Back in October, when I set aside everything else I had going on in Final Fantasy 14 in order to get deep into crafting (in order to avoid thinking about my relationship with my biological family), I didn’t realize that it would take me three months to get through that and everything that sort of just flowed out from it: two rounds of intense combat gear crafting, numerous rounds of crafting and gathering gear crafting (largely free of charge because I don’t like making people pay me for the ability to make/earn money on their own), the start of a workshop that has largely fallen into stillness now that the major demand for new gear and consumables has passed (though I imagine it’ll tick up again when the raiding members of the workshop run through their current stock), and starting progress on one of my alts. I thought it would be a few weeks of work and then I’d just go back to leveling other jobs, digging into older parts of the game that I brushed past in my drive to finish the Main Scenario Quests, and puttering around. Instead, I wound up getting carried away by all that, changes to my weekly activities with my FC, the slow start of a new season of roleplayed wrestling (busier now as I am the official cinematographer for the federation), and the thought of starting up a workshop within my Free Company to help give everyone the means to make some money while the thing we used to do is on indefinite hiatus. Only now, as I’ve settled in to the realization that none of my groups are going to become high-end content groups in any kind of a hurry and started doing stuff “to make sure I’m not missing out” rather than in preparation for a specific thing, have I returned to the slow, plodding tasks that fell by the wayside in my fervor to accomplish all my very specific goals.

I still have a lot going on, mind you. I’ve got a wrestling event to edit and upload, past wrestling events to re-edit and upload, the slow work of integrating into the established group with a new feature that not everyone knows how to use (recording video content, in my roleplay wrestling experience? What do you mean I can now film special promos and callouts outside of the limited slots available in matches?) while also being criminally shy, and more stuff than I’ve mentioned going on in my FC as I try to find the balance between my ambition and my actual energy (I want to make a LOT more stuff happen than I have the energy to actually follow through on). I could easily fill all my time every day with this stuff but, as I’ve learned and relearned many times over my year playing this game, I actually need to play the game. I need to do things that are fun and that are rewarding beyond just the various (now-dwindling) goals I have. For instance, trying to level one of my jobs is all well and good, definitely an admirable goal, but if I like the job, I also need to do things that let me play it as it is supposed to be played! I need to get experience with it at my current power level and with the abilities I’m unlocking or else it’s just going to be a dull grind of under-leveled bleh. I mean, I wound up repurposing a glamour just for this one job I’ve been leveling because it makes it fun to do the job and all I’ve done with it is content that doesn’t actually let me use the CORE FEATURE of the job since that’s locked behind the level you start the job at! I just keep getting randomly sorted into low-powered crap and while it gets the job done just as well as doing stuff closer to my level, it simply isn’t as fun to do the same junk over and over again. I want to ACTUALLY use the job! I need some kind of variety in my life to keep it from becoming a massive drag!

It is difficult to keep this level of variety going, though. Especially when it comes to combat jobs. Each of them is unique and while there is often some level of overlap between them, there is enough difference that there’s a bit of an adjustment period no matter how much I practice. I’m sure there are people out there who are amazing at every single job and can play each one at a top-tier level, but that’s just not realistic. Most people have one or two they can do well and I’m pretty far out there in trying to maintain one of each type (to be, as I often descibe myself, a “professional fill” despite my love of healing). Practically, there are issues with this in that it is difficult to keep multiple jobs fully geared-up in the early days of an expansion (since the currency you need to get better gear is limited to a certain amount each week), but most groups also have people with dedicated roles so most people who are doing new content only need to gear one job up. In the later days of the expansion, as the new gear is still relevant but there’s been a lot more time to acquire it, it will pay to have been accumulating and spending this currency the whole time, but for now it’s mostly just keeping up the grind to supply my main job that I’m not even using in any kind of content that needs it. The idea of getting to a point where EVERY job is fully geared up feels… ludicrous, frankly. That would take SO MUCH WORK. I mean, I’ve already done most of the work to get them all geared up with the best crafted gear eventually, but that’s still a hair or two below where everything needs to be to be “relevant” for the later days of the current high-end content.

Which, as I’ve said, is a moot point for me. I’m not doing any of that these days and I have no idea when or even IF the one group I’m in will get there given that we meet once a week and have some pretty significant organizational issues I’m still not sure will be fully resolved or just ignored until they become a massive problem. I think I’m going to try to find another group for the next expansion and its’ patches, one that I get along with and feel comfortable in, but that’s a few years out at this point and it feels a little late to be trying to set something up for the latest and/or next patch. I mean, I probably could try and maybe even succeed, but a lot of the people I’d like to play with are already in groups or don’t really have the time to dedicate to something like this. I mean, I’m not even sure I’ve got the time to dedicate to this, considering my laundry list of game-based work tasks, my need to actually have fun, and the constant work that is weekly upkeep projects in this game (I really need to find some ways to get into a solid, mindless routine for some of this less-interesting stuff). I really should just try to get a handle on everything, pick attainable goals, and keep my focus on small, acheiveable things rather than trying to solve my schedule and ambitions like they’re some kind of math problem. That’s not going to work out for me since it would fall apart the instant literally any thing changed and I’ve got maybe a month left (less than that by the time you’re reading this) before the wrestling season starts properly and then I’ll have a weekly event throwing a wrench in the works of whatever I might come up with in the next month. Best to keep it light and flexible, really, and fill in my spare time with fun. I’ll probably be much happier that way than if I somehow filled every second of my free time with productive effort towards my broader gaming goals.