Category Archives: Personal

The blog is dead: long live the blog!

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I’ve thought about sunsetting this thing. I’ve not been keeping up with it regularly for ages and let’s face it, blogging as medium is dead. Especially when you compare it to the likes of TikTok, Instagram and countless other social media outlets where content spreads to everyone in sub 30 second chunks which are easy to digest. I find myself scrolling Instagram Reels for hours on end if I let myself and even though I’ve not installed the clock app, I know it’s what everyone is using these days.
So why still write something here? Because personally, I’m kind of tired of all the information thrown at me at breakneck pace through social media. It’s just brain stimulation for hours and what do you actually get from it? A wasted day. There is a reason why I still enjoy coming back to certain parts of Reddit, even if the medium itself is also a toxic cesspool. There’s a reason why I prefer reading the news instead of watching it. There’s a reason why I prefer following written game guides over Youtube videos. And it’s because at the end of the day, reading text is still my preferred medium of getting information. And if it’s that way for me, I’m sure it’s that way for a lot of other people as well.

So why not? Why not try to breathe some life back into this shell of a blog and see if I can actually get myself to stick to a somewhat okay schedule when it comes to posting. Being more organised and able to stick to plans has been a mayor lifegoal for me for years, why not try to implement it here. Not that I want to write daily, I think that’s a bit of a tall order but I would like to be able to drop two posts per week. One on Wednesdays where I will talk about my love for games and other nerdy things and what I’ve been up to all week in that regard and one on Sunday where I will talk about random topics that have kept me busy over the week. I’m planning to start dancing in 2024, 2-4 nights a week depending on how well I’m getting on, and I’m going to get back on track with my weightlifting as well. With a big trip to Japan coming up in the spring I feel like I want to be the fittest I’ve been so I can enjoy myself to the fullest. Maybe I’ll talk about a new meal I’ve learned to cook or a movie I’ve seen or a day or evening out I’ve had that was a lot of fun. Maybe I’ll talk about my stress at work and how it’s making me feel and use this medium to vent a little and write down my frustrations. I’ll find something to write about, I just have to sit down and do it.

For now though I’m wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas, I hope you’re all having a good one!

We do a little travelling and gaming

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As the summer wanes and the days gradually shorten, I reflect on the fortune of living life on my terms. Travel has become my passion, especially to Budapest, a city I’ve fallen deeply for over the past three years. In fact, my dedication to exploring its beauty is so steadfast, much like the commitment of a friend who works at a fire watch company in Dania Beach, providing indispensable safety services with the same reliability and consistency. Just as they’re prepared for any emergency with their well-trained personnel and immediate response capabilities, I am ready for my annual pilgrimage to Budapest, planning to cherish this tradition for the foreseeable future.

I came back home from Sziget on Monday evening. Last year the festival was an absolute blast, but this year it felt less. There were considerably less acts that were performing, the food was disastrous and the prices of everything went through the roof. I understand we are living in a time where there is a cost of living crisis, but expecting me to pay €15 for a plate of reheated (IN THE MICROWAVE) fries and onion rings is beyond absurd. So I turned my back on the festival for the most part and enjoyed Budapest as city. I climbed up to the Fisherman’s Bastion and the Castle to take in the amazing views of the city from up high. I ate good food and melted away in the city parks because it was 30 degrees Celsius during the day in the shade. I still got to see the acts I wanted, most notably Yungblud and David Guetta, and I managed to turn what was a very disappointing experience into something I could still enjoy.

Next to travelling I’ve also been busy with and in games. For some reason I finally caught the “I want to tackle my backlog” bug and with the release of Final Fantasy 16 I knew I had some epic game times ahead of me, and boy I wasn’t wrong.
In the past 2 months I’ve finished three games and I’m working my way through the fourth and fifth as we speak. I managed to get the platinum trophy in Horizon Zero Dawn and play through the DLC. After that I picked up Final Fantasy 16 and completed the game in a little over three weeks time. No platinum trophy there though because I’m just not up for another playthrough right now. After that I picked up Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart which I finished last week, and platinumed. Finally I’ve started playing Horizon Forbidden West right before I flew out to Hungary and I’ve been playing Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D on my 3DS during my Budapest trip. I’m going to try to platinum Horizon Forbidden West but I don’t know if I want to get all the collectibles in DKCR yet, I guess I’ll see how I feel once I reach the final boss. I’m only in the second world as of right now so I still have most of the game ahead of me.

