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"I've only lived 18 years, but I don't want to change any of them. They're all part of my life, even the failures." -Makise Kurisu
God damn I miss Final Fantasy XIV guild. I miss them a whole fucking lot. With the recent announcement of the latest expansion Shadow Bringers I've gotten to reminiscing about my time in Eorzea and the people that I spent it with. So in no particular order let's reminisce together about the lovable group of colorful characters that I called guildmates.
Haylee Heavensong: I know I said no particular order, but they were the first one to invite me to the guild in the first place. Now they're unique because it's one character controlled by a husband and wife. Never did figure out which one contacted me. I had posted somewhere that I was looking for a group of people to play with the the party finder for the games first dungeon was not helping. They sent me a message, got a few other members to help clear the dungeon, and sent me a friend request afterwards along with a invite to the in-game chat room they shared with other English speaking guilds (ended up on a Japanese server by accident). Wanna say within two weeks I asked to join the guild and was met with open arms. If they hadn't responded to my random post than I doubt I would've stuck with the game. Thanks for showing me the ropes Haylees you don't know how grateful I am. Cap'ir Ke: This dude was a fucking trip and during the time he was playing FFXIV (hasn't been on in years unfortunately) was one of my best friends online. He was always up for helping me clear dungeons and trials. Showed me how a lot of systems worked and how to change my UI to my liking. The biggest thing he ever did though was after I had finished the main story. Everyone was gearing up to fight the new raid that had just come out and while I had it unlocked I didn't have strong enough gear to do it. He just gave me handcrafted gear that he made, for free. Told everyone to give him 15 minutes while he did. Now while a seemingly insignificant thing in the grand scheme it meant the world to me cause it showed that these people do care and wanted me to have fun with them. I miss this guy a lot and still a little sad whenever I see that his character is still not active in my friends list. Lee Shusheng: If there was ever a party happening or their wasn't a party happening you could bet your ass the Lee Shusheng was at the center of it. This was another one of my best friends in game (that ended up switching servers after an extended period away). The first time I met Lee was at a bar in game that I had a quest at. He was there dancing on the table, in pink underwear and nothing else, telling the guild leader that this was his power move and would win the hearts of everyone in the guild. He then proceeded to chase (think it was tag) the leader around the area screaming that he will show his true strength as everyone laughed their asses off in chat. Lee is the purest definition of a wild card +4. He always showed up to raids and dungeons in the most bizarre outfits, usually pants-less, and was the type of random humor that was actually funny. The day I saw him in the bar was my first full day as a member of the guild and I new I made the right choice. Lee was right their with Cap'ir for a lot of dungeon clears for me and had some insane knowledge on bosses. We timed out in a dungeon (we cleared it already) cause Lee decided that before we left we should have a victory dance party. Dungeons give you 90 minutes to clear them. That dance party lasted for 50 minutes. Valia Rosa: The original leader of Harmonium and the quintessential mother of the group. Had as many alts as she was allowed to have. All had varying levels, races, and personalities. RPed every chance she had to and got right down to brass tax when it came to clearing the high end raids. I owe a lot to her. Good clan mates are one thing and are incredibly important, but if you have a shit leader than they can only do so much. Val was the absolute best and was so forgiving of my sporadic playtime and pleads for help. Part of me think it was because I was the youngest member at the time (17 when I joined) and she had a kid of her own she tried to get to play a bunch. It was most likely cause she's just a super awesome person. It was sad to see her transfer to another server but I'm sure she's happy to have other RPers around her. Sara Goldmoon: The current leader of Harmonium and the best damn White Mage you'll ever find. She was another one that I felt always had an eye on me. She was always willing to jump into dungeons with me and explain shit when Cap and Lee were off dancing in the corner. A wealth of knowledge and a master at the art of leveling EVERY CLASS in the game to the max. She took over the reigns as leaders seamlessly. While there was a leader in-between them I think that has to do with how close she was to Val (they got married in game after all). Just all around a super nice person and one the best members of the guild. Virgo Memelan: The wise and weird uncle of the group. Lee showed up to raids in weird gear Virgo would show up in the basic form of classes and still be on the top players. Another player willing to jump into a dungeon to help out any of the