It is still a metaphor, even in Final Fantasy 14, though perhaps a more true one than usual given how much of the crafting I’ve been doing in this game actually involves my character using a grindstone. Unfortunately for me, the actual heavy work for the crafting workshop I’ve been running these past two weeks has been the day-to-day administration of it. There’s a lot of stuff moving around, a lot of things to be tracked, and so very much that needs to be stored for eventual use that it is a significant undertaking if one of the other players participating in the workshop submits a few claims and then the items from the claims in quick succession. Which one of the players, an officer in the FC, has been doing. She has so very much time to work on this stuff that it has become a regular occurrence that, despite my efforts to put systems in place to prevent this from happening, I am getting quite burned out on it. I mean, I set this up with a ten-claim limit, with restrictions on the high-value items to one-per-ten-claim-set, to hopefully force people to pace themselves so I’m not constantly updating this set of tables and worksheets, but I also set it up so that people were supposed to be claiming on resource per set of things being produced as “one claim” and the first person to take work didn’t do that, so no one else has either, which is why this has taken so long. I’m not terribly surprised that the spirit of the whole thing got missed in the rush to get the financial gain side of things. But I persevere because this will put the workshop in a good spot so I can just do maintenance crafting projects in the future rather than have to spend time each week planning what to craft (and hoping that this isn’t the week that those things turn unpopular).

Toward that end–of creating a stockpile and refreshing said stock rather than predicting market trends–this process is working out pretty well. The decisions I made about what to stock in greater quantities have been reaffirmed by what has sold from past work orders and while we’re basically out of stuff to sell until this latest set of 29 items gets produced, I expect that we’ll get quick a bit of movement when we finally put things up on the market. I still need to double-check all that pricing information and eventually do the genuinely exhausting work of clicking everything to make the actual assembly of these walls happen (this, plus the administration of the endeavor, is why I get 10% off the top of each thing sold, plus whatever I’m due for my contributions), but I think we’re getting close to that point. There’s still some big gaps in the tables, but they’re closing fast as all the higher-value or low-effort items get claimed and people still want to do work and earn money. It probably helps that I held off on taking any work for a week and then jumped in with the stuff that no one wanted to claim due to the annoyance of the work required to get the materials for those items. Which folded neatly into the other, non-crafting stuff I’ve been wanting to do, anyway, so it was time-consuming work but very productive. I’m much further along in one of the paths for creating the latest Relic Weapons (the weapons that will eventually be the best possible thing for each combat job) than I was at the start of this process and it’s been good to have some “listen to a podcast and mindlessly chill” activities to do since I’m still struggling with how burned out and tired I am.

Outside of that… Well, I’m mostly been doing that lately. I still have my Monday night alternate character nights with my one friend (and sometimes an additional friend) and I’m constantly doing bits of stuff here or there to progress the goals of my main character, but it has mostly been this specific effort, cleaning out my inventories as I mentioned last week, and crafting a bunch of the high-value items I had important pieces for cluttering up my inventory. Constant, steady effort and slow but predictable rewards. Money spent, money earned. Time spent, progress earned. A bit at a time, day by day as I work on setting myself up for the next patch coming in about a month and then the next expansion after that. And, you know, pursuing my own interests along the way. I mean, I enjoy this stuff and find the idea of having a relic weapon finished a very rewarding one, so I will keep that grind alive until it’s complete. I mean, there’s going to be a whole new area to explore in the next major patch as well! Lots of fun stuff coming up and I’m putting in the work now so I can start to enjoy it right away when it drops. There won’t really be any new stuff to craft, so I’ll be able to just skate into the new patch and hopefully sell a ton of the stuff I’ve been stockpiling and slowly selling since December. Ideally, anyway.

I’ve also been trying to take more breaks. With moderate success so far, but I’m sticking mostly with my “No FF14 on Tuesday nights” decision, even if I’ll be breaking it tonight (I’ve gotta take some pictures and stuff for some art a friend is comissioning, and I’ve put it off too long, so I’m spending my off-night turning all my idle thoughts into a useful reference document). I’ve been playing some Pokopia and eating my meals at a table (well, mostly in front of my TV but sometimes at a table) instead of my desk all the time in an effort to spend less time in my office. We’ve had a few warm days later that made it difficult to enjoy being in there without my AC going full blast and I refused to turn it on when it was supposed to drop from mid-70s into the mid-30s within 12 hours, so I spent as much time outside my office as possible. I think I’m going to keep this effort up. It’s not like I’m not having fun or even feeling particularly overwhelmed by my chosen labors, I just… Honestly, I’m tired of spending all my time cooped up in that little closet office. I might rearrange my apartment in an effort to get out of that cramped space, but the benefits of having a little siloed-off space like that are difficult to argue with, especially given that it means I don’t need to worry as much about being quiet at night thanks to the soundproofing I’ve put up. I mean, I could also move away from any thin walls next to bedrooms for a similar effect, but all of that involves having my back to my front door and I don’t much care for that. Closet cozy, if also kind of suffocating sometimes. Closet safe, if also sometimes making me worried about sounds I hear elsewhere since it’s not like I can see much of my apartment form in there. I don’t know. I’m still toying with the idea and have been busy enough in Final Fantasy 14 that I don’t really want to take the few days off all that moving would require. There’s just so much still I’d like to do.