In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve been raiding with a static for the final raidtier of the expansion again. We have killed P9/10/11S and are currently staring down P12S. I hope we can kill it sooner rather than later but seeing as we’re still in phase 1 of the fight I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon. My Dancer is completely kitted out though and apart from a weapon upgrade and the final tomestone upgrade token I’m completely in best in slot gear. Something I’m actually pretty proud of. I’m also not doing too badly on the DPS rankings, parsing greens and blues when I’m not being a derp and dying and all in all I’m having a good time. I’ve also been steadily working away at leveling all my alt jobs, I just finished Summoner/Scholar to 90, and I’m catching up on some beast tribes that I’ve neglected. Finally I’m pursuing all the relic weapons of this expansion, seeing as how they’ve decided that the only grind there will be is the tomestone grind it’s not as hard as previous expansions.

All in all I feel like I’m in a good space when it comes to spending time on games and finally tackling all the games I’ve purchased over the last 10 years. I’m really enjoying sitting on my couch and playing stuff on my PS5 as well as grinding away in FFXIV for the time being. In a few weeks we will also get a new patch for Disney Dreamlight Valley and of course a new season pass so I will put some time into that as well.

As far as other aspects of my life go… I’m picking up my training routine again after letting it slide for the past few months. I bought a few nice brand jeans on sale and I want to fit them properly so that is the goal for the next month or two. Eventually I want to get down to 65kg, but babysteps. Work is stressful but manageable and I already know when my next holiday will be so that helps to keep my sanity in that department. Hopefully once I get a good work/sports/gaming/social life routine figured out I can tackle more things but for now that is the aim and I hope to be able to do it in the remainder of this year.

Struggling with Structure

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As part of my healing process I’m trying to add more structure to my days and weeks. I’ve never been a very structured person when it comes to time management. I don’t eat or sleep at set times nor do I plan my days and weeks out ahead. I know what I need to do roughly each week and then just do that task whenever I have the time to do it. I show up on time for appointments and I’ve only been late to work twice in the 6 years I’ve held this job, both times because I forgot to set my alarm the day before and overslept.. And even then I was only late by 30 minutes. When there’s commitments where other people rely on me I’ll block my time in advance and prepare to be on time for wherever I need to be. If it’s somewhere I haven’t been before I’ll look up the route beforehand and calculate when I’ll have to leave.
When I’m mentally doing well I’m normally also pretty organised in my house. Every object has it’s place and I try to keep things as neat as possible (although sometimes when I feel bad or tired things can get a bit messy). It helps me later when I’m looking for stuff that I know where things can be found. Which is the polar opposite to how I grew up in my dad’s household where mess was normal and things would always get lost. That’s probably why I prefer it not to be that way.

However. Outside of work and meetups I’m terrible when it comes to managing my time. Often times I don’t know what to do with myself and waste hours upon hours of just not doing anything I really enjoy. I’m terrible at forming new habits, because I’m bad at sticking to them and then I feel bad because I abandon things not even halfway through. I was committed to doing 10k steps a day and I would go on walks after work every day. I managed to do that for a week and a half and then abandoned it. I can’t count how many times I tried starting a new evening routine only to give up after a week. Or going to the gym, or going swimming or picking up a new hobby. I’d set a time to do X and then just, not do it. I can’t even cook dinner around the same time each day, let alone commit to anything else.

I’ve tried anything from different planners and bullet journals to just making lists each day of the things I want done to setting timers for me to start or stop doing things. I’ve planned my day down to the minute and I’ve thrown everything to the wind and just let it all loose and see whatever happens happens. Nothing seems to work and it’s costing me a lot of energy and giving me a lot of frustration. I often look at people in envy who seem to have their shit together and are able to get up at the same time every day, go to the gym, have a good evening routine and overall seem to have a nice structured life. I desperately want the same and I just don’t know how to achieve it. Even when it comes to hobbies I can’t seem to manage my time between the things I enjoy. I feel like I always just go towards an extreme end of the spectrum and it’s tiresome.

