Reflections on the summer so far

My new window dressings- so nerdy!

My posting has tapered off a bit even though I'm still playing WoW regularly. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had a case of summer doldrums, this is actually an issue I've had for the past few summers and seems to be due to the unstructured time I am left with once the semester's teaching assignments are over. Having been indoctrinated into the GOGOGO workaholic attitude of the sciences, any break in the workload has become a source of guilt and distress. Added to this are some unhealthy behavioral patterns I have learned over the years for dealing with social stressors. So too much unstructured time + any kind of drama or conflict in my life can trigger a fluctuating state of severe anxiety and depression that seemingly feeds itself and can become uncontrollable. The good news is that I have learned a lot about why my brain responds this way from a behavioral and physiological standpoint, from reading and therapy, which reassures my scientist side enormously. Armed with a better understanding of how my crazy brain works, and with the support of my fabulously wonderful boyfriend, I've been successful this summer in pulling myself out of the doldrums and dealing with stressors in a healthy way. That's a quick summary of a lot of progress but I think that's all the detail I'm comfortable with in a public forum.

During this time, I have been using WoW as a relaxation tool more than ever this past few weeks. Fossegrimme's slow leveling progress has been full of exploration and achievements that I haven't acquired on any of my other toons. I set up an evening's playtime by saying something like, "Tonight I'm going to help the Wyrmrest Accord," and then send Fossegrimme to Dragonblight to see what she can do. With a few dungeons sprinkled in, she's acquired 1-2 levels a night this way and is now at level 81 and wearing her first set of Cata gear!

Shortly afterwards, she finished her studies with the Kirin Tor in Dalaran for the Higher Learning achievement!

She received a book in the mail, and a means to take it to Archmage Vargoth in his secret room in the Violet Citadel.

Impressed by her finding, he gave Fossegrimme a familiar to help with her future studies!

Yes! Fossegrimme even decided to go blonde for a bit to celebrate her recent achievements!

What's next for Fossegrimme? Well, I'm a bit burned out on the Cata questing content, so she will be finishing her leveling process in dungeons for the most part. This is also due to the fact that her opening quests in Mt. Hyjal were an awful experience: clothie in Wrath gear is so squishy! If she could get a Hot Streak proc off she was fine, but otherwise she was being pummeled unmercifully by every mob. Even once she learned to switch to Frost Armor and Mana Shield, it was a tough go. She spent about as much time eating mage food and corpse walking as actually doing quests. So needless to say I would rather brave Cata normal PUGs than continue that experience!

Not related to the paragraph below, just a cool picture!

Another cool thing that has happened is that I have transferred Fossegrimme to the Shadow Council server to play with a friend, and hopefully with his guild at some point. Unfortunately, the day after I transferred my friend's subscription ran out and he hasn't yet been able to re-up, but I hope that will happen soon. The good side of this is that I will very likely be able to run Fossegrimme with his max level shaman as  soon as he is back in game.

Shadow Council is an interesting server. It is lower population than my old server, Drak'Thul, and at first I was lamenting the scarcity of necessary items on the auction house (OMG Frostweave cloth 60G/stack!!). But just over the past couple of weeks I have come to enjoy the more small town feel of Stormwind, with just a small crowd of people hanging out and doing business rather than 300 arseholes blocking the auction house mailbox with their stupid l33t mounts. There is also a small but long-standing RP community here, so I have downloaded the MyRoleplay addon and filled out a description for Fossegrimme. We'll see if that leads anywhere, although interestingly I haven't run into a single person yet who is also using the addon. I'll keep looking though!