Soon…

It’s been a while since my last update in this blog, so that my friends started to worry a bit :)

Fact is, February was the time when I made some big decisions and rethinking about my life in general. I’ve returned from my vacation in Turkey and realized that I cannot even post any of pictures of my own self because I simply don’t like what I see in them. Gaming and TV series made me grow into my slippers, I’ve been basically circulating between my working/gaming chair (same spot, as I work from home) and my couch – and the worse of it all, this loop didn’t even bring any pleasure, cause it’s been, well, a loop. I’ve become lazy, capricious, reluctant and picky to go outside, and the less I moved in general the less I wanted to. Except for the once-in-a-week event like a rock show once in a month or meeting with friends, I’ve been sitting at home in this endless cycle, and that couldn’t last anymore.

So, I’ve made up this self-improvement program called “New Old Me” – the idea is to turn myself into my own version of 2010, but maybe even better. I played WoW back then already, yes, but I had an active metal band with many collateral things like records, shows, new acquaintances, eager to join any event that pops up (like “Wanna walk at 10 p.m.? Of course”), general interest in trying all the new things and shit. Gaming or watching shows – i.e., passive lifestyle – never, ever interfered with this, I was always ready to shut down my PC and go do something else. Oh well, how did it play out eventually?

This Spring, I lost 20 kg (ca 40 pounds), and now I’m almost perfect weight for my height. Since February, 6000 steps is my daily minimum (more is better). This Spring, I’ve started to grow back my hair. This Spring, I’ve revised my wardrobe, and all the casual wear goes to hell, gradually and consistently replaced by stylish gear. This Spring, I’ve rekindled my interest in music: in 3 months I’ve attended more shows than I did in the last 2 years. This Spring, I’ve composed a new album for my new conceptual music project, and now working with a guitarist, a new acquaintance, to arrange the whole stuff and get ready for the full-scale return to the stage. This Spring, I’m actively seeking events, places to attend and interesting stuff to do in weekends. This Spring, I finally started learning Japanese which I wanted to do a long time ago, but never managed to struggle through the basics of katakana/hiragana before – now I’m in the middle of my first textbook. Finally, this Spring I got rid of… my gaming addiction.

Addiction, yes. There’s nothing wrong with gaming per se, but I realized it’s been my major focus in the past years, especially when I ended my previous band and got totally engulfed in MMOs with little to no distraction. Even planning my weekends around what I’m gonna manage to do in the game yet before daily reset and that sort of thing. Toon rosters grew to provide me some new purpose to login, and stretching me thin – so that even if I don’t want to level, I have this goal, and just needed to. Searching for and trying new games instead of shutting down my PC and looking for things to do outside of it. It doesn’t sound healthy, and it was not.

Besides my general life decisions, a situtation in gaming helped too. I’ve no intention to go back to WoW, because the story does not seem interesting at all – I didn’t even gear up or play through the first Dragonflight raid, and just watched story cutscenes and cinematics on Youtube which appeared to be quite enough not to miss anything vital during the expansion. I was not impressed at all. I’m planning to do the same as The War Within kicks in.

As for Final Fantasy XIV, I’m quite in a good place gearwise (aka next-expansion-ready), I’ve leveled all the jobs on my main, and well, except for finishing kobold reputation and the binding story for them all in ARR, there’s nothing left to do yet. So I didn’t even login since February.

I’ve purchased Dawntrail, yes, it’s sitting in my Steam account and subscription is active. On July 2, I’ll be playing through the story, and exploring the new continent – that’s gonna be the point of my return to gaming. But on my own, not addiction’s terms.

I’ll focus on stories and exploration in the first weeks, and then it’s gonna be some casual gameplay, like weekly logging in for a raid run for an hour and maybe 10 minutes for new dailies to see the story connected to them. I don’t intend to level everything frantically – just the jobs I’m really interested in (and obviously trying the new ones) – and in spare time, not as a major goal of my life. And I deleted my lalafell character, leaving only my main catgirl which is the canonical WoL in my universe (frankly, the other toons didn’t seem like one anyway).

So, this is the New Old Me :) See you in Dawntrail!