I realise that my depression plays a major part in this as well. I’m so often overwhelmed and exhausted and feeling down that I just can’t seem to pick up anything else. But I don’t want that to be my excuse. My mental health can’t be what defines me for the rest of my life. And so I struggle on, trying to find something that works for me. Eventually I hope something will stick, but for now this is just another thing kicking me down. I can’t even structure my days or weeks right, how am I supposed to get through another 40-50 years of my life like this? I guess only time will tell.

Taking Back My Power: Solo Trip Berlin 2022

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I’ve always enjoyed travelling and exploring new places. Maybe because I didn’t get to do it much when I was younger or maybe because I really enjoy exploring new cultures, places and languages. When I grew up we never really left the country for holidays because my mom couldn’t deal with the long drives and heat of southern Europe. So we vacationed inside our own country instead. Which was fun, but I was jealous of all my classmates going to different countries every year whereas I never crossed the border.

Given your passion for traveling and exploring new places, it’s understandable that the desire to venture beyond your home country grew stronger over the years. The allure of distant lands and diverse cultures is truly captivating. Thankfully, opportunities eventually presented themselves, allowing you to embark on exciting journeys. One such memorable adventure took you to the enchanting islands of Hawaii with LYA Hawaii. The moment you set foot on this tropical paradise, you were swept away by its breathtaking natural beauty, vibrant traditions, and warm hospitality. Exploring the lush landscapes, indulging in local delicacies, and immersing yourself in the unique Hawaiian culture became a cherished experience, fulfilling the wanderlust that had been kindled during your childhood.

Also, I have made up for this from high school onwards. I’ve been to a lot of places within Europe and have seen a good handful of capitals and enjoyed my stays there. Two years of pandemic threw a wrench in the works when it came to travelling and although I discovered Budapest last year, and got to spend a week in Greece, I did miss the freedom of just booking a city trip when I felt like it and leave the country for a couple of days to go exploring. Luckily this is all available again now and as such I’ve picked up my travelling ways again. I’m heading off to New York City in two weeks, my first travel outside of Europe on my own, but I wanted to do a trial run to see if I would be able to handle being on my own in a big city for a couple of days without feeling lonely or bad.
Queue sprs.me a travel agency that will send you to a random city within Europe where you only learn your destination about two hours before you have to be on the plane there. After booking and weeks of speculation where I was going, Lisbon being a prime candidate, I set off last Wednesday and got on the plane to… Berlin.

Brandenburger Tor

I have been to Berlin before when I was in high school. It was the annual outing for 5 VWO (the year and level of education I was in) and I remember the trip fondly. So after being slightly disappointed that I was being sent to a city I’ve already been to I turned it around and decided that I was going to be a proper tourist there. Seeing as for school we had to follow a certain itinerary I couldn’t actually explore the city proper. I made a list of places I wanted to visit when on the plane and tried to spread them out over the three days that I was going to be there. I tried to pack as lightly as I could, seeing as how I had to drag my bag with clothes and toiletries through the city on at least the last day, and I prayed that the weather would be as predicted and I wouldn’t end up with heavy rain on any of my days.