new players (usually because he's run the endgame activities into the ground) . Usually the one to come up with unique races to have with other guilds through dungeons. Virgo was the grand master Summoner I tried to learn from and was one of the reasons I dropped Black Mage for it in the first place. Tiritiri Minimini: Name says it all folks. She is just a ball of energy and someone I could easily visualize jumping up and down in their seat as they typed stuff. First to say hello as I log in and the first to say goodbye when I leave. It's pretty hard to stay in a bad mood once Tiri starts talking. Catalina Feloneous and Nekomata Tejas: Each have hit the alt character limit on our server and each use all of them (usually with in the same day) and all of Cat's characters' names are within one letter of each other. They're the only two people I know that work on a ranch specifically a horse ranch if I remember correctly. Another wife and husband duo respectively and two of the sweetest people you'll meet. I'm not a hundred percent on the being in southern US, but they have the hospitality to make me think so. Every time they log on there's some kind of story about the ranch and they usually swap out playing and working with one another. They're the relationship goals of the FC. Zeno, Leeby, Stormis, Hex, Rumina, and everyone else: I could go on forever about the people in my guild, but seeing how it's 1 am and I have class in 8 hours I should stop. I miss all of these guys so much. It's been like not seeing really close friends for months. Unfortunately due to monetary constraints I haven't been able to jump on in about half a year, but I'm hoping with me possibly switching departments at work and summer slowing coming up that'll I'll have the time and money to do so. I could also just make this as part of my birthday gift to myself, but that'll depend on the paychecks this month.
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It's that time of year again where we must say goodbye to a class and this time it's actually one I've really enjoyed and has helped me a lot. Everything from the blog post to the narrative project and even the research project to some extent though that more or less just drove home the problems I've been dealing with for the past year or so. this class has been in many ways very cathartic for the struggles I've been facing in my personal life. For instance the Three Good Things a Day blog was a much needed reprieve. I've always focused on the bad in my life whether on purpose or through some subconscious form of torment I felt the need to put myself through. For better or worse I've always worn my heart on my sleeve and sometimes that can let stuff hit me harder than it should. That week of just keeping track of what went was a major boost to my general mood (if only I kept up with it).
The narrative project was another big one for me this semester. The major theme for my whole website has been how much the past is important even the worst times. I won't move past that day, but I can eventually truly come to terms with it and have it not effect me as much when my brain decides to randomly remind me about it ten years later. If I were to choose the thing that had the biggest impact though it would be the blog by a large margin. I've never been a great talker when I'm not being forced to speak. I work retail and can speak to customers and coworkers all day no problem, but ask me to speak about something in a class room (or talk to friends about serious topics) and I freeze up. This blog has been a tremendous way to write the thoughts and feelings in my head in a coherent manner (and not just shout them out at no one on twitter). I really wish I kept up with my Digiblog series though (part 1 and 2). That was my first attempt at writing a long term project just for fun since high school. Who knows I might continue it after this is all said and done. Hell I've been kicking around the idea of posting the old stories I've tried writing over the years here so I can get back the drive to finish them. All in all that would be three total stories, one with only two chapters, one with five or six chapters done, and one that I actually completed the first draft for the first of three books. This was a good semester all in all. I may have fallen off a little bit towards the end due to some personal circumstances, but I was able to finish my second semester back after a year and a half away from school, I found a great outlet to do some writing for fun every now and then, and I just had one of the best classes ever. Here's to the future. "Consider, can the universe be justifiably called infinite? Doubtful. It may not have a discernible end, but it had a beginning and its component parts definitely have a limited cosmological shelf-life. Splitting hairs or not, if history tells us anything, it's that scientists often make very poor poets. We're all just a ship of fools chasing phantoms, heedless of what really underwrites natural law." - Okabe Rintaro For this one I decided to put down the first paragraph of my opening. I went with the anecdote route because the day I talk about is a perfect example of the Three Good Things process. This was a day that a lot of stuff clicked for me and I was able to let go of stress.
