the-hell-awake. Why? I could very easily fall asleep at my desk right now (if I'm not careful and extend a blink too long, I can feel myself starting to drift off), so why why why can't I sleep at night? In the dark? In my warm and comfortable bed? It doesn't make one bit of sense, but it's killing me. (Probably literally!)
Walking, walking, walking. I didn't do it last week (vacation), but I'm back to daily now. It's funny how many people walk, though most of them are really old. Must be retired folks, though if I were retired I sure wouldn't be walking pre-8 AM! Sleep in, silly people!
Milk update: After two days without any dairy products (and no sickness at all), I tried having pizza last night. If it had any side-effects, they were very mild. Maybe it was a passing bug, or maybe only an excess of dairy causes it. This is a very good outcome, as without meat, cheese is a big source of protein for me. Losing it out of my diet would be very, very troublesome. (Besides, I like it!)
FFXI: I've not been playing much lately, though not for lack of time. I'm tired of the hoops that game makes you jump through. Every little thing you do is set up to have to be done the hard way. If accept a quest that makes you need to go from Area A to Area B to get something and then bring it back to Area A, the gamemakers will have positioned that object in the part of Area B furthest (or toughest to get to) from Area A. It's frustrating and annoying, and I need more of neither of those two things in my life.
(For anyone who has been reading my LJ a while, you know that that's about my usual experience with video games -- that's why I don't play them hardly at all. This is only the third one I've stuck with more than a minute or two, the others being Animal Crossing and FFX. Eh, unless you count Pokemon as games. I don't. :) )
For being a game with thousands and thousands of people playing it, it's an oddly lonely place. The few times I interact with people I don't know, they type so poorly that I decide being lonely is better. Why can't people type well? It's really not that hard...
I've used Raise a couple times now, but it's less satisfying than I thought it would be. Once the person was AFK, so I wasted nearly all of my MP trying to raise him for nothing (non-players: You need to push a button to accept the raise, you can't be raised without you there.) One person ran off without saying anything, and the last person did some sort of dance after being raised. Maybe he was trying to thank me, who knows.
Oh, crafting: Since I finally reached a profitable thing to make in leathercraft, I may just stop here. If nothing else, making items to skill-up forces me to check in as frequently as possible, to keep stuff moving at the Auction House. That means logging on and off three characters before work, when home for lunch, after work, and before bed. (MUSHers: Switching between characters is nothing like on a MUSH. It takes literally minutes to log off and back on. It's slow and annoying.)
No matter how all that may sound, I'm not dropping the game... I just no longer desire to be on it 24/7. A lot of the stuff that used to excite me (fishing, crafting, leveling up solo) now bores me to tears. I've seen much (though not all) of the in-game world. The newness of it all is gone. Maybe it'll come back later, or maybe this is caused by some mood/stress/lack of sleep thing within me. Who knows. Stay tuned and find out!
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Beastmaster! Beastmaster! Beastmaster!
Date: 2004-06-08 12:51 pm (UTC)What are you doing that's causing you to run all over the place?
At the moment I'm doing that thing with the clay, where you have to run to all four courners of the Earth to get impressions, bring them back to Selbina one by one by one by one... (Why the heck can't he just give you all the clay at once, and you bring it back to him in one trip? Heehee.)
I don't need the map to the Crawlers' Nest (at least not right now), but I don't feel like leveling and I don't feel like crafting and I don't want to stand around in front of the AH and hope someone checks my bazaar, so that leaves only these random quests.
You're good company.
Thanks! I have fun playing with you, too.
Re: Beastmaster! Beastmaster! Beastmaster!
Date: 2004-06-09 12:58 pm (UTC)Ye gods, don't do that quest.
Well, actually: don't do that quest with the intent to finish it quickly.
I'm *still* working on it. If I happen to have clay, and am in a zone that has a tablet I need, I go grab the impression. But I've never, ever made a trip solely to get an impression. Tromping all over the world is *boring*.
I guess, to some extent, I'm in a similar situation. There are things that make FFXI not fun for me. My solution is: I don't do those things. By restricting the things for which I'm willing to log on to just the things I enjoy, I find that I almost always have fun when I'm online, and I also end up with a lot more time to do other things.
Or, in other words, unless I know what I'm going to do when I log on, and think that it will be fun, I won't bother.
Re: Beastmaster! Beastmaster! Beastmaster!
Date: 2004-06-09 01:02 pm (UTC)That's about the conclusion I've come to. I had intended to take teleports and chocobos and get one or two new ones a day, but it's boring and annoying to find the spots and do all the running. Now I'm going to just carry the clay and try to get it if I'm in the general area (or really bored).
By restricting the things for which I'm willing to log on to just the things I enjoy, I find that I almost always have fun when I'm online, and I also end up with a lot more time to do other things.
That sounds like a really good plan to me!