Cav's Place

When I went on LiveJournal yesterday to see if there were any new posts to read, I noticed this “writer’s block” question: “If you arrived at your front door and saw your first love standing there, what would you do or say?” Found it oddly fitting, because first loves somehow came up during a recent chat with Tiel and that made me try to glance at Rose’s profile on Facebook, only to see that she no longer showed up on a search. Wondered if she got married and changed her last name, so I searched for her e-mail, but still came up empty. Then I searched on Google and her Facebook profile was the first match, but when I clicked it I got a message saying the page doesn’t exist. At which point I figured out what happened, logged off Facebook and clicked that search result again. Sure enough, there was the profile. So, if that were to happen, I’d ask her why the hell did she put me on ignore. I mean, the last time I sent her something, and probably also the last time I looked her up, was on her birthday, last year, when I just sent her my usual birthday message. She just replied to say thanks and that was that. So I’m really curious now, wondering what exactly happened during these past several months to cause this to happen, since I’m quite sure I didn’t send her anything else since then.

Otherwise, people sure seem to be following the usual routine and no longer talking to me after a little while. Actually, in most cases it looks like it’s the more and more common routine of no longer even logging on anywhere, apparently due to being too busy with “real life” to make time for such things anymore. Andreea is, as usual, busy with school and, more recently, work as well, which is something I’d be at her throat over if I could actually get to talk to her, or talk to her more than once every other week or so, as it seems to be the case lately. The last time Shiri sent something was a month ago, saying that she’s terribly busy with school and can’t figure out how she’ll handle everything, and she hasn’t even logged on since, or at least she hasn’t logged on to OkCupid and I haven’t seen her on messenger. I haven’t seen Ria log on in two weeks, which is rather worrying since she was there on most days before and it seemed like we were actually starting to talk more, not to mention that I just checked her blog now and I see no new entries in over a month, which makes just these last two weeks be the problem because she seems to normally be averaging about one entry every other week. As for Alina, ever since switching our conversations from OkCupid to Yahoo! Messenger, we just chatted a few times, over a month ago, when she kept saying that she’s really busy and is trying to get herself organized and stop giving in to distractions, by which she mainly meant chatting and browsing, and the only thing I saw from her since was a brief message a few days ago, to say a joke I sent her was funny. And then you have that former classmate of mine who looked me up a while back, who at first seemed to make a fair bit of effort to keep talking to me and then all of a sudden gave up on that idea completely, but I don’t mind that since she’s just someone I don’t mind talking to, not someone I particularly care to keep in touch with, so if she no longer wants to talk that’s fine by me.
The only partial exception seems to be Tiel, who at least is frequently busy with pretty nice things, namely her boyfriend and gaming, which also make for interesting conversations when she is actually able to talk. Unfortunately, “real life” things pop up more and more frequently with her as well and I only see that getting much worse as time passes. And, either way, there’s still the really annoying fact that she’s on-line all the time, sometimes leaving it like that even while she’s sleeping or not at home, so I never know when she actually is available and when I’d be better off trying to strike up a conversation with a wall.

At least, between actually playing and keeping up with posting bug reports and suggestions, Forsaken World is still keeping me busy. Since I’m not a social creature, it’s getting more and more frustrating, but parts of it are still nice enough. Unfortunately, there are the other parts, such as the fact that you need to do certain instances in order to complete quests or, perhaps more importantly, obtain any decent gear for yourself. Since those instances are getting more and more complex, they require more and more knowledge and coordination, therefore resulting in lots of awkward issues.
Actually, just tried the second gear instance, Emperor’s Canyon, yesterday. Yes, my mage entered the instance meant for obtaining level 20 to 29 gear for the first time at level 37. My vampire, also level 37 right now and soon to be 38, didn’t even enter it yet. I mainly went there to complete the quests that sent me there and to get some achievements, though it’d be nice if I’d find a weapon as well, as it’d be better than what I currently have. I’ll need to go there five times on each character to get one achievement, for example, but this is a very scary prospect at the moment, considering how things went the first two times. But the next step is the Lost Lighthouse, which is known to be a quite difficult and long instance, so I really get cold feet at even the thought of trying that. Not to mention that I really should do Nightmare Carnival as well whenever possible, but never did so far because it can be quite tricky and people keep specifying that they only want those who know what they’re doing while searching for groups, which certainly rules me out.
I do feel significantly less awkward on my vampire, as she can actually be useful in several ways and, most importantly from my point of view, can hold her own and take care of herself if things go wrong, but that also means there are certain expectations when she ends up in a group and I’d rather first learn the ropes and get her in only once I know what to do. On the other hand, all the mage can do is basically sit there and hit stuff, hoping for a quick rescue if any enemy decides to target him, but that’s pretty much all anyone expects a mage to do, so nobody has any real reason to complain if I’m just sitting back and watching what everyone else is doing. Hence he gets sent in first, but that only makes me feel even more inadequate, knowing that I couldn’t do anything in there on my own.
I do my best to play my part and also plug any holes I see in the group, but that’s hard to do when I don’t know what part I’m supposed to be playing. Now I’m usually a very fast learner, but feel terribly awkward in a group, even a virtual one, and just sort of end up curled up in a ball and just wishing for it to end so I’ll be able to get back to doing stuff on my own and at my own pace, which sometimes prevents me from acting on what I’m learning and quite certainly prevents me from asking or saying anything. I mean, as soon as I figure out how things are supposed to be going, I have the whole strategy in my mind and keep meaning to spell it out when I see people not following it, but almost never say anything…