Reichstag

Besides a few hiccups, I had a wonderful three days in the capital of Germany. I was able to be the ultimate tourist and visit all the places that I wanted to. I stayed in a sidestreet of the Kürfürstendamm, the major shopping street of West Berlin, not far off the Zoo and a lot of public transport connections. I travelled to see all the sights, spent a good chunk of my time in the area around the Brandenburger Tor and walked. A lot. I think I covered more than 40km in 3 days time. My feet are still hurting as I type this up, even with an entire day of doing nothing but recovery yesterday.
A lot of places were exactly as I remembered them to be. Checkpoint Charlie is still rather disappointing. Potsdamer Platz is intimidating and, unfortunately, extremely windy if you’re unlucky. Unter den Linden is a beautiful boulevard. The Fernsehturm is visible from every spot in Berlin and seeing the amount of tourists in the city it was as if the pandemic never happened.
I don’t think I can accurately put into words how much this little holiday empowered me as a person. I’ve come back with so much more confidence in myself and how competent I am at handling stuff. I was able to enjoy this trip my own way without having to take someone else’s preferences into account. I could be as slow or fast as I wanted travelling through the city and seeing the sights. I could sit somewhere for an hour if I wanted to and not feel bad about it. I got over the hurdle of being embarrassed of sitting at a restaurant by myself and was able to enjoy meals and drinks on my own. When I would get tired in the evening I would just end the day and go back to my hotel and rest. If my feet were starting to hurt I could sit down wherever and for as long as I wanted. I decided what I did, when and where and it was exactly what I needed in my journey of healing right now. Of course I would miss someone to be physically present and enjoy things with me. I like having people around and I did miss some company, but only when I had winded down for the day or when I was sitting down somewhere with no real form of entertainment for longer than 10 minutes.

Rotes Rathaus

I also took a few learnings with me for when I fly out to New York in two weeks. First take a powerbank with me to be able to charge my phone during the day when I’m out and about in the city, especially on the last day when I can’t go back to my hotel. I’ve had to deal with my battery draining during the day due to using certain apps to navigate the city and taking pictures and having to go back to my hotel to charge it every single day. Which isn’t that much of an issue but it is when it’s the last day and you have to use your phone as a boarding pass. Second is to take a small form of entertainment with me for when I do sit down somewhere for a while. Time goes by much faster when I would be reading a book or playing a game instead of relying on my phone as only source of entertainment for the entire trip. Lastly, don’t push myself over my limits. Sit down more if needed and take more breaks. I walked a lot in Berlin and by day three my feet were absolutely killing me and I still had to make it home. I think I pushed myself too hard in a way and will definitely be more cautious about this in New York.

All in all though this was a very positive experience and something I will remember as a first step to taking my power back and become the confident woman that’s hiding somewhere deep down inside of me.

Choosing to heal

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World Mental Health Day 2020: Importance of recognising and accepting depression | Lifestyle News,The Indian Express

In March I have been diagnosed with a Major Depressive Episode. It didn’t really come as a surprise to me but it had been camouflaging as a burnout so I guess it tricked me in at least that way. I was feeling permanently tired, burned out, done with life, done with the world. I felt at my lowest of lows after a year where I thought I could finally see a future worth living for. But life has a funny way for knocking the wind out of you and I found myself staring at the edge of the abyss for a little too long.

I’ve been here before. I’ve seen this edge before and I stepped away from it before. But as I find myself to be twice the age I was last time this happened I notice that I don’t bounce back as easily as I once did. Feeling bad had taken over my days and nothing really brought me enjoyment anymore. I had sought help and, even though it took a while to get going, finally managed to get into a trajectory that will help me heal and deal with a lot of issues that have been simmering right beneath the surface. I’ve spent years powering through everything, trying to tell myself that this is how life is, that if I just worked hard enough and did more than what was asked of me and ignore the stress and weariness and pain of life occurences I would eventually get to be happy. To be loved. To finally feel like I was enough.

How wrong that mindset has been.

I’m learning to love myself. To live with myself. To tell myself that it’s okay if things aren’t always okay. I don’t have to be perfect, I don’t have to push myself beyond my limits. I’m worthy of being around, I have value as a person even if I’m not doing that great. I’m choosing to let myself of the hook. To be kinder, nicer to myself. To not work myself to death. To not expect more when I’ve already done more than enough.
I stop holding myself to impossibly high standards, to an expectation of perfection that is impossible to fulfill.

I’m choosing to heal.

As part of this I want to track my journey here. My ups and downs. My victories and days where things just don’t really go the way I want them to. And that’s okay. No one is perfect. No one has the answer to everything. Life isn’t rainbows and sunshines. And that’s okay.

