The Glorious Geekiness of Christmases
First of all, I'm posting this to my new Dreamwidth account. Yay for free account creation over here! The new LJ comment system is just gross, and I'm not really terribly tied over there since leaving WoW behind. But glory be, Dreamwidth allows for cross-posting, so yay!
It's the 27th, two days after my first Christmas as a married woman, and it was a geeky and wonderful Christmas. Kyle and I spent the whole day watching Every Star Wars Movie except for The Phantom Menace, because that one seemed loathe to understand the importance of celebrating the birth of Christ by watching Anakin Skywalker's transformation from a whiny nine-year-old to James Earl Jones. Still, we got the other five under our belt (mocking Attack of the Clones mercilessly and eventually drifting off to play SWTOR with our headphones off, only to keep getting distracted from that by the movies at hand), so I consider the First Annual Star Wars Christmas to be a success.
...minus the Star Wars pancakes. My mother got us Star Wars pancake molds from Williams Sonoma for a wedding gift (the amount of "EEEEEE!!" that accompanied the receipt of these molds has not been seen before nor since), so the plan was to make Star Wars themed pancakes and eat them while watching Star Wars. Very meta. The problem was that the molds made it hard to flip the pancakes, so we ended up with many pancakes that were black and crispy on one side and barely done on the other. But that also resulted in the best pancake texture ever; i.e., crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. So things worked out.
Gift haul this year was fantastically geeky. Kyle and I decided that instead of trying to covertly spend lots of money on each other, we'd just decide what we wanted for a big gift and then go get it. SO he has a nice new monitor for the computer my brother is building him and my iPhone will arrive in the mail in about a week. We're drowning in stuffed Yodas (Yodae?), as apparently, that was the gift to give this year, and we ended up with some really nice cookbooks and clothes from his parents. My parents sent over a portable hard drive for Kyle, and some nice geek swag for me (namely, an Alliance hoodie from Jinx, because the blue side will always have a special place in my heart). And my sister got me a Sonic Screwdriver. So that's nice.
We've also officially made the switch from WoW to SWTOR. From what I remember and from what I hear, SWTOR is currently very much like Vanilla WoW, both for good and for bad. My current frustration comes from that--as back before dual specs existed and things were tweaked and changed--you can't really be heal specced and then solo anything, even with a companion character. And, for all its flaws, WoW has definitely improved on that. I'm one of those who really likes to solo my way to max level, so although I'm leveling with someone in SWTOR and am therefore not completely screwed, those few times when I do have to do things solo just... nngh.
But it's a good game. A lot of fun to play, and a lot of fun to be in a mostly new community.
Of course, playing a new game as a young professional who can't take time off from work to enjoy said new video game (I don't accrue vacation time until I've been here a year, and using sick days to stay home and play video games is stupid when you only have a week of them) is pretty frustrating. When I wasn't working, my gameplay pattern basically consisted of doing actual game stuff (leveling, dailies, PvP, whatever) during the day and leaving the nights open for RP. When my days went away because I got a job, it didn't matter because I was level 85 and had nothing I wanted to do anyway. SO I had my nights for RP and could just relax.
SWTOR, however, I have so much to do gameplay-wise, still. I've got three characters to max out (two are priority, the third is kind of an escape character), and since I'm leveling with someone, there's that pressure because he waits for me to be around to level his character. So it's get home from work, grab a bite to eat, and then run off to level forever. RP and working with other characters end up neglected because we end up just leveling the two of us. And then I go to bed around midnight or 1 a.m. and everyone else stays up until way-too-early RPing or whatever.
So I'm frustrated. My hobby is currently less fun than I'd like it to be. I like SWTOR as a game, but the social aspect gives me a headache, almost to the point that I'm wanting to just throw the towel in and go hide on WoW for a couple more years.