It’s a Sunday night and I’m hanging out with my friends in my basement as usual. For some reason my friend Katie’s house was brought up and I’m going off on a tangent about the island that separates her family room from her small dinning room. I was talking about how it doesn’t make any sense because it completely closes off the room, it makes it near impossible to pull the chair at the dinning room table out far enough to be comfortable, and just went on and on. Mid rant my friend Eric jokingly says that I should just be an architect and I stopped mid-sentence. It was a like sitcom where one character says something that makes another character stop cold and everything they were wondering about and stressing over just clicked and they knew what to do next. Because of that one joke I am now changing my career path. So I was supper busy this week. Work is getting geared up for the holiday season (just had a meeting at 7:00 am yesterday for Black Friday), friend and family commitments are ever prevalent, and I haven't had time or energy to really do any research or plan out the full scope of my project. So I decided to use all of that.
After keeping track of three good things every week I kept track of how my mood was after not doing that for almost a week. Essentially using my lack of time to still do research. I gotta say that not doing for a week after doing it for a week really drives home just how helpful that was. The whole week has just been so draining and I know going deeper into the holidays it's only going to get worse so I plan on keeping up the Three Good Things a day and documenting on how that gets me through the tougher days this holiday like Black Friday and working on Thanksgiving. Links:
What is Positive Pyschology & Why Is it Important? (Positive Psychology Program) Greater Good in Action: Science-Based Practices for a Meaningful Life (UC Berkeley's Project Home Page) Three Good Things (Greater Good in Action) Finding three things that went well that day or you were grateful for... Tougher than it should be at times in all honesty. This did really help with my mood though in all honesty.
Admittedly I've already covered this one to a certain extent in my blog about family, but I'll do my best to not repeat things. That being said let's dive into the second part of my eight part series, this one being about Friendship.
Friendship didn't always come easy for me. I've always had friends but it wasn't till around 7th grade that I had a "friend group". Before that I had one or two really close friends that I would hangout with every weekend and try to meet up with after school. Once 7th grade hit my... I don't want to say former best friend cause he and I are still close, but we haven't been as close as we used to ever since he had to go out of town for college, anyway my other best friend Steve introduced me to who would become my first/only girlfriend and my ex. Than we made friends with the guy that stole Steve's lunchbox every lunch, not hyperbole it was in fact every lunch, Barr (he's also named Nick so we call him by his last name. Than came in Mike, than the two Ryan's, than Josh. By freshman year I had a group of pretty good people to hangout with. Than by the end of the first year of college, Josh had become an intolerable jackass, Mike showed his true colors as a manipulative asshole, Hom (one of the Ryan's) and I just drifted apart, and after a year of dating my ex and I broke up. During that first year of college however I met a few new friends as well. After awkwardly walking up to the three of the them while they were playing Yu-Gi-Oh (never too old for a card game especially since Yu-Gi-Oh nowadays take a freaking math degree to understand). Alex, Peter, and Eric were soon integrated with my core friend group. From there came Ellie and my soon to be current best friend and Eric's girlfriend Katie. Now we cut to about two years later and well... Peter and Ellie walked away from the group because (and this is an unfortunate theme throughout the past few years) people couldn't be adults and talk their shit out. Alex revealed himself to be a very toxic person to be around and we said our goodbyes to him last winter. Now though, we have Eric's brother EJ, Emily, someone Barr, Travers (second Ryan), and myself went to high school with and Jyn (another Katie and Travers' girlfriend) in the group. So the question is why would I go through this long backstory for this blog. Why divulge what some could say has been a mixed bag of luck in keeping friends and picking friends. Well to obviously illustrate some kind of point. Honestly that should be pretty obvious. Friendship to me is one of the most important things in the world. The support of a friend can mean so much more than a family member's. There is no obligation any friend has to help you through your rough times, to pick you up when you fall. Good friends will be around when you get back up on your feet, those you can call family will help you stand back up. Take Katie for instance. The night of my narrative essay I was a wreck. She was the first person I told and she was the one that checked on me the most afterwards. Steve was there for me when my ex and I broke up. Eric has seen through the masks I wear more than anyone else. Barr is always the first to motivate me to try something new. Emily is the first to point out bullshit and put an end to it. EJ and Jyn are amazing example of what it means to be an 'adult' while still being a kid at heart. Travers has had my back several times over the years. Other than my parents I couldn't even begin to make similar praises about my family, let alone my extended family. I couldn't say similar things about any of the people I've worked with over the past few years or the people I've gamed with online. Friendship can be the strongest and most rewarding thing in the world, but as I've shown it can also be the most fragile thing to hold on to. I've had friends come and go for a multitude of reasons some good and some not so good. It's the one that have stuck around through my worst times and continue to root for me for my best times are the one that are wroth keeping, They are worth the trouble. They are worth the headaches. They are worth the heartaches. They are worth everything they've put me through and they are worth everything I've put them through. Alright. So THIS derailed a little bit. The point is that friends will always be there, when you're doubting yourself even when they are struggling themselves. If you can find a good group, real fucking good group of people hold onto them. Work through the shit that tries to pull you apart and come out stronger because of it. So quick side note before we get started, I fucking love Digimon. I watched the various shows religiously as a kid and I've gotten back into it with the most recent two games (which are outstanding and great turned based RPG games) so that's where the idea for this series of blogs comes from. In the original show there are eight crests representing eight values, Courage, Friendship, Love, Knowledge, Sincerity, Reliability, Hope, and Light (they are also my newest necklace set because why not). The last one not so much a value in the traditional sense, but can still be interpreted as such. So I thought in the middle of class today, hey I like sharing the thoughts in my head (here and here) and I've definitely have thoughts on these so why not right about them? I'm going to go in order listed above so without further ado let's talk about courage.
