I’ve been making progress in the final (currently available) expansion of Final Fantasy 14 (Dawntrail) over my weekends lately, but I don’t really have a lot to say about it yet. There’s very little that has carried over from the previous chapters of the game, so I don’t have a building sense of what’s going on to discuss, and I’m only just starting level 94 quests (out of level 100), so I’ve yet to get to the midway point, much less what I expect to eventually be the inflection point or whatever twist might be coming. Things are just fine. They’re proceeding apace. I’ve reassessed my opinion of one of the main characters and am beginning to suspect so many people online seem to hate her because she’s a woman who is seen struggling with the mantle of potential leadership (I’m flashing back to how nonsensically people reacted to Keyleth of Critical Role’s first campaign) but I’m trepidatious given how many people react to that with something like “just wait” or “the story isn’t over yet.” Other than that, though, the only other noteworthy thing is that I’ve learned my favorite song from the expansion (so far) is called “Taco Delight” and I’m not sure how I feel about that beyond “mildly amused.” That’s fine, though. Most of my time and attention has gone to my various other activities: leveling crafting classes, working on leveling up my non-main combat jobs, doing side-quests with the job I’d set aside for that purpose, and doing high-end difficult content. The two raid series I’m still in, The Epic of Alexander (an “Ultimate”) and the Alexander Savage series (we’re now on A11S, the penultimate raid in the series), are what take up most of my extra time and attention since both require doing a bit of homework and preparation in the Savage series’ case and a LOT of homework in the Ultimate’s case.
Continue readingAccomplishments
Dedication To The Craft In Final Fantasy 14
One of the things that has taken up a large amount of my time alongside running through the plot of Final Fantasy 14 has been not just leveling the combat classes I need to complete the plot-based missions, but also leveling the crafting and gathering classes required to repair the gear for those combat classes. I mean, I can also make gear for the lower-leveled classes I’m working on getting up to snuff now, but most of the purpose for all that leveling is so I can keep my highest tier of combat gear in tip-top shape without needing to rely on other players I might not have easy access to when I need the work done and so I can stop paying an NPC vendor to repair my gear. Getting it fixed by a player character is a much better investment since you can repair gear beyond what you’d normally expect to it’s “full” state. It’s a bit silly since all this does is set a new point for what counts as “full” integrity on your gear, but it is satisfying to see all of those blue lines (to signify full integrity bars) next to all of my gear whenever I open my character window. Still, having all this extra space before you need to worry about your gear breaking is one of the main benefits of crafting to the person playing the game’s content and, for a while there, I couldn’t actually fix my top-tier gear. In order to hurry through the last two expansions, I set aside my usual schedule of 2-3 weeks on content and then 2 weeks on other stuff (mostly leveling crafting jobs), so while the leveling I’d done previously was enough to keep my gear going in the 2nd to last expansion (Endwalker), it was not enough to fix the gear I got following that expansion. And some of the gear I got toward the end of the expansion, too.
Continue readingEven Small, Every-Day Accomplishments Are Still Accomplishments
It can be difficult to maintain context in your life. At the very least, it is difficult for me. I haven’t figured out how to really compare notes with people in my life about the way we remind ourselves of the context of our lives and our daily deeds, so I’m not sure if this is a problem I face because of my childhood, or if it’s something everyone struggles with. As a child, I got very skilled at normalizing the things happening in my life. It was a key survival skill, going hand-in-hand with hiding the way I felt and learning to live with people who did not treat me well. While I’ve made a lot of personal progress on the latter two things (which will still be the work of a lifetime, rather than a labor I can reach the definitive end of), I still struggle with maybe too-readily normalizing whatever is happening in my life.
Continue readingNaNoWriMo 2019 Day -335 (Saturday Morning Musing)
I did it. I broke one hundred thousand words in a single month (since I wrote this post last night). I ended this post with a total of one hundred thousand eight hundred thirty-five words for the month and I am immensely proud of myself. I even bought a bottle of champagne–excuse me, sparkling wine–to pop as soon as I finished this post and, while I’m too cheap to buy good champagne, it was nice to just have something to pop at the end of the day. It tasted alright, too, but I can’t really tell the difference between various wines and I don’t really care that much about it so I’m cool with that.
It was nice to actually manage this goal, given how my month went. So much happened… Honestly, I’m pretty curious about how much I could accomplish in a month if I didn’t have to spend a lot of it learning to cope with my grandfather’s mortality and the constant stress of trying to lead my team at work into a new process I developed. If I actually had energy when I got home from work… The thought of just how much I could get done is staggering. I’ve done an average of three thousand three hundred thirty-three words a day and yet my actual median is about five thousand. If I could do that every day, I could do fifty percent more words in a month, and that’s at my current pace with my current levels of energy. If I keep up this writing thing, I might be able to get even more written during a focused hour than my current record of two thousand words. If I get a better handle on my mental health, especially my anxiety and depression, I’ll have more energy and get even more done in a day. There’s always room for improvement and I’m excited to see how I continue to improve.
While I’m sure plenty of people write more than I do, even if I do get up to one hundred fifty thousand words a month, I’m not looking to compare to them. Personal accomplishments count more to me, anyway. I’d rather beat my own record than compete with someone else for the high score, in both video games and my personal life. I love a challenge, I love having a rival, but I’m more about support and helping each other achieve new heights rather than trying to out-do each other or trying to be top frog in the well. As much fun as it might be to say I’m the best, that’s not really what motivates me. Striving to be the best is a journey with an end. Striving to be better is a journey that can take you from the day you start to the day you die. I’m all about the long-term, really, in everything thing I do. Finances, career, self-improvement, romantic/platonic relationships… Everything. I’m good at predicting outcomes and I rely on that skill to guide me. Trying to always be better than myself only ever leads me forward and upward.
As much fun as this was, though, I’m really looking forward to a thirty to fifty thousand word month. I need some rest and the winter holidays are going to be stressful enough without trying to spend every second writing. I mean, I’m not going to stop myself from writing when I want to, but I’m not going to force it again. I need a break to rest my mind. Since your brain is like a muscle, in that it gets stronger the more you use it, it is just as important to give it a chance to rest after pushing yourself to new heights. So I’m going to let my brain rest and recover these next few weeks and then we’ll see just how much stronger it’s gotten as a result of this month by trying some new personal challenge. Or, you know, just adding a reasonable amount of book writing in addition to my blog writing. It doesn’t need to be another month of one hundred thousand words. I’ll probably just aim for a thousand extra words a day of book writing. That seems reasonable but also ambitious enough to keep me moving forward. I’ll probably aim for a total over a month rather than a daily limit so I can deal with busy days that don’t leave me room for writing without feeling stressed out about missing a thousand words.
Honestly, as much as I really want to outline my plans for the next year, I think I need to rest before I do that. It’s not even nine and my brain is already so fuzzy that I have to go back and read through sentences I just wrote to figure out what I’m trying to say as I write them. I’m also looking forward to sleeping in. And an end to stress headaches…
As much as I want to keep going, I think I’m going to call it here. It’s time to rest and, while I plan to continue to update my blog every day, I think I might take an entire day off of writing for the first time in several months. Just… play some video games or something. It’ll be nice. Thanks for taking this journey with me and I hope something I posted was of use to you. I also hope you’re continuing to write. It’s a pretty great feeling to see your words on the page or screen, so I hope you get to enjoy that for a while longer.
Today is day -335 of #NaNoWriMo2019 and I’m excited about next year already! Really, though, this is a Saturday Morning Musing post and I wrote 999,999 words last month so I’m gonna rest now. I’m so tired.