SO. My new job is for a construction firm, where I'm working as a "marketing coordinator." Basically, this means that anything graphical ends up being designed by me (including the newsletter and this year's holiday cards). Of course, that's mostly just the icing on the job--the real big stuff are the proposals. Those are going to start coming with increasing frequency as we move into January, February, and March. My job is to basically make sure that everyone who's working on the proposals (I almost never write them myself) gets their stuff to me on time, edit all that stuff, make sure it's in line with the RFP, and then create a final product with a cover and such.
It's... well, it's paying work. And it's not horrible. During busy times, it's really engaging, and I enjoy it, but I'm also sitting here wishing that I could go back to writing my novel. Like, not even staying home to play video games, turn off my internet, whatever. I was blazing through Nanowrimo, got more than halfway done, and then got this job and it died. And that's frustrating. We need the money, but nngh. I was finally getting there with that dream I've had since I was a kid, and splat. Job has to come first.
This is that adulthood thing that people have been telling me I have to embrace since I went to college. And perhaps, if I was a more determined person, I'd be coming home every night and pounding out a couple thousand words or even a few hundred. Or getting up earlier. But maybe because of my own introversion or maybe because I'm just lazy, working completely drains me of anything but the creative willpower to derp out some RP and mash my hotkeys until I've achieved braindeadness. And for the first time since I got out of undergrad, it's really annoying me.
I know it can't be helped. I know I should be grateful that I have a job. I know that this is part of life and I need to just suck it up. But it is really painful to be approaching your dream and then have reality say "lolno" at you.
Bah. I complain too much, probably.
Kyle finished his undergraduate degree and is looking for work, and I'm praying he finds something soon, not because I'm like "rargh I do not want to be the only one working argh" but because it'll be good for him to have something fulltime and solid. He spoke with the guy who managed him on his internship, and the basic gist of what this guy told him was that if Kyle's willing to relocate, he's going to go really far in his field and really fast. That's good news, no question. I just hope that "relocate" ends up translating to "maybe the East Coast or California" and not "elsewhere in DFW or possibly Minnesota." No offense to any Minnesotans!
So...yeah. Life's a mixed bag right now, but I'm thankful for work, good friends, and an amazing husband. And that's about all I can ask for.
It's the 27th, two days after my first Christmas as a married woman, and it was a geeky and wonderful Christmas. Kyle and I spent the whole day watching Every Star Wars Movie except for The Phantom Menace, because that one seemed loathe to understand the importance of celebrating the birth of Christ by watching Anakin Skywalker's transformation from a whiny nine-year-old to James Earl Jones. Still, we got the other five under our belt (mocking Attack of the Clones mercilessly and eventually drifting off to play SWTOR with our headphones off, only to keep getting distracted from that by the movies at hand), so I consider the First Annual Star Wars Christmas to be a success.
...minus the Star Wars pancakes. My mother got us Star Wars pancake molds from Williams Sonoma for a wedding gift (the amount of "EEEEEE!!" that accompanied the receipt of these molds has not been seen before nor since), so the plan was to make Star Wars themed pancakes and eat them while watching Star Wars. Very meta. The problem was that the molds made it hard to flip the pancakes, so we ended up with many pancakes that were black and crispy on one side and barely done on the other. But that also resulted in the best pancake texture ever; i.e., crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. So things worked out.
Gift haul this year was fantastically geeky. Kyle and I decided that instead of trying to covertly spend lots of money on each other, we'd just decide what we wanted for a big gift and then go get it. SO he has a nice new monitor for the computer my brother is building him and my iPhone will arrive in the mail in about a week. We're drowning in stuffed Yodas (Yodae?), as apparently, that was the gift to give this year, and we ended up with some really nice cookbooks and clothes from his parents. My parents sent over a portable hard drive for Kyle, and some nice geek swag for me (namely, an Alliance hoodie from Jinx, because the blue side will always have a special place in my heart). And my sister got me a Sonic Screwdriver. So that's nice.
