So yet again my guildmaster didn't stay gone, he came back, only days after I quit the guild. 3 of my 4 toons are now back in. And he made Ancasta a Co-guildmaster.

*sigh*

Ancasta is now 80th level.

Skyamaalu, my lowest-level toon, is now 41st.


It's Memorial Day. I went out and got a hamburger, stocked up on Diet Coke. Back to work tomorrow, after 2 days off.


Latest wild-hair wish: To get a piece of land somewhere, build a yurt, put in a few solar panels, dig a well and a septic tank, and live off what I can make making soap, growing herbs, and building junkbots out of old tape players.

Because I'm really, really coming to hate being around people. And I'm really, really coming to hate living by everyone else's rules and schedules, in a nature-less environment, at a job that I hate.

See www.coloradoyurt.com for details.

Never volunteer. Never take over because no one else has. Someone will crucify you for it. Every fragging time.

I quit the guild again. And this time, I'm about 1 centimeter away from deleting all my toons and quiting WoW altogether.


This is why I'm in therapy.

So I've been thinking lately about what things or conditions truly help me, calm me down, give me space to breathe, etc. What subjects feed my soul, what do I truly love that makes me feel like there's some reason to go on, what makes me forget the usual mantras. This line of thought started during the ice storm, when I ran out of Diet Coke and started drinking so much tea. The tea literally puts me in a meditative state -- provided I drink it mindfully. Or maybe that's the thing. I dunno. I just know when I take the time to make the tea properly, sit down in a quiet room or with some soothing non-frantic music playing, I feel better. At peace.

Maybe I'm getting old, I dunno. But I have to start digging myself out of this hole I'm in and not just mentally race around the same old crazy.

This kind of path can lead you to some uncomfortable truths. For one, Warcraft is a net negative effect. It's a stressor. It makes you forget, sure -- the same way TV does. It's not constructive, though when I started playing it was. For all that I'm an officer in one of the largest guilds on our server, I have a grand total of 2 people I talk with semi-regularly -- Kill and another Gnome mage named Morgianna (another older lady like myself, we have much the same experiences in WoW so we commiserate a lot). Otherwise, there are names I know because they are often troublemakers. But they're not friends. Also the frustrations of just playing the game get to me a lot, which just adds to it all. Zoning out on farming motes in Nagrand is not a healthy kind of forgetting. It's the kind that leads to "what the hell, it's 11 PM already, where did the time go?" and waking up the next morning feeling like the previous night wasn't restful at all.

Problem there is, I love Warcraft. But it ain't healthy for me.

Further along that line, the realization that spending every night and most of my days off in front of the computer is only exacerbating things. It's alienated me from a lot of things that used to be of interest to me, such as my mythology studies, my writing, my crystal collection, the podcasts I used to get into, the ambient music I used to get into. My hippy side. The psychospiritual side of me.

Playing Warcraft, mindlessly checking Fark or my RSS feeds and the fanfic sites, it's just escapism. It's not dealing with myself. It's worsening all my problems, not helping me to heal. It's not letting me think beyond a narrow set of parameters. It's not just Warcraft that's the drug, it's the whole shebang. Everything I do in my life.

As I said, uncomfortable truths.

But the tech is inescapable. It's woven into my life. The tech itself isn't bad. It's what I'm choosing to do with it that's screwed. And it's not going to be solved in a day. No more than heroin addiction is.


And aside from pulling myself out of this, there's the larger issue of my job and my life circumstances in general.

But we will see.

Time for an update.

With regards to WoW: This one's complicated. Okay, so back here a few weeks ago I'm hanging in Desolace being bored, because that's about all you do in Desolace. Desolace = Desolation. Anyway, fortunately I was at the Inn at that particular moment, when suddenly I get a notify that Kill is online. FRAGGING WHAT?! He LEFT! He wasn't coming back! He was quitting WoW! So yeah, kinda shocked. I ported back to Stormwind, ran out to Elwynn, there he is. Same old Rogue pimp he always was. Almost first thing he sez is "You left the Guild?" So I had to explain yes, left the Guild, they were being horses' patoots toward low levels, but I'm good, I'm leveling, see? Anca's much higher than when you left -- At which point he yells for the new Guild leader to meet us in Elwynn. By that time other old Guildies started showing up, there was a crowd, the now-leader of NO shows up, Kill starts giving him the what fer, Drama ensues, I'm wanting to sink into the ground.

