For the past week or so I’ve been taking a long hard look at myself and my accomplishments in life and came to the (not so) shocking conclusion that life as I imagined it 10 years ago hasn’t turned out the way I wanted.
I have had to deal with a lot of roadbumps on the way, so to speak. Most of them were out of my control, others however I have created myself and the road to overcoming them is longer and harder than I thought it would be.

All my life I have been struggling with motivational issues. You could say I’m lazy, but I don’t feel that way, I just feel unmotivated. At primary school I was one of the more intelligent kids in class. Due to how the Dutch school system works however all the attention went to the kids who were struggling to keep up, whereas the ones who were struggling with boredom got more or less ignored. I never had homework the way others had, I learned fast and worked fast and got everything done at school so that I would have the afternoons and evenings to myself.
This continued, partially, on in high school. Subjects I enjoyed I would be done with on time. The ones I didn’t I kept postponing untill the last minute and then either failed or got just a high enough grade to pass the class.

Fast forward to university. I hated half the program. Science didn’t interest me, I wanted to be a therapist and all the courses I had to do that didn’t involve that I made sure I put as little effort in it as possible without failling them. I didn’t go to college a lot. I skipped almost all morning lectures, unless attendancy was measured and you had to be there or you would fail. I stretched deadlines and managed to maneuver my way through 5 years of this without getting caught in lies once. I know it’s not a healthy way to go about life, but it’s a way that I have been using for atleast the past 20 years and I’m not sure how to change it.

Right now I’m still suffering from the same issues. I have gained a lot of weight over the past two years, as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, and finding the motivation to hit the gym consistently is hard. I rather stay in bed than get up and go. It’s the same with applying for jobs. I just can’t find the motivation to actively browse jobs, write letters, update my resumé and apply. It’s all detrimental to myself, I’ll never leave the house or get my own life if I don’t have work, and yet I can’t stop doing it. I’m just not motivated, at all.

The only motivation I seem to have is when it comes to playing video games. And even thent it’s waning. I can love a game for a while and then completely discard it a few months later. It’s the regular cycle on Diablo III for me, it’s becoming a bit of a cycle on World of Warcraft and it has happened on FFXIV aswell. Not to mention all the non MMO games I’ve bought over the past year and have barely played. I pick them up, play for an hour or so, put them down and then never look back. By the time I feel the need to play again I’m completely lost as to what and where the story is so I have to start over. Which I detest. So instead the games just lie there, gathering dust.

I do feel like I am on a crucial point in my life where I need to start changing some of my habits. I’m afraid I will be stuck in my infinite cycle otherwise with no way of getting out. And that scares the hell out of me.

As we all have noticed, the Steam Summer Sale has started again. Although I had planned not to buy anything, there are some deals that I just can’t/couldn’t let slip and so I caved in this year and made a small budget for games I still want.
Child of Light was 75% off yesterday and so naturally I grabbed that together with Mickey’s Castle of Illusion (nostalgia!) which was 50% off. That should net me atleast a few hours of entertainment right there. I gave myself a €20 budget this year which I’ve spent half of now on those two games. I’m hoping Ori and the Blind Forest will get hugely discounted aswell so I can pick that one up and I have my eyes set on Rayman Origins, after having bought Legends with a huge discount last year.
All in all it would mean I would get to nab 4 awesome platformer games for only €20 if I’m lucky and I would be thrilled with that.

In other news, I have found myself becoming slightly addicted with Heroes of the Storm, Blizzards MOBA. After playing League of Legends for years, and having to admit that I can’t lasthit for my life and thus would never get out of bronze rankings, playing this game is a breath of relief for me. Due to the way Blizzard has developed the game there is much less focus on the individual skills of a player, instead the game is more about teamwork and taking objectives. Ofcourse if you get matched with one or two dopey people there is a big chance you will lose the game, but it’s much less brutal than League of Legends is.
I currently own 10 heroes, the minimum requirement to be able to play Hero League aka Ranked, and am saving up so I can finally get Sylvanas. Although Blizzard has a few bundles you can buy for real money to get into the game faster I feel like you are able to buy enough Heroes with gold as long as you do your dailies. From my personal experience I found that I have been able to buy atleast one Hero a week, sometimes two when I went for the “cheaper” ones.
Seeing as the game has only just officially released, and there aren’t that many Heroes to get yet (37 to be precise), it’s fairly easy to own a whole bunch of them in a relatively short time.

My favourite champion to play is Valla. I have clocked about 60 games on her. I feel her kit is strong and she’s exactly the type of champion I like to play. Hard hitting, can make/break a teamfight and she has an escape in the form of her E skill: vault. I have even broke my “I don’t want to spend any money on f2p games anymore” rule to get her Angelic skin when it was on sale for €5.

I look so cool in games now! Best skin (together with Blood Elf Tyrande)

It gave me an incentive to be even better and push even harder on this champion, because I have actually spent money on it now. Not to sound bigheaded, but I like to believe that I am proficient on Valla and that I know the champion well enough to perform well on every map, with multiple builds.

