The problem is, there's not much for me to do, and the things that there are to do, I don't feel like doing. I'll go lay down on my bed for a bit to unwind, or I'll sit outside and enjoy the atmosphere of the night, but that always gets me to thinking about things - like I would do when I was younger, just sit in a room and think myself in circles for a while. But the problem is, when I do it now, I keep stumbling upon topics and subjects that I want to go look up on the internet to learn more about. Particularly, I'll think about ways I might improve my life, and it always comes back to doing a Google search to try to look for certain types of opportunities (which I can never find, by the way). But the problem is, this just draws me back to the computer, which is what I was trying to get away from in the first place...
I would love to have some kind of regular physical activity, like going out and playing tennis in the park everyday, or five days a week, or something (this is purely a random example), but I just can't be bothered to do it on my own. If I had friends and we arranged for something like that, that would be perfect, but I don't have friends. I don't have people I can just call up (or preferably IM) and then go and hang out with, somewhere outside, or at least out of the home, and play ball or toss a frisbee around, or anything like that.
Going for a walk is nice because it's something I can do alone, but you get more walking done if you actually have someplace to go. If I'm just randomly wandering, I'll find that I won't take this or that road because I don't want to go too far and tire myself out. But if I had someplace to be or get to, then I'd take the road no matter what - and even though I might get tired, it'd be a good workout and I'd be all the better for it. It's like saying, "I dunno, that's a pretty long walk, I'm not sure if I can do it", as opposed to just getting out there and doing it, and finding that it doesn't matter if it's long or you get tired, but that you just do it anyway once you're determined to. Of course, it still has to be within reason - you can't just say "I'm gonna walk to the beach" and then watch it happen. (Unless you're a lucky bastard who lives within walking distance of the beach).
There was more that I wanted to mention about Guild Wars. I wanted to briefly talk about my characters. I currently have three characters that I really like. I recently made a fourth, but she serves mostly as a storage mule, and I don't really like the way she looks, after all, so I'll probably delete her and try something else somewhere down the line (presuming I reach a point where I feel like the three characters I have and like aren't enough). If you don't understand what I mean when I say "storage mule", here's a quick explanation. Each character you create in the game has a certain amount of inventory (meaning no "bottomless bags" like you get in some Final Fantasy games). There's also an in-game "storage account" you can purchase (with gold) and use, which gives you even more storage, and allows you to trade items between your characters. The trading between characters part is nice, but the trouble is, that storage account doesn't get bigger when you create more characters.
So anyway, there's a slight problem with storage in the game. It's not terrible, but I tend to bring my real-life packrat tendencies into the game, and that makes it tough for me. I like holding onto weapon and armor upgrades - partly because if it's a nice one I feel like I should save it until I get a stronger weapon or armor, and partly because I like having options in case I change my mind about what I want in the future. Also, armor takes up a lot of space, and in some cases, I like having different armors to change between, if there are multiple outfits that I like. There should definitely be a separate "wardrobe" section of storage just for keeping armor, so that it wouldn't have to fill up space in the regular storage.
Another important point is that the storage problem wouldn't be so bad if I just needed the space to carry what I already have. But when I go out and fight monsters, they drop stuff, and though most of it is relatively un-important to me, I have to pick it up and carry it around if I want to either salvage it for materials or sell it for precious gold when I get back to town. I was playing on one of my characters recently, trying to scrounge up the dough to buy the expensive elite armor for another of my characters, and my inventory was so filled with the stuff I was hanging onto, that I only had like 5 or so slots to pick up things that the monsters dropped. And I was going on relatively long stints in tough environments where jumping back to an outpost every time my inventory filled up would make me have to do all the work of clearing out that area again just to get back to where I was previously.
Ok, this wouldn't be an issue if I was just out farming for gold and stuff. But I was also exploring, and my goal was to advance to new areas, and thoroughly explore the areas around me, so killing the same monsters in the same area just outside of a town over and over again did not appeal to me. Therefore, I frequently found myself juggling those 5 spots between the items I was picking up, leaving the ones that were worth less gold behind. There was also a problem with my Identification Kit randomly dying on me, but I'm not gonna bother going into detail about that. Anyhow, only bringing back 5 items from an expedition meant I was only making so much money. After I created the extra character purely to exploit her personal inventory space, I could pick up like 20 items from an expedition and make 4 times as much money with the same time and effort!
