Last Wednesday Legion timewalking with mythic+ got released for the first time.

Having done the dungeons at the time, to the point of not doing them very much anymore towards the end of Legion—probably more due to general boredom with the state of the game or the game itself than the dungeons themselves—I didn’t have all that high expectations from this event. This was enforced by my general disinterest towards World of Warcraft at the moment, as I’m just really not feeling the game—probably because I’ve been playing it for a long time now without significant breaks.

This, however, turned out not to be the case. To my surprise, doing the dungeons again is actually a great deal of fun, much more so than pretty much any current content. I’m not sure if this is merely because I actually enjoy them more, or if the fact I am once again playing more with friends along with nostalgia are the primary contributing factors to the amount of fun I’m having, but it was definitely a positive surprise.

It feels a bit strange to actually have fun playing World of Warcraft again, and certainly not something I was expecting to happen so soon or suddenly, but it is a nice feeling to have.

What still puzzles me however, is why timewalking in general is an event, and not merely something one can choose to queue for whenever. I get that it might make sense to not make the weekly quest available at any time, but the dungeons themselves feels like would be a sensible choice. Especially considering all the scaling tech now implemented for the new leveling experience, the distinction feels so completely arbitrary.

Now I just need to consider if I have the time and motivation to tacke the mage tower challenges as well, as those are back too. I did give the discipline priest one a few half-hearted tries, but I do think it might be fun to make more of an effort towards it. I’m just noticing a certain feeling of frustration in me towards again the time-limited nature of that as well, which is making it more difficult to actually start ironically due to feeling forced to do it.

Well, time will tell how that develops, I still have Endwalker to play too so it’s not like I’m missing fun things to do—here’s hoping I can get started on actually doing them at some point.

I have recently started what will undoubtedly prove to be a long journey were it to prove successful: learning Japanese. It’s something I have wanted to do for a long time—since my teens, really—because the language just has a certain cool-factor for me, perhaps because it’s so seemingly different? Or potentially because it is a language one stumbles upon often enough through gaming and knowing it seems like it could be useful.

I have been putting it off for a while since I wanted to be in a somewhat comfortable situation with my Russian-learning before I started with another language, but decided to jump in anyway since while my Russian is far from perfect or even usable at this point, I feel like I have hit a wall with the tools and methods I am using currently in that department and until I find another approach to continuing it doesn’t really make sense to keep punishing myself with something I’m rather sure won’t work to get me fluent with the language.

Interestingly, my motivation in learning Japanese has been much higher than it was at any point—even starting out—with Russian, and I’ve repeatedly ended up exceeding what I have previously had as the daily goal while I’m used to just barely meeting that bar. I’m not sure if it’s because the start is so “easy” with me merely having to start learning the alphabet which makes me stay more motivated, or if there is just a greater internal desire to actually learning the language than there was in the case of Russian. I mean, Russian perhaps feels to me more like one of those “would definitely be cool to know it” kind of languages, but I’m just not sure if the motivation is there for actually learning it or if I just like the idea of knowing it. The idea of learning Japanese is definitely a long-lived one, so perhaps it is also merely the satisfaction and impatience that comes with starting something one has had planned for so long?

I do have to admit though, I am noticing a certain level of increased resistance in actually accomplishing the daily goal now that the exercises are getting more difficult and I actually have to have a greater degree of concentration in order to complete them, though at the same time I am more willing to actually try to put in that concentration into the task than I have been in recent times with Russian. Perhaps it was just a bad day or too as well, is certainly also a real possibility since my mood has been rather variable of late.

At any rate, I’m curious to see how this exploration continues, especially as the exercises continue to get harder and harder, and I’ll keep brushing up on my Russian on the side as well so as to not forget the things I have already learned in case I find a good way to keep learning the language more in the future, but for now I’m just excitedly looking forward to knowing a language I have wished to know since childhood.

Maybe that also helped me with starting to learn German, having studied it before and consequently actually having a certain level of base desire to actually knowing the language better. I certainly put a lot more effort learning back then than I do now, though to be fair the need for me to know the language was also greater.

I had two rather strange moments today, where I became somewhat disturbingly aware of my own sentience.

At one point, in the middle of a sentence, I just became very aware of the fact I was talking and explaining things, and started questioning from where I was drawing the things I was saying, how I knew all of it, and how strange it really is to just know and understand things.

Later on, after having watched a TV show and being transported back to reality by the ending of the episode, I just somehow became acutely aware of the strangeness of being and this strange disconnect of me having just been so involved and inside of the happenings of the show and the people within, especially since it is all happening in third person, and then being suddenly jerked back into reality where I am myself and things happen in the first person.