We've also officially made the switch from WoW to SWTOR. From what I remember and from what I hear, SWTOR is currently very much like Vanilla WoW, both for good and for bad. My current frustration comes from that--as back before dual specs existed and things were tweaked and changed--you can't really be heal specced and then solo anything, even with a companion character. And, for all its flaws, WoW has definitely improved on that. I'm one of those who really likes to solo my way to max level, so although I'm leveling with someone in SWTOR and am therefore not completely screwed, those few times when I do have to do things solo just... nngh.
But it's a good game. A lot of fun to play, and a lot of fun to be in a mostly new community.
Of course, playing a new game as a young professional who can't take time off from work to enjoy said new video game (I don't accrue vacation time until I've been here a year, and using sick days to stay home and play video games is stupid when you only have a week of them) is pretty frustrating. When I wasn't working, my gameplay pattern basically consisted of doing actual game stuff (leveling, dailies, PvP, whatever) during the day and leaving the nights open for RP. When my days went away because I got a job, it didn't matter because I was level 85 and had nothing I wanted to do anyway. SO I had my nights for RP and could just relax.
SWTOR, however, I have so much to do gameplay-wise, still. I've got three characters to max out (two are priority, the third is kind of an escape character), and since I'm leveling with someone, there's that pressure because he waits for me to be around to level his character. So it's get home from work, grab a bite to eat, and then run off to level forever. RP and working with other characters end up neglected because we end up just leveling the two of us. And then I go to bed around midnight or 1 a.m. and everyone else stays up until way-too-early RPing or whatever.
So I'm frustrated. My hobby is currently less fun than I'd like it to be. I like SWTOR as a game, but the social aspect gives me a headache, almost to the point that I'm wanting to just throw the towel in and go hide on WoW for a couple more years.
SO. My new job is for a construction firm, where I'm working as a "marketing coordinator." Basically, this means that anything graphical ends up being designed by me (including the newsletter and this year's holiday cards). Of course, that's mostly just the icing on the job--the real big stuff are the proposals. Those are going to start coming with increasing frequency as we move into January, February, and March. My job is to basically make sure that everyone who's working on the proposals (I almost never write them myself) gets their stuff to me on time, edit all that stuff, make sure it's in line with the RFP, and then create a final product with a cover and such.
It's... well, it's paying work. And it's not horrible. During busy times, it's really engaging, and I enjoy it, but I'm also sitting here wishing that I could go back to writing my novel. Like, not even staying home to play video games, turn off my internet, whatever. I was blazing through Nanowrimo, got more than halfway done, and then got this job and it died. And that's frustrating. We need the money, but nngh. I was finally getting there with that dream I've had since I was a kid, and splat. Job has to come first.
This is that adulthood thing that people have been telling me I have to embrace since I went to college. And perhaps, if I was a more determined person, I'd be coming home every night and pounding out a couple thousand words or even a few hundred. Or getting up earlier. But maybe because of my own introversion or maybe because I'm just lazy, working completely drains me of anything but the creative willpower to derp out some RP and mash my hotkeys until I've achieved braindeadness. And for the first time since I got out of undergrad, it's really annoying me.
I know it can't be helped. I know I should be grateful that I have a job. I know that this is part of life and I need to just suck it up. But it is really painful to be approaching your dream and then have reality say "lolno" at you.
Bah. I complain too much, probably.
Kyle finished his undergraduate degree and is looking for work, and I'm praying he finds something soon, not because I'm like "rargh I do not want to be the only one working argh" but because it'll be good for him to have something fulltime and solid. He spoke with the guy who managed him on his internship, and the basic gist of what this guy told him was that if Kyle's willing to relocate, he's going to go really far in his field and really fast. That's good news, no question. I just hope that "relocate" ends up translating to "maybe the East Coast or California" and not "elsewhere in DFW or possibly Minnesota." No offense to any Minnesotans!
So...yeah. Life's a mixed bag right now, but I'm thankful for work, good friends, and an amazing husband. And that's about all I can ask for.