It’s funny to think back to my early days of playing the game. Putting around with side quests, gathering whatever random crap I could, crafting more random crap with what I gathered, fighting low-level mobs, and generally just not being super focused on the game. Then I slowly dialed in more and more as I started to run into the boundaries of what I could do with a free account and, a month into my playtime, bought all the expansions and a subscription. From then on, I was basically all-in. I still had occasional nights off and spent time doing other things on the weekend, but I mostly stopped playing other games and completely stopped being “relaxed” about the game. I had to catch up to my friends, after-all. I had so much stuff to do in order to make up for the months they’d been playing while I was off in Dragon Age Land, playing through that franchise and it wasn’t going to happen if I didn’t focus. Plus, it gave me goals to pursue and I love having goals. I love having targets to aim for. So I spent a lot of time driving myself forward in the Main Scenario Quests for weeks at a time and then took a break to do crafting and gathering stuff before ultimately returning to MSQ. The cycle repeated itself for almost six months when I cleared the final pieces of Endwalker hand-in-hand with my friends and then we all collapsed in exhaustion. I resolved to get back to puttering, my friends resolved to pace themselves, and the rest of our Free Company hinted at what exciting stuff awaited us in Dawntrail whenever we finally got to it. Which, for me, took about four or five weeks. I was content to rest for a while, catch up on some leveling of other jobs and personal projects, explore my island sanctuary, and mess around in a variety of other types of gameplay, but eventually I felt the itch to get moving forward again and let that lead me into the post-Endwalker patches, Dawntrail, and not to being caught-up with the Dawntrail patches.