These moments are, luckily, somewhat rare for me, since when they do happen they have a rather profound negative effect on my mental well-being in the moment. I doubt the human psyche is built for such examination of the self.

Yet at the same time, I think this certain distance one takes to the self in such moments might prove useful in exploring the, shall we say, defects of the self—behaviors which lead a person to go against their own wishes or interests. Today I unfortunately did not have the energy for such exploration as the experiences rather took everything out of me, the latter more so than the former, yet I think these are thoughts worth hanging on to for a short while, in case I do find more to be had in exploring this matter further.

It’s getting dark really early.

Now that isn’t all that strange, being something that has been happening for as long as I’ve been alive, what is a bit stranger though is that while it probably isn’t the first time I notice being affected by it, it definitely hasn’t been many years. Until not that long ago I even preferred the dark in a lot of cases, with its more cozy atmosphere, yet now I am definitely noticing how it’s affecting my mood in a not so positive way—making me more lethargic and even more difficult than otherwise to get going on things.

What seems to have helped is increasing my dosage of D³—something I take as a supplement anyway—but I’m not quite sure if that’s just placebo or actually working at this point. I feel better though, here’s hoping that feeling stays.

Another thing that hit me the other day, was how seemingly quickly this fall has gone by, something I felt especially strongly as I was out shopping the other day and there was some sort of Santa-event going on and my first thought being “it’s a bit early for that isn’t it?” yet quickly having to concede that with it being about a month until Christmas it really isn’t that early for something like that—maybe it could still have waited until December though, feels somehow more fitting that way.

I wonder what’s behind that, since I don’t think there has been anything particularly interesting happening that would’ve caused the time to go by so quickly. But then, maybe exactly that is the problem, I haven’t had much going on—partially fueled by my less-than-motivated state caused by the darkness—meaning the days have blended into each other and everything feels quick in retrospect even though the individual days might’ve felt somewhat slow at the time.

With the help of some of that newfound energy I’ll try to stay a bit more active again, we’ll see if that ends up helping as the winter progresses.

I am noticing a trend in my thinking that often leads to me feeling somewhat lost or unsure about the things I have done, or rather how to go forward with them, namely: false expectations.

Most recently, I am noticing this again with Linux, where I once more am feeling the desire to try it out a bit more and have actually done so on my laptop this time around—where I am currently using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed—but the “problem” I have ran into once again is this old feeling of “now what?”. I’ve installed it, am using it and for the most part enjoying it—aside from the small problems I had with the wireless networking and touch pad, both which seem to be solved now—but it’s all just so disappointingly normal that I am to a degree asking why I bothered. Don’t get me wrong, I still like Linux and will probably keep using it on my laptop for the foreseeable future even if desktop is probably out of the question for now due to gaming, but I had just for some reason expected more even though I’m not quite sure what and since that expectation was unreasonable I didn’t end up getting it.

It’s also something I’m running into with Final Fantasy XIV, where while I have been enjoying leveling rather a lot so far, I’m kind of stuck with it at the moment since I’ve ended up wondering what I’m doing it for—fun being the obvious answer, since I’m having fun—because I just stop playing the job basically the moment I hit max level. I did do some more playing with the white mage as I quite enjoyed healing, but even that was rather minor. It doesn’t really help that every time I do end up hitting max level I have on the one hand this feeling of elation of finally reaching the goal I had been working on, but simultaneously this overwhelming feeling of emptiness since I don’t really know what to do without something to work on. All of which ends up leading to this nagging feeling of wanting to play more, yet not knowing what to do once I am playing.

Perhaps there is a solution here in two parts. Part one: learning to set new goals ahead of time, so that even once I finish one I immediately have something new I can start on—or rather, preparing those new goals so that I am ready to start the moment I finish if I so desire.

Part two: learning to let go. By this I mean for example, even though I technically had the next goal ready and waiting once I finished leveling white mage, since I had grown so attached to what I was working on previously I took a long while to start on the next thing. This in and of itself is fine, working for a long while on something confers a certain level of attachment to that thing when it’s good so I’m not saying I should detach myself, but when that attachment is keeping me both from enjoying the old thing since I don’t know what to do with it as well as preventing me from starting something new since I’m clinging to the old the only thing it’s bringing is trouble and that is unnecessary. If you love something let it free and all of that.

Now of course, I’m not sure these things will solve my problem, and talking about it is always easier than actually executing on something—along with the nasty tendency of planning and failing to execute something resulting in a rather big amount of stress and thus negative feelings for me—but maybe writing about it here can be a first step towards a better me. If not, maybe it at least provides some food for thought for you, dear reader.