Our guild had an interesting discussion last week about sexism in the Gamer community. It baffled me that there are still a lot of men who deny the gamer community is sexist at all.
Just look at all the comments surrounding EA’s announcement to include women’s teams in FIFA 16, look at the gamergate scandal from last year. The gaming community is still very much sexist, and denying that only makes you look even more ignorant than normal.

A lot of guys don’t even realize that what they say is sexist. “Oh, she’s a good player… For a girl”. No, no people it doesn’t work that way. Gender has nothing to do with being a good player or not. I’m not different because I’m a girl and I don’t require a special set of skills to be on the same level as a guy.
And then there’s the constant “kitchen” and “housewife” jokes. Newsflash, they’re not funny. But seeing as they’re only jokes apparently us women need to suck it up and deal with it. And god forbid if you say something about it, then you’re an uptight bitch who can’t laugh at a joke.

I have a male friend who is very pro when it comes to women’s rights (no he’s not gay before you ask). Even he makes inappropriate jokes at times, which I told him. He gets very offended then, how I would dare call him sexist. That’s how far the jokes at expense of women are ingrained into the male society, even the ones that do stand up for equality don’t even notice it when they make inappropriate comments themselves.

Sometimes I feel like it’s a lost fight to begin with. Women are still not equal to men in many ways. Our society has made huge steps, I’ll admit that, but we are nowhere near true equality. There are no jokes at the expense of men. Women don’t make fun of men doing “female” sports. We don’t tell our men to go to the shed and fix our shit. We don’t accuse men of being asses because “they’re probably on their period”. Yet this is stuff I have to deal with on a regular basis. Hearing a guy make fun of the women’s football World Championship is just hurtful, making comments that “women’s football is comedy” is not right and does no justice to the women who work hard to play there. It’s plain disrespectful and rude and it’s making me hate the people I’m around in the gamer community.

Ofcourse one hundred percent equality isn’t attainable. Men and women are simply not the same. Our brains develop differently making us excel at different stuff. Men are usually in better physical shape, women are better when it comes to socializing (in general, don’t bite my head off). This is the result of thousands of years of evolution. I don’t expect a woman to do the same hard physical labour as a man, often times women are simply not built for it. I don’t expect a man to be as good in sharing his thoughts and emotions as a woman simply because it’s a new concept for them. Ofcourse there are women who do hard physical labour (and I mean real hard labour, working in mines, as lumberjack etc) and ofcourse there are men who have very developed social skills. But in the base we are just not the same and it’s good that way. But it’s time that both men and women realize that we should respect eachother and stop making one or the other gender feel like less than they are. Because it’s breeding hatred and resentment and that can never end well.

So guys, please think twice before making a degrading woman joke. It might be funny to you, or when you’re alone with your buddies, but it’s highly inappropriate and sometimes hurtful when there are women around. And girls, not all men are sexist or out to hurt you. Stop putting the male society down, don’t turn into feminazi’s.

To end this post on a positive note: Look at my Dragoon Nexus Weapon!

There has been a time, about 5-6 years ago, that I considered myself to be good at World of Warcraft. It was the end of Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Cataclysm was dawning, and I had found a home in a Horde guild on Vashj-EU.

I had rerolled from a Hunter to a Warrior (a decision that I still slightly regret untill this day) and was topping DPS meters on most fights due to broken Warrior scaling and the famous trinket from Saurfang. I would spend hours reading up on my class, tweaking, practicing, just to make sure I was doing the best possible thing I could do.

Fast forward and I have kind of lost my touch. I am an average Shadow Priest, I’m not the best, I’m not the worst but it isn’t really my forte. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Priest to death but the Shadow specc is not and has never been an specc I could excel at. I have always played Holy rather well and I can now find my way around the Disc specc. But I will never be on the same level as Shadowpriest as I was when I was playing Hunter and later Warrior.
I try to improve here and there. I know I can pull amazing numbers when need be (40k DPS on Iron Maidens Heroic puts me in the top 25% of the Shadowpriest population) but for some reason I can’t seem to perform to the maximum of my abilities. Everything that came so natural to me on Hunter and Warrior is now a struggle. And I wonder if I have chosen the wrong class for this expansion.

Of course just pure DPS isn’t everything. When it comes to game sense, spatial awareness and improvisation I haven’t lost any of my earlier prowess. But the DPS well…
Maybe it has to do with the fact that I don’t really have a drive to compete anymore. The guild I’m currently in is very (very!) casual, raiding only two times a week with no real aim except for clearing Heroic raids before the next tier of raiding comes out.
I also make a cameo every Sunday in a Horde guild on a Balance Druid which, to be honest, I’m not a fan of playing at all. I’m seriously considering dropping that raidgroup seeing as I feel no attachment to it whatsoever. The only thing keeping me there is the fact that one of my closest friends raids with them and I still want to be able to play with him.

So here I find myself in the position that I lack dedication to both of my raid teams. That I lack dedication to WoW as a game and to see what I can improve as a Priest. And it’s wearing me down.. I feel the serious WoW burnout and I’m not sure how to handle it. I’m still of the opinion that Blizzard has made a good game. I still love my Priest. But I just can’t be arsed to put in the effort to get to the point that I excel on my character again.
And I don’t know how to change it… 🙁