Thursday Thoughts

I see myself not being able to relate to conversations that other people are having, because I either don’t agree with them and can’t find a way to word it eloquently enough or because I do agree with them and they have already worded things better than I ever could. I just feel like I’m watching people, like I’m watching the community pass me by.

I’m suddenly overcome with ennui and I don’t know what to do about it.Instead of talking about what I haven’t been able to do or haven’t been doing lately, let’s talk about what I have been up to. World of WarcraftI haven’t raided in two weeks. Last week I posted out because I had just broken up with my boyfriend and I was really in no mood to raid or do anything that felt competitive or like I would have to really push myself to do.

This week I had the chance to go out and do something to take my mind off said breakup and so I took the opportunity to do that and volunteered to sit on the bench for the night.I don’t miss it. Let me be more specific – I don’t miss Dragon Soul. I’m excited about raid testing being made available in the Beta. I’m excited at the thought of grinding the 5 man dungeons to gear up for new raid content in Mists of Pandaria and then doing said content.

The Beta, as it stands right now, doesn’t have much appeal to me, either. I have no desire to level a toon from 85-90 and then have to do it all over again when the expansion hits. I would much rather wait until the premade characters are made available and then go from there. That’s really where things in the Beta will start getting interesting to me. Diablo 3I have an Annual Pass, so I didn’t actually have to “pay” for or go seriously out of my way to get my hands on a copy of Diablo 3. It’s fun. I haven’t played it as much as most people have. My witch doctor hasn’t even cracked level 20 yet and I’m not in much of a hurry to change that. I enjoy the slow pace. I enjoy exploring every nook and cranny of the map and breaking every barrel, urn, and spider egg that I see.

I don’t feel like there is a clock ticking that tells me I have to be this level or I have to be this geared in order to do this instance within this timeframe. It’s nice to just say to myself “I want to kill shit,” and then I log on and do it. It’s very simple and very mindless, which I really appreciate at this point in time. Magic the GatheringI have been playing quite a bit of Magic the Gathering lately and it has brought me the most enjoyment these past few weeks.

I find Magic to be very refreshing and so different from World of Warcraft in many ways. Here are just some of those reasons: The community. Since I started playing Magic again, I have been trying to get a feel for what websites are the best resources for me to go to and which forums seem to have the most decent people posting on them. I have started to Follow certain writers that I enjoy reading the most on Twitter, striking up conversations with them when I can.

I’m slowly trying to get involved in a community that is unlike what I’m used to and it’s intimidating and yet strangely exciting, at the same time. One thing that really stands out to me about the Magic community is the sense of meritocracy or the feeling that people who are seen as authorities or who are the most respected have genuinely done something to deserve that.

Something that has really frustrated me about the WoW community lately has been the recent surge in people who have obtained this bizarre form of celebrity for seemingly doing nothing at all. They don’t play the game. They don’t raid. But yet they’re in a position where people look to them to tell them what to do or for advice.

They exist solely for entertainment value and while I can see the immediate benefits of such a thing, it still feels sort of wrong to me. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that someone actually plays the game that they write or podcast about.

I don’t think it’s wrong to ask someone to share their level of experience with you when they try to give you advice on how to do something. This doesn’t seem to be the case in the Magic community. The people who are writing for these websites and that you see out and about can genuinely prove that they have been there, that they are successful, and that they have a reason to be doing what they are doing.

They are there to entertain you, but that comes second to the fact that they have some amount of credibility going for them and I really respect that and I miss that. The social interactions. I knew that I was starting to experience some burnout once we had downed Heroic Madness for the first time.

I knew that I wanted to take a break from WoW before Mists of Pandaria came out, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with all that free time. The possibilities were endless. I could go back to Rift. I could try out Star Wars or TERA. I could throw myself into Diablo 3. But then I realized that I really missed social interaction with people and I mean face to face conversations.

I started to feel like everything I was doing involved hiding behind a computer screen and like I was becoming very isolated and possibly even socially awkward because of it. It seemed really obvious to me, maybe even too obvious to choose another computer game to keep me occupied until the next expansion comes out.

That’s when I decided to start playing Magic more and to relish those moments when I’m not tied to a headset or to a keyboard and mouse. To my surprise, I had become really awkward around groups of people. I found that I had a hard time remembering the names of the people I had started to play with regularly at my local Friday Night Magic events.

I noticed that I had a hard time looking people in the eye when I was talking to them. I had to remind myself that I don’t have a push to talk key in real life and that I have to keep some things to myself if I don’t want someone across the table from me to hear them.I’m getting better at communicating and I’m still not perfect. I do still rage when people stand over my shoulder and make comments about the game I’m playing or someone plays a card over and over again that I don’t like.

I have to get better at being a good sport, for both when I win and for win I lose. I need to be able to say that I did a good job, even when I don’t feel like I did or when I feel like I could have done better. Coming back to Magic has helped me identify all of these things (and more) about myself that I don’t think I would have done if I had just moved on to yet another computer game to pass the time. I’m really grateful for that. The freedom.

I don’t feel like I’m bound to a set schedule with Magic, the way that I am with WoW. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t make it to Friday Night Magic, or if I have to leave early. I can go to a tournament at this store on Tuesday, or that store on Thursday, or do both tournaments and even a third on Sunday.

I find being able to say what I want to do and what I don’t want to do, without any negative repercussions very exciting. I don’t feel like I’m letting anyone down if I don’t make it to an event or like I am lagging behind, like I would if I missed a raid. I don’t feel like I’m doing the same thing over and over again, like when you farm the same instance for several months at a time. It all feels fresh and new and dare I say it – like a game *should* feel. It kind of makes me wonder why I have been settling for something else this whole time.ReadingI got used to bringing a book with me when I used to ride the Amtrak to go visit my boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend).

One of the books that I had picked up was the first book in the “Pretty Little Liars” series. Needless to say I was hooked. I’m currently on the third book and I just started watching the television show that goes along with it. It’s been much easier to avoid spoilers of the books than it has been the television show, but it seems like the show is radically different from the books, so it’s not really hurting anything. Like I said, I’m hooked.

I squeal like a teenage girl when the cute boy takes his shirt off or he says something close to romantic. I gasp when something sort of scary happens. I panic when one episode ends and I have to get up to turn the next one on from my computer. Completely hooked.

I know this post kind of went all over the place, but I’m okay with that. Life is good – even if it’s not giving me a lot of things to write about. I still felt like I should say *something,* so hopefully I’ve accomplished that today. Thanks for stopping by!