Courage is a weird thing. A courageous act to one person can be seen as a reckless/stupid one to another and sometimes to a third person as a cowardly one. Let's look as this example. Say you see a friend in trouble, whether it's physical, verbal, emotional, whatever someone you know is in trouble in someway shape or form and you know trying to help them will but you in danger as well, what's the courageous thing to do? Do you go and help them even though you might get hurt as well. but isn't that a reckless action that could make the situation worse? Okay so you instead go get someone better suited to handle the situation because your recognize that you aren't the best person to handle this situation, well now you're possibly leaving a friend alone and walking away you coward. Maybe the situation is that your friend is doing something illegal. Is the courageous thing to confront them upfront about it or to tell the authorities. Well now aren't you either butting into a situation you aren't involved in or being a snitch and possibly ruining a friends life or at the very least their faith and trust in you. So what in the hell is courage? To me courage is all of that. It's helping and not helping a friend. It's confronting a friend about a problem or telling the people that need to know. It's making the tough decisions that no one else can, will, or wants to make. It's recognizing when you need to swallow your pride and confront a part of you head on. It's admitting you're not equipped to handle a situation and getting someone who can. It's choosing to help someone when no one else can or will. Courage is admitting you need help and you aren't invincible. Courage is admitting you are losing against your inner demons and asking for help. Courage is admitting you can be wounded and need a pick me up. Courage is talking about the shit going wrong in your life. Courage is asking for help. Courage is not holding all of that in. Courage is not shouldering the world. Courage is not fighting by yourself. Courage is not taking everything on by yourself so other people don't deal with your baggage. Courage is in all of us. Even small bits. It comes out when it needs to know, but not always when we want it to. Running isn't cowardice, admitting you need help isn't weak, saying that I'm not strong enough for this isn't pathetic. Courage isn't black and white. A courageous act by one person in a different scenario could be seen as a reckless one. A courageous act can be as small asking that person out, admitting you need to go back to school, admitting you aren't as happy as you make yourself out to be, or admitting you took on too much at once and you need to drop something. Today has been an interesting day. Yeah, interesting is the best word for it. My original plan today was to hangout with my best friend and watch Your Lie in April and absolutely fantastic anime about a child piano prodigy. She unfortunately wasn't feeling well so I used today to get some stuff done and just be by myself. It's been a while since I've done that. Between work, family, school, and my friends I haven't just been by myself for awhile now and I didn't realize just how much I needed that. I was able to recharge my mental and emotional batteries and listened to a lot of slower and more somber songs. One of which being The Real Me by Andrew Stein.
