Things have settled down in Final Fantasy 14. I’m building new routines and continuing to find my fun in the game, even if I’m also thinking about playing it a bit less. Things have calmed down with the crafting workshop, largely because attendance remains fairly sparse. I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff made to slowly sell–personally and on behalf of the exterior crafting groups–a much-narrower list of things I’m buying, and I’ve even begun slowly clearing out my retainers so I have space to store things again. I’ve spent more time leveling one of my alternate characters hand-in-hand with a pair of friends who are doing the same thing, I’ve wrapped up a very long quest set that was exhausting to deal with, and even started the process of getting my storage Free Company set up so I can start churning out retainer-based materials. Which I’ll probably wind up selling eventually, once I’ve got enough stored up for my own purposes. It’s not like I want to endlessly churn that stuff anyway. And I’ve been making sure I take the time to do something at least a little fun every day I open the game, even if it is just daily roulettes with a job I enjoy playing. I’ve also started reading again, set up a day for my book club to meet, and am thinking about playing other games [which I actually did the night I wrote this blog post]. We’ll see if that latter one materializes into anything (the time away from Final Fantasy 14, ostensibly required to play other games, means I don’t generally want to), but it’s nice to think about given how many games I’ve got that I’d like to give some attention to at some point.

Now that I’ve gotten out from underneath all that workshop work and am not feeling the need to constantly log in order to not fall behind, things are moving forward much more smoothly. I’m not entirely settled on all of the mods and everything, but I think I’ve found where I’m comfortable with them for the time-being. I’ve gotten all the workshop stuff to a point where it is time to wait for everything to slowly sell and then slowly restock. I’ve paused housing exterior production for a bit while waiting for things to sell. I even fully withdrew from both of the remaining activities I was doing and that either weren’t fun or where contributing to a negative state of mind. At this point, I’m down to basically no obligations or even strict plans other than what I make from one week to the next. And wrestling events, of course. Those are starting up soon (will have started by the time this blog gets posted) and will be a weekly event until July, so now I’ll be planning around those and the time it takes to edit and upload each show after I’ve recorded it. I still want to get some kind of maybe more enjoyable activity scheduled every week, but I’m not sure how that’s going to go considering the various groups I’m a part of and what seems like hesitation on some poeple’s parts to make a commitment. All I can do is ask and plan, though, so we’ll see how it goes once I’m ready to start trying to make that sort of thing happen.

Even as I find myself thinking about community more and more, especially given that the ones I’m a part of feel like they’re dwindling or like I’m never really going to get comfortable in them (which I recognize is mostly a “me” problem and I’m doing what I can to address that), I am finding quite a bit of peace and enjoyment in small group or individual activities. I don’t always have as many of those as I’d like and I do miss the effortless participation that I had in my Free Company once upon a time, but those are problems I can solve over time by continuing to make friends or by getting a group of people together that is willing to actually commit to regular activities. Unfortunately for me, I am running low on energy again thanks to daily job hunting. I’m not sure I’ve got it in me to do more than I already am since the thought of trying to organize a group to do an activity, let alone actually doing the activity (to say nothing of leading it), has me yawning in exhaustion. Maybe in a few more weeks, once I’ve hopefully made some progress on the job hunting front and, if I’m lucky, gotten more sleep.

Until then, I’m back to my ol’ regular stuff in Final Fantasy 14. Roulettes, side quests, society quests, the endless grind that getting some of those society relationships high enough to move on to the next set, and maybe even participating in the new crafting zone if I feel the crafting urge. Goodness knows I don’t need to be crafting more normal stuff than I already am… It’ll be nice to get back to leveling and everything. And maybe do some exploration zones. I’m trying to get myself in a position to do all that stuff as much as possible, but I’m also a bit leery of going full-bore into anything because I don’t really want to run out of stuff to do. I mean, if I did that, maybe I’d spend more time roleplaying than I do right now, but doing regular old content is much less energy-draining than socializing or roleplaying. I’d like to do more of that too, but it’s so much more of an energy expenditure than just bumbling around in the daily content mines. Which is why I’m looking at playing other games. If I can find something even more relaxing and chill than Final Fanasty 14, maybe I’d be able to feel more rested on the nights I do play. Or at least able to better assess if I’ve got the energy to spend before it’s time to go to bed. I don’t know. I’m kind of extremely exhausted right now, so I’m quickly losing focus. I think I’m going to go wrap up some editing, post the wrestling videos I recorded, and then… I don’t know, maybe actually play a different game for a bit. It’s not like I’ve got anything urgent to do right now. Nothing that needs my attention. Maybe this will be the beginning of my return to not playing FF14 at all on Tuesdays. Could be nice to have an official night off.