I’m catching up on a lot of travelling this year after being homebound by the Coronavirus for close to two years. I’m setting off to an unknown destination this Wednesday and have a New York City trip coming up in June. I’m going back to concerts and festivals again. I’m seeing my friends, both online and offline, in real life for the first time in years. I want to document it all. But also the struggles with keeping a good rhythm. For finding a schedule that works. Trying to learn new habits. How to treat myself nicer. How I stumble and fall and get back up again doing things outside of my comfort zone.

All of this and more. I hope you’ll be along for the ride.

Status: Life

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Sittting around with my own thoughts for a week has given me the need to write stuff down. I’m not sure why, but maybe I want to take a screenshot of being at my lowest and being able to look back later and be proud of how far I’ve come from this point. I guess a little story is in order about how I got here in the first place…

I’ve struggled with mental health issues since I was a child. I was bullied at school and even though I had friends I always felt a little left out. My dad was a harsh man who worked five days a week so the main parenting was done by my mother. When she passed away when I was 12 it was the start of real mental issues combined with rough teenage years where a lot of emotional and mental abuse happened. I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD aswell as unspecified anxiety disorders later in life. I have abandonment issues coupled with a deeply ingrained feeling that no matter what I do, look like or achieve in life it will never be good enough. I’m thanking my dad for the latter.

Fast forward to 2019. I got promoted at work and was struggling filling the position. I didn’t really have anyone to support me and the work itself was starting to bore me. I had a lot of plans that never really came to fruition because I kept getting dragged into the day to day stuff which I loathed by that point. Then the pandemic hit in 2020. Right before we got sent home in March 2020 I was getting my life a little bit in order again. I visited the gym and the swimming pool multiple times per week to prepare for my 3 week trip to Japan, something I was looking forward to very much. Instead we got sent home, my trip got cancelled and that was the start of the current almost 2 year streak of working from home. I had my Japan trip cancelled again in 2021 and in the meantime being at home all the time was slowly pushing me into a serious depressed state. I missed going into the office, I missed the social interaction and being at home alone just drove me insane. Alas there was not much I could do about it so I turned to online communities a lot to keep me company and lift my spirits.
In the meantime the resentment towards my job grew and I applied for another one without success.

This is where I met my partner in January 2021. Even though there was a lot of distance between us, both in age and in actual physical distance, we decided to take a leap after about a month and a half of talking and became exclusive. I was happy, he was happy and we met up multiple times throughout 2021. In hindsight though little cracks were starting to show and we didn’t attend to them at the time, leaving time and space for them to become bigger and bigger until we had a major argument around New Years Eve. Things were said, things were discovered, we were both majorly hurt. After a lot of contemplation we broke up last Saturday. The differences were too big, maturing needed to happen and there was just too much hurt to be able to fix. I’m right in the middle of grieving this relationship and am feeling angry, sad, relieved and desperate all at the same time.

Unfortunately this was also the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. After resenting my job more and more in 2021, and another failed transfer to another job, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I went to my GP and received a burn-out diagnosis. I’m currently working much less hours and have transferred a lot of my responsibilities to my coworker. I feel tired 24/7 and am just picking up the pieces of a life that I thought would turn out much different than it has. I’m at my lowest point in years and I guess the only way from here is up. I’m not sure yet how I’m going to achieve this, but I don’t want to be silent about it to anyone anymore. I’m done hiding how I’m doing and pretending everything is okay when it isn’t.

So here I sit, trying to rebuild myself from the ground up. I need to be nicer to myself. I need to accept that right now I can’t do all the things I may want to do and be content with the things I can do. I know that I will pick myself up eventually and that this will be one of the biggest learning moments of my life.
Right now though, I’m just tired, lost and left wondering how the hell I ended up here.

New Year, New Look

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Right. It’s been a while hasn’t it. I guess life got in the way again and one of the first things I drop seems to be this blog. C’est la vie. I don’t want to dwell too much on the hows and why’s of me not posting and instead look ahead to this year and all the things it’ll hopefully bring me.
As such I’ve decided to change up the blog a bit. New layout, new background, nice header image. I’m quite happy. It feels softer and more like me.