This song has always resonated with me. At some points in my life more so than others, but today was the first time it really sank in. There are very few people that i would consider that I'm truly myself with. I would imagine that's true for most everyone though. We all act differently depending on the situation. From school to family to work to the general public everyone dons a different persona to make interactions go as smoothly as possible. I'm no different. At the same time though wouldn't it be appropriate to say we constantly reject a certain aspect of ourselves at any given moment? At any point in time we feel we have to repress a part of our true self to fit into the environment we find ourselves in. Which would also lead to the conclusion that people are very rarely their true selves. Take me for instance. Most people would say I'm rather shy and quiet in school. I don't speak out in class too often and when I do it's usually quick and short blurbs. When I'm with my family, every single word I say is calculated. Before I even begin to speak I run through my head every possible scenario that could stem from what I'm about to say. When I'm with my friends I will shout out any little thing that comes to mind and not care what the hell happens afterward. When I'm by myself I think about this kind of stuff and usually torture myself over all the little shit I did wrong in the past week. So when can someone truly be themselves? When can anyone show every last shred of their personality and being? If I only knew. My best friend is the person I am the closest too and she has gotten the closest to seeing the "real me", but even she hasn't seen everything and it's getting more and more tiring to keep up all of this different masks. I'm tired of keeping quiet, of constantly planning everything I say, of not being able to show my friends a part of me that's becoming more and more important. I'm also terrified of what will happen. What if I say something in class that get's spread throughout campus, what if a off handed remark leads to a fight with my sister's and I say things I can't take back? What if the rest of my friends aren't as accepting and I lose them? At the very least I know the last one is nothing to worry about, but fear is a force that can paralyze the best of us. With the holidays coming closer I've been thinking a lot about family lately. The necessity of it, the reasons for having it, the reasons for keeping it, and so on and so forth. I've come to the realization that there is more than just one kind of family. I have three in fact. Three distinct families that have made me into the person I am today, Three different families that if it weren't for them I wouldn't be here today.
The first one is obviously my birth family. With a mom and dad (this year was their 25th anniversary in fact) two older sisters and a older half-brother needless to say that alone time isn't generally in abundance, at least in the traditional sense. I'm without a doubt the proverbial black sheep of the family not for any bad reasons mind you. I've never had any interest in sports while my dad and two sisters go crazy every Sunday night. My oldest sister Nicole (yes I know how close our names are) is following in my mom's footsteps and working in the medical field. My brother is currently working with my dad at his construction company, which I've tried doing several times and it's always ended with us yelling at each other. Even when they're not doing something together most night they all usually spend at least a few hours just sitting in the family room with the occasional mild chatter. I on the other hand am usually sitting by myself in the basement. It's where my whole set up is, all of my gaming consoles, my computer, and all of my stuff. As it is my bedroom is only used for sleeping. I'm in the same house, I'm still a part of the family, and I've never felt unloved, but if I'm not out with friends I feel alone in that basement. My only interaction with my family most days is when they need to me run something up or down the basement steps. Despite all of that I know they have my back when I need them. In the end they are still my family, not matter how different I feel, no matter how lonely I might get, no matter how far I'll inevitably move away, I know that they'll always be there for me. My second family is my "created family", my friends. The best way to describe them would an eclectic group to say the least. Half of us from Springfield, half from Ridley, and few from just around. I've always felt that this kind of family is the hardest to maintain, but the most rewarding when you do. The only thing keeping a group like mine to together is a sense of mutual acceptance, liking, and shared interest. If any one person stops feeling like any of those three aspects are true it's easy enough for them to find a group of like minded individuals to hang out with. There's no traditional sense of family that says that just because we share the same parents or one gave birth to another that we have to stick it out through the bullshit. There's no memories of growing up in the same house to together. The only thing keeping friends together is the mutual agreement to do so. That's also why I think friends are the strongest connection you can have. At any point I can choose to walk away from them and the same goes for them, but even through everything that has happened, that is happening, and that will happen I've been lucky enough to surround myself with people that will always be there for me because they want to be. What keeps my group together is the sense of family that can only come from when you make a true connection with people and really open yourself up to them. The sense that the person who's shoulder you're crying on is there not because of some obligation they fell that they have, but because they genuinely care about you. The sense that the fun you're having on a Friday night and the camaraderie you feel won't still be there when you look back on that memory in ten years. This is the most fragile type of family by far, but it can also be the