Mixed Bag

My mood as of late can best be described as melancholy. To say the least two weeks’ notice tends to change one perspective and also lends to far too much time to think about, well everything. This mixed with a general sense of not really giving a shite about too much other than doing nothing, yet becoming increasingly bored at the aspect of doing nothing. It’s a fun ride really, it leaves me feeling kind of detached from everything around me. These little mental holidays are good for everyone and I highly recommend you take one sometime soon. I’m going to list out a few examples, normally these following scenarios would either tend to piss me off or fill me with dread and anxiety.

The new house and moving: At this point the Missus and I have so much repacking and getting ready to move to do (of which we have done pretty much nothing) that usually I’d be stressed to no end that we haven’t really bothered. WE are both really psyched about the new house and can’t wait to get into it, but I think the apartment we are in is some kind of mystic hall of dread that prevents either of us from getting down to getting to work on packing it back up. Now I know that the Missus and I being sicker than sin the past few weeks has played a part in this as well, but it is very rare that both of us are totally unmotivated to do something that needs doing at the exact same time. I take the blame for this, my personality tends to be infectious, I’ve inspired acts of great motivation and commitment to damn near lost causes in my time, but I’ve also lead may an unwary traveler down the road of doom and despair. I’m sure I will snap out of it fairly soon, I always do. But for now I’m just enjoying the mental holiday.

The Job: PLEASE! I’m on two weeks’ notice, to think I’m even going to think about really working is just plain crass. If UMC taught me anything at all it was indeed, Do NOT get emotionally involved with the job or the people you work with. Don’t get me wrong you sort of need work friends to survive your daily torture at work. One or two good folks to commiserate with over a tasty beverage, a needed cigarette or occasionally large amounts of fermented tasty beverage. As to the emotional connection to the job itself, it’s a hard thing not to do, you always end up putting a bit of yourself into your work and we all have issues with loss in our lives *Think of all the cool toys you had as a kid, where the hell did my Lincoln Logs go anyway?*

So I’m in game (EQ2) last night playing me Fury alt when I get a tell to join a raid. I figure what the hell, not doing too much at the moment. So I make the pretty long run from Freeport to the back ass end of Feerrott for this raid taking place in a special instance of Cazic Thule. So there we are waiting around (pretty typical) for the raid to get its collective shite together, 30 minutes turns to 45 then on to better than an hour and the raid leader decides we have waited long enough and we finally go in. Now while we were waiting around the raid talked about who was Main Tank, Main Assist and that lewt rules we NBG (Need Before Greed). This particular instance is sort of a jack pot of named mobs (14 in total) and we started out pretty strong (this is typical too, a good raid maintains it all the way through) hitting mobs and taking em down, watching with keen interest at what dropped off these slain foes; I’m sure my fellow raiders were taking note of this as well. We fight on and start to get down to the last few named mobs and things are just falling apart. Folks tend to lose focus in a long raid but we had only been at it about an hour and a half, so it was kind of silly that some of these folks were falling short. So a very long story later we are at the point of saying uncle, just about everyone in the raid was broken on armor and no one other than myself seemed to have a repair kit or back up gear (been merc raiding for awhile now and expect very little from those putting on the raid). So we call the raid over and now comes the everyone standing around to see what lewts are to be had. Well the raid leader is just standing around while everyone is calling for lewt rolls. He says “what lewt?” This is when everyone starts listing what dropped and what they wanted. Being a crafter I was keen on a few of the rare materials that dropped. What it came down to is, the raid leader (also the leader of his guild I believe) proclaims that none of the rares are available he is keeping them all, that out of the 10 masters that dropped only two of them were up for rolls as the rest could be used by his guild, none of the weapons or armor could be rolled on, but the 20 some Adept I books could be (this is usually considered vendor trash). Needless to say many of the folks in the raid were pissed off (This was a PUG [Pick Up Group]raid) I stood there thinking about it for a minute, I got an outrageous amount of exp debt and a very big repair bill from being totally broken on 2 sets of armor. I just kept thinking I should be mad, I should be sending this asshat tell after tell about what an asshat he actually is, but somehow it just didn’t seem to matter, it is after all a game; nothing more than pixels. I called back to my home town and repaired, checked my broker; I had made damn near the exact amount I just spent to repair. All in all the night was a wash; basically it was as if I had never logged on. The true reality of the time sink that this game is hit me. While I still want to play and do look forward to it after a day at work, it just seemed to not matter as much anymore. I was feeling bad about game as of late. The Order is just a little guild, I like it that way; but I cannot for the life of me understand why the current members hang around. We try to put events together but either not enough folks to go or folks are busy doing their own thing. I guess this is OK, doesn’t matter too much to me if they are happy with the current state of affairs who am I to question why they stay. So all in all, these things would at any other time really bother me and weigh on my mind. As of late it just doesn’t seem to matter, it is after all a game.

So there it is playmates, no big message, no moral to the story and really not much point to the post other than remembering that once in a while it’s OK to just generally say fuck it to everything in life. I’m not advocating it as a lifestyle; nihilists kind of piss me off. Apathy usually really pisses me off, but there are times when we all need the mental holiday. I still highly suggest the trip.

I don't care
I don't care
I don't care
About this world
I don't care
About that girl
I don't care
I don't care
I don't care
About these words
I don't care
‘I Don’t Care’ by Ramones