Enough with the storage thing - it's a problem, but you learn to deal with it as best you can. What I really wanted to do was briefly describe my characters, that I love so much, since I don't think I've done that yet. My first character was an Elementalist - basically, a mage, a spell-caster, a wizard, casts mostly offensive elemental spells, that sort of thing. I named her after a character in Claymore - Kazekirino Flora (Windcutter Flora). Following the Claymore symbolism, and because I love swords, I made Flora's secondary profession be Warrior, so she could wield a sword. There's even an Elementalist armor set that looks vaguely Claymore-like, though the Elementalist actually has multiple armor sets that I think look good. The problem with my plan is that warriors and spell-casters don't seem to go together very well, and I've all but given up on having Flora wield a sword, even though I still like the idea in theory. Actually, I changed her secondary profession to Ranger recently, and now she wields a bow, but the reason for that was purely utilitarian - I wanted the bow skills that interrupt enemies, since interruption is such a useful ability.
As a matter of fact, I learned the usefulness of those bow skills from my second character, who I made a Ranger. The only reason I wanted a Ranger was because I looked up all the armor sets for all the professions online, and the single set that I liked the most out of all of them was a Ranger set. Unfortunately, it was also an elite armor set, meaning that you can only get it towards the end of the game, and that it costs a ton of money. Still, I was prepared to put in the effort for that reward. Unfortunately, the majority of the other Ranger armors turned out to look terrible, which bugged me for awhile, but then I found an intermediate set that I liked, and now I finally have the expensive elite set and I couldn't be happier. It's a Druid set, actually, and my idea for the character was to make her a Druid type. That's why I named her Salix Sepulcralis - which supposedly means "Weeping Willow" (my favorite type of tree) - and made her secondary profession Elementalist, so that she could wield the elemental forces of nature.
Now on to my third character. Looking at the armor sets online again, there were two sets that looked incredibly hot, because they basically consist of either tattoos or scars - depending on whether it was the Monk or the Necromancer - covering the skin of the entire body, with minimal clothing. Between the two, I decided to go for a Necromancer, largely due to another Necro character I saw that had a combination of the scar "outfit" and some really sexy boots. And it's a good thing, because with my Monk storage character, I've found out that I really don't like a lot of the Monk's other outfits (you can't get the tattoo one until later in the game - farther than I'm willing to take my storage character, which I don't especially like anyway). On the other hand, the non-scar Necromancer armors turned out to be really cool-looking - so cool, in fact, that I haven't even been using the scar armor hardly at all! My Necro's name is Malady Grimm - kind of simple, but it's certainly grown on me - and her secondary is Monk, mostly because I liked the idea of being in control of life and death, but also partly because the missions I had the most trouble with were missions that required keeping somebody important alive (not that they've proved significantly easier for me even with healing spells at my disposal...).
I picked up a really really really cool looking sword recently. It's not the Fiery Dragon Sword, although that one looks cool, too. It's called a Fellblade, and it's all black and shiny and evil looking, and I think it goes perfectly with my Necromancer (see image above), except that it brings me back to the difficulty of having a spell-caster type fighting with a melee weapon. I might find a way to work it out, or I might just hang on to the sword, but I really love the way it looks. So much so, that I just had to mention it here, even though there's not really much to say about it...
You know, I was gonna talk about a bunch of other things, but I've gone on long enough already. I feel like I'm a rambler, which is ridiculous considering that if you meet me in person, I hardly ever say a word. But when my mind isn't otherwise occupied (more often when I'm alone and not consumed by the concerns of being among people), I'm engaged in a continuous internal dialogue. I could probably easily write stuff every day, but the biggest problem is that most of it doesn't seem worth saving or sharing, or else I don't like the way it comes out. I could just as easily have scrapped this post as published it.
-- Personally I think you should get a job. Not for any societal bullshit reasons, you can quit after two days. But it would completely get your barrings straight from doing it. I remember exactly what it is like to live the lifestyle that you live now and it's a bit of a drag. It gets very muddled, very clouded. My life with a job is much more satisfying. It's not like you've never had a job before so it's not like you'll have any trouble doing it. I could get you a job at Eat N Park and we could just hang out all day. You could be a cookie specialist and literally get paid to stand there making cut-out cookies all-day, it's like a 2 step process. It would get you up, out, and give you delicious, reliable excercise. You'd also meet tons of cute-as-hell girls who will be all over you. That's a guarentee. I think it would make your life more satisfying. You could still do all the same things you normally do but you'd get to go away for a little while 4 or 5 times a week and that would make everything you do a lot more interesting and worthwhile.
ReplyDelete-- You could hook up with (Leah's brother) Oskar. He and his group of friends are always going over to Hoover to play frisbee and stuff. They're music majors too.