I left of my own free will. I believe in voting with one's feet. You don't like a situation, leave. I'm not so dependent on a Guild that I can't hang on my own and be happy with it, though fending off the other Guilds trying to recruit me is a pain and a half. I didn't want to be a club to beat somebody with. Owl, Anca and Skya are just fine.

So. Anyway. Kill starts another guild. I joined. It's now as big as NO ever was. Though I must say the gbank is a bit better quality than NO's was.

Cataclysm is about to drop. I got a silly Gnome pimp that sometimes scares off annoying Taurens for me and tells me I'm amazing for no adequately explained reason. I am back to the situation of two posts ago.

Sometimes I log on to Skya just to escape the pressure of leveling. Just to play the game, not to feel like I've got to go clean out half of Tanaris.


Regarding the Day Job: Grievance has not been filed yet, researching what exactly they're in violation of. Got told again by the PM that I can't be put on the Maintenance register because we're an associate office and there's nowhere for me to advance to. In effect, I have no future in the PO and yes, I was handed a bill of goods with this dead end job.

Frag it, I was happy when I was unemployed. I played WoW ten hours a day and I was happy. I thought I'd never have to deal with the PO and all it's crap ever again. The future was dim, but it had possibility. I had a vast, empty road ahead of me and a world to explore.

Why am I doing this again?


This being the holiday season, there is the usual angst about how isolated I feel being me in a family of ultra-conservative racist homophobes. Honestly, I'd be much happier staying here at home for Christmas. Alone, in the quiet, playing WoW. Being me, without being afraid to do or say anything that would offend anyone or embarrass anyone or ... just not have to deal with anyone else's idea of who I am.

I'm fragging tired.

Think I've almost had it with the guild. Kill has left WoW and given up control of the guild to others, and they're making changes to the officer structure and have "temporarily" restricted access to the gbank only to officers. People have to ask an officer if they want to deposit or withdraw from the gbank. They've also restructured officer status to be dependent on how much a person raids, essentially. Raiding is something only higher levels (60+) do, so anyone below that is pretty much shut out of officer status. It's also dependent on whether one is a "casual" or "committed" player, which seems very discriminatory to those of us who can't spend 12 hrs a day on the game due to things like working for a living.

I got in a big argument about it with one of the new "officers" last night and quite frankly I see no advantage to being in the guild anymore. Why should I work to level, gather mats to put in the gbank, make armor or potions to put in the gbank, when I can't expect to get anything out of it? I asked if high lvls were going to be putting in mats that I could use to level my alchemy or leatherworking and was told to go out and level and get them myself. I have to pay out the nose for the herbs that Ancasta needs now on the AH because she's too low level to effectively gather them herself in Arathi without dying constantly (which uses up the very potions I'm using those herbs to make). So my toons are broke, and can't expect any help from the guild beyond being told to "go out and level and do it yourself, when you're 60th lvl you'll be worth bothering with."

Hell with it. They're not worth it.

Welcome to the land of strange dilemmas.

Can hardly make myself type this.

In World of Warcraft, I'm in a guild called Natural Onslaught. Our leader is I think a teenager, or maybe early 20's, in real life. Here I am, frumpy dumpy 41 year old. We both play Gnomes. His toon is an 80th level Rogue. One of mine is a 27th level Mage. In the WoW fanfic I've been writing I've turned his toon's name as Kill Mechaswarm. I have no other phrase to describe it, we seem to be sweet on each other. We've sat watching the noobs duel each other in Goldshire, I've gotten Ancasta naked and danced with him. We chased off a Horde tonight and chased each other on our mechanostriders.

Just when I had gotten my head around losing count of the years alone, that it didn't matter anymore...

I don't know what to think. It's disturbing. And sad. That I can do this in a virtual world where I'm 2 feet tall, redheaded, and capable in ways I can never be in real life. I feel more myself as Ancasta. But she's a mask too. So is Owl. They let me be aspects of me I'm not here in real life, but they present images to the world that aren't me as well.

I like hanging out with Kill. I just don't want it to go too far. I don't want him to ask to meet me in real life. I'd rather have the sweet virtual puppy love than see some kid's eyes go dead the moment he sees me. I've seen it all before, I don't want to go through it again.

It makes me feel old. And like life has passed me by and that future I've always looked to now belongs to the kids behind me, and never me. All my chances are done with, and happily ever after has burst like a bubble.

I was talking to myself in WoW today. I got done with the monologue and heard clapping behind me.

That's embarrassing. Doing a depressing monologue to yourself while staring out over Lake Everstill, only to hear clapping at the end.

It would have been worse if it was a Murloc.

It was a Dwarf.

Meh.