As you may have seen if you follow me on Twitter I decided last night that it was time for change in Final Fantasy XIV as well. After almost 9 years of playing as a Miqo’te I’ve decided to take a plunge and fantasia’d to Viera. I also threw in a name change, seeing as how my old last name referred to an ex. It feels like a fresh start and that’s something I desperately needed. I’m really happy with the transformation and I hope I won’t miss my Miqo self too much. I’ve found a nice little community in the game with some old WoW guildies and friends and we’re planning to tackle Savage content together eventually, but for now we’re just having fun and poking around everywhere.

I want to write a bit more on the blog and will aim for one post a week (probably on Sunday) as part of me working through my burn-out and establishing more healthy hobbies and activities again instead of only working from home and gaming. For now though I hope you like the new look of the blog and are still interested in hearing my silly stories!

I Set Goals… And Never Came Back

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So. I realized that my last post was setting goals for February. And then I never came back.
Kind of funny how those things go. A lot has happened in the past three and a half months. Work has been extremely overwhelming. I didn’t get the job that I applied for at the end of January, much to my dismay, and in the meantime lockdown due to COVID has been dragging on and on in the Netherlands. We’ve finally had some rules loosened and vaccinations are progressing rapidly so maybe there’s a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
Next to a lot of disappointments there has also been one big bright point. I guess people driving home the idea that you “shouldn’t look for love because it will find you” scored a point with me this year. I’ve met someone very special, after a long time of being single and basically giving up on the idea that I would meet someone that would love me for who I am. But I’ve met that someone and he’s been brightening my days for the past three months. I’m so incredibly thankful that he came into my life and I hope we can build something that will last for a long time.

As for the gaming front. Well. I guess a lot has happened and not happened.
The World of Warcraft guild I’m in has moved to Horde side. Unfortunately recruitment on Alliance side seems to have completely bled dry so they made the hard decision to swap over to Horde so Mythic raiding can happen in patch 9.1.
I moved with them and rolled a new character and am currently raiding a bit again as Elemental Shaman. I’m having a decent amount of fun although I’ve not really touched Mythic raiding yet and I’ve not really found the time to do Mythic+. I’m hoping with my workload dying down a bit I can spend a bit more time in WoW and push to get some achievements done.

Next to that I’ve been catching up in Final Fantasy XIV. I was a few patches behind and worked my way back up to the patch 5.5 content when it comes to main story. My current goals are getting the final raid of Eden done, the final Nier raid and get completely caught up with the mainstory. I’m also still leveling my crafters and almost have my Alchemist at level 80, which means I only have a few more to go after. With Endwalker getting a release date I have around 5-6 months to get caught up on everything, which should be more than enough time. I just need to remind myself to log in and actually play.

As far as League of Legends goes… I basically stopped playing somewhere in February and I’ve been struggling really hard to get back into the game. I’ve been playing ARAMs and a few normals here and there and participated in some Clash but otherwise I’ve not touched ranked in months. I’m really soul searching on what I want to play and if I still want to make the push towards Gold or not. It also hasn’t helped that I’ve been duoing with people that make me tilt. I think I’m better off staying solo and look to grind up on my own. I’ve been asking for some tips and tricks and once I can settle on a role and a champion I’m going to just start pushing again.

All in all it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster in my life the past few months but I’m finally feeling like I’m landing on my feet again. Let’s hope it will give me enough headspace to do more than just work, sleep and eat.

Switching it up: Job application

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I wanted to write a blog post yesterday about my experiences playing Crash Bandicoot 4 (it’s a really fun game) but something happened in real life that took over my time and as such I had completely forgotten to post. So I’m making it up today by telling you all what the real life thing was!

I’ve been working at my current department for over 5 years now. I got in on a temporary contract and managed to get a permanent contract in 2019. I also managed to get a promotion twice and the only jump up I can now make is to a fulltime manager position, a jump that I’m probably not able to make for a while yet.
Within those 5 years I’ve seen the department grow increasingly smaller. So many people were let go, partially due to a lighter workload and partially do to automating processes, thus needing less people to do the actual work. However we have hit the point that our team is made up now of the bare minimum amount of people you can possibly have.. And it’s causing a lot of stress. Especially when we are having extremely busy periods it’s all hands on deck and I feel we’re still not getting everything done we should be doing. The last two weeks have been one of those periods where I just shut down at the end of the day and have 0 energy left for anything else. To say I’m exhausted doesn’t even begin to cover it. It makes me resent having to get up in the morning and logging in to work. Something that is a gigantic red flag on it’s own.

