McRanty Ramblings
I seem to be in the midst of a "down week," which is to say struggling some with my more depressive moods. Such bouts are usually sparked by something. Worry over a friend, worry over finances, a stressful and unproductive work day... something. I get annoyed, or frustrated, or angry, and get into the mindset of wondering why I put up with such in my life. This leads to a somewhat cyclical sequence of thinking about things and feeling bad about them. I commonly come back to how I don't feel I've really accomplished anything in my life, and I don't really have any goals. I may berate or just ask myself about what value my life has in the grand scheme and that goes nowhere good.
The most recent spiral was probably from work. Now, overall, I'm relatively happy with work. I still have a job that appears to be stable for a while. I have a boss who praises us, and our recent company of a board member was positive. But until numbers get hashed out by administration (which always seems to drag its collective heels on such matters), I won't know how this salary shift will shake out. And recent experience with the timecard system has injected some measure of pay rate jealousy into my life, even if that's more general than directed toward individuals. So that's all probably as much the "cause" as anything.
Though it may be more effect than contributing factor, I've been looking at WoW the last couple days and just... ugh. I've long felt my interest level in the game was motivated largely by two factors: the guild and a sense of attainable goals.
With the loss of active guild members, any activities that currently count as progress are pretty much impossible. We may go trounce the Lich King Saturday for an achievement, but even 5.0 raiding is out of the question with around 7 people. We could do dungeons, but there's nothing to be gained there either. We could theoretically do challenge mode dungeons, but I doubt more than a couple people would be interested enough to put in the effort. So with the guild inactive, there's no drive for me to be better. I do my best to be prepared to tank any content the guild may take on, but when I'm already better geared than most of the group and the group is below an active threshold... I'm already there.
And outside the group... attainable goals are lacking. The Isle of Thunder's quests are feeling painfully stale. I can grind out valor points, but the only decent upgrades to spend them on are tied to raid reputation. Pursuing Wrathion's quest line is similiarly tied to the raid. So the only real way I have to improve and see more content is to raid, and in absence of a guild group that means LFR. But with current wait times, that requires roughly 2-3 hours committed at a time (and probably one hour of that simply waiting for the queue), and that... just isn't feasible.
Pet battles don't interest me. Leveling an alt bores the heck out of me by about the third quest, because I've done them on my main already. That just doesn't really leave anything. And with no new dungeons forthcoming this expansion, I'm not sure when my own interest may pick back up.
I'm minorly miffed at the USPS. I don't get a lot of mail, and sometimes only check every couple days because of that, but after two weeks or more of not seeing anything, I finally dug up a form online and said "hey, wtf?" (paraphrased) on Tuesday evening. Yesterday, I did get mail, incluing a bill postmarked March 22 and another from a different location postmarked March 13. It seems pretty clear to me that something was causing my mail to get backed up, but I've received not a peep as to what the heck happened or if it's truly fixed now.
The most recent spiral was probably from work. Now, overall, I'm relatively happy with work. I still have a job that appears to be stable for a while. I have a boss who praises us, and our recent company of a board member was positive. But until numbers get hashed out by administration (which always seems to drag its collective heels on such matters), I won't know how this salary shift will shake out. And recent experience with the timecard system has injected some measure of pay rate jealousy into my life, even if that's more general than directed toward individuals. So that's all probably as much the "cause" as anything.
Though it may be more effect than contributing factor, I've been looking at WoW the last couple days and just... ugh. I've long felt my interest level in the game was motivated largely by two factors: the guild and a sense of attainable goals.
With the loss of active guild members, any activities that currently count as progress are pretty much impossible. We may go trounce the Lich King Saturday for an achievement, but even 5.0 raiding is out of the question with around 7 people. We could do dungeons, but there's nothing to be gained there either. We could theoretically do challenge mode dungeons, but I doubt more than a couple people would be interested enough to put in the effort. So with the guild inactive, there's no drive for me to be better. I do my best to be prepared to tank any content the guild may take on, but when I'm already better geared than most of the group and the group is below an active threshold... I'm already there.
And outside the group... attainable goals are lacking. The Isle of Thunder's quests are feeling painfully stale. I can grind out valor points, but the only decent upgrades to spend them on are tied to raid reputation. Pursuing Wrathion's quest line is similiarly tied to the raid. So the only real way I have to improve and see more content is to raid, and in absence of a guild group that means LFR. But with current wait times, that requires roughly 2-3 hours committed at a time (and probably one hour of that simply waiting for the queue), and that... just isn't feasible.
Pet battles don't interest me. Leveling an alt bores the heck out of me by about the third quest, because I've done them on my main already. That just doesn't really leave anything. And with no new dungeons forthcoming this expansion, I'm not sure when my own interest may pick back up.
I'm minorly miffed at the USPS. I don't get a lot of mail, and sometimes only check every couple days because of that, but after two weeks or more of not seeing anything, I finally dug up a form online and said "hey, wtf?" (paraphrased) on Tuesday evening. Yesterday, I did get mail, incluing a bill postmarked March 22 and another from a different location postmarked March 13. It seems pretty clear to me that something was causing my mail to get backed up, but I've received not a peep as to what the heck happened or if it's truly fixed now.
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