strongest connection you can have with any group. My third family is one I haven't spoken to in a while, but that doesn't matter because I know I'll be welcomed back when I can eventually afford my subscription again. My Free Company Harmonium in the MMO Final Fantasy XIV. I know none of their real names. I know the country some of them live in and even some of the states for my more 'local' clan mates. I know two of them work with horses, I know a few of them are in college, I know back when I first joined I was the youngest member at age seventeen. I know so little about all of them, but they are still family to me. When a gamer finds a guild they synchronize with, a group of people that they have some kind of other world connection with it's hard to look away from. Now families two and three can very easily overlap, I've never had the chance to do so, but I know a couple of people that have met with online friend in real life. The distinction comes from when they are separate entities. Close nit guilds in any game can be the family people go to to escape their real life families. It's the feel of escapism that games can give people while also giving them a group of people to escape to. I love all of my families, even the ones I don't get to visit as often as I would like. They all have helped shape me into who I am and they've all helped keep me here, whether or not they know it. Friends are important. Your hobbies are important. Family is essential. Links:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Biography Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) The Yellow Wallpaper (Audio Text) The Yellow Wallpaper Rewrite For this one I was tasked with rewriting a part from The Yellow Wallpaper, I choose the ending, and writing about a time where someone's else actions impacted be negatively. So I decided to write about the last New Years Eve party I went to and how the eventually led to the end of a friendship. In all honesty in probably was for the better, but the months leading up to my friends and I finally saying we had enough were freaking rough and I still lost a friend. He wasn't a good friend by any stretch of the word, but it's still a sad thing to lose someone in your life. A Negative Impact Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time! Thankfully Jane soon found the two of us, but she was so cross with me for tearing up that horrid yellow wallpaper all she could do was weep and wake up John. I tried to talk to them but no matter what I said they wouldn’t even acknowledge me. They did a curious thing though. They cleaners come to the house. On the day right before we leave? I thought it rather strange but decide to pay them no mind like they’ve been doing to me. We had one very simple rule to follow that New Year’s Eve. Don’t let the parents know who’s underage. It’s the most obvious thing to do when you’re drinking underage at someone else’s house. Those that drove that night left our wallets in our respective cars and those that didn’t drive just didn’t bring them. It’s was supposed to be so simple, but we didn’t account for the dumbass that was John. Now this guy has done absolutely idiotic stuff in the past (if I could share half the stories), but this was just stupid. So, a bunch of people are at this person’s house for New Year’s Eve and just a quick side note, this person’s house is just a what the hell am I even looking at kind of house. The hedges out front was cut into irregular shapes, trapezoids, pyramids, and the like, and the house itself looked like a giraffe. The outside tile was randomly designed light brown tiles randomly placed at odd distances and patterns with thick cream white concrete running throughout. Any way let’s jump to a little past 11pm and the party is in full swing. Drunken karaoke is happening in the living room, the hottest songs of the year being slurred out. Fighting games are being played a few rooms down with cheers and boos echoing throughout the house. The food that was prepared has been thoroughly destroyed by this point. Now during the whole party, the parents of the house have been keeping watch and making sure nothing got too out of hand and for some reason John though it was a smart idea to pull out his wallet and leave it out in the open. Now I can’t blame his parents for looking at his ID. With a house full of young twenty somethings some of which are known to be underage and aren’t drinking, I can understand wanting to make sure the law is being upheld so that nothing can come back to bite them in the ass. So, he got barred from ever coming back to that house, the party immediately ended, those that were drinking were the only ones allowed to stay the night, and a lot of the friendships he had at the party took a big hit. Now how did this all affect me I can hear you asking. I had to deal with the god damn aftermath from all of this. A good number of those friendships he fucked up were my friends and I. The coming months he got more and more toxic towards us because he felt we were “being unfair” about the whole situation. The amount of drunk texts and calls I got from him either begging for forgiveness or cursing me out is too much to even count. Our weekly Dungeons and Dragons game would turn into us either making sure he didn’t drink himself sick or get so high he passed out. He would never want to hangout anywhere else other than his house because if we did he wouldn’t be able to drink or smoke… I also think it’s because he wanted to have control. Thankfully we soon had enough and went our separate ways. I did learn a very important lesson from all of this. Toxic friends are not worth keeping, there’s only so much reasoning and discussion you can have with a person before you have to decide that they’re never going to change and you’re better off without them. John’s behavior wasn’t anything new, but the New Years Ever brought it into clarity. |
Nick D'AversaWriter, outstandingly good at mouthing along to songs, level 9 Dragonborn Blood Hunter, and just trying to figure out what in the hell I'm doing. Archives
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