However… This week a job application got posted for a job at a department that I have been side eyeing for the past two years now. It’s a department dedicated to implementing Robotic Process Automation throughout the entire organisations and it entails that I would be joining the team that designs and implements “bots”. I’m already in contact with this team due to the bots we have running on our own department and I’ve been developing some of them on my own as a sort of side project. They had put up job applications before but I never felt sure and ready enough to reply, but this time I figured I’d take the jump and just went ahead and turned in my application.

I hope that my familiarity with the team and department will help in my favour. I haven’t heard back anything yet so far but the application is still open to reply untill next Wednesday so I’m not sure when I will be contacted. By taking this step though I would transfer over to a department that has it’s own kind of stress and deadlines but also with a bigger team, less individual responsibilities and more structured systems in place. It’s probably the best step I can take for myself right now and I’m hoping really hard that they’ll consider me for the position. I will keep you all posted how it goes, but this could be the breath of fresh air I need to kickstart other more important life changes.

A home on the internet

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From the earliest days of my World of Warcraft career I’ve always been looking for a home on the internet. It started out with guilds and forums, which were the biggest thing of communications back in the day. Before there was something like Discord. I’ve had many homes throughout the years in multiple games and with multiple communities. They have always been temporary homes, as is the nature of most communities in games. Guilds come and go. I’ve made the jump to several ones over the span of my own gaming career. Sometimes it was because of the raidteam breaking up, sometimes because the guild make-up had changed so much over time that I didn’t feel at home anymore. I think the longest stretch I’ve been in a guild has been from Cataclysm through Legion, although on occassion I couldn’t really call it a guild but a two man show, on account of most people abandoning ship.

Then came the rise of Discord. I’m not sure when exactly I joined there but I’ve been active on Discord as a means of communication for a while now. Things stay the same though, communities come and go and at some point I realised that staying in dead Discords had no use at all, so I left most of the ones I was active in years ago. Some Discord communities are gigantic, so big actually that it’s almost impossible to actively take part in them. Look away for 10 minutes and you have missed a couple of hundred messages. These are also the types of communities that I learned to shy away from. How is it fun to be in a discord with so many other people that you can’t even follow the conversation anymore? That’s not really a home on the internet, that’s just a gathering of people shouting into the abyss.

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However, I think digging between all the dirt and weeding out a lot of communities where I didn’t really feel like I wanted to stay… I think I finally found a small home or two on the internet that are worth sticking around in. Both of them are Discords and both of them are built around League of Legends personalities. I guess it’s what you get when you start watching streams again and interact with the community in those streams. Both Discords are relatively small, small enough to follow the conversations that are going on in them, but also big enough to be lively constantly. There are some absolutely lovely people in both and I’m happy that I’ve been able to find a community where I can just be my crazy, geeky, League of Legends fangirl self and not be judged for it.
One especially has made my days so much brighter over the past few months of being stuck at home and feeling like I had nowhere to go and no one to talk to. Just being able to be around people who share the same interests and who are happy to jump into voice chat and have fun has absolutely saved my mental wellbeing from the dark place it was headed. Knowing I can just drop in the Discord for a chat with anyone who is online at the time has been so nice. There have been community nights, there have been awesome initiatives for tournaments and movie nights. As added bonus it was so nice to see everyone come together and send the most important member on the server some love and compassion when he was going through a rough time.
It’s just a very wholesome, supportive, drama free environment, although some jabs here and there are common, and it’s absolutely what I needed, and still need, in my life. With the pandemic dragging on and regulations getting more and more strict I feel like they’re slowly squeezing the life out of any offline interaction possible. So I turn to what I’ve been turning to for most of my life and take comfort in the presence of people on the internet. Because no matter what, they can’t take that away from me.

As such I’m going to stick around, talk to some of the lovely people I’ve gotten to know and for a while, even just a little while, feel like I’ve found my home.