Another world

I am back into playing World of Warcraft.  Strangely enough it was at Wendy's urging - she seemed to think that I needed focus, direction, something to give me that sense of achievement.  Most people default to the assumption that my spouse must be grumpy that I play games so they tend to be floored when I say that mine encourages me.  This is why my posts have been somewhat sparse as of late - somehow writing about the world is less urgent because it occupies a smaller place in my mind.

It has been a strange sort of trip back into another world that I inhabited to constantly and deeply for years.  I feel almost as though the real world is fading, like my real life is a fake and the real world is the one I inhabit while at my computer.  I am keeping up with all the things that I need to do but much of what I do for fun here and there is crumbling in the face of my desire to slay monsters and take their shiny stuff.  I get the shopping done and cook dinner but when it comes time to maintain the web of relationships I occupy I find it hard to put in all the time necessary to see all the people I want to see.  The smaller, newer, more tenuous connections fade away because I simply do not have the energy and time to put into maintaining them, much as I might wish otherwise.

I am finding new community though.  For years I played with my group of real life friends, mostly game geeks from the University of Waterloo, but by and large they have quit WOW and are focusing on things like children and jobs and other distractions in the 'real' world.  For the first time in a long time I had to go out and find a new group of people to play with.  I put up an ad, essentially a resume of both my personality and my playstyle, and although it took awhile for someone to approach me about it I found what seems to be a really good place.  It is full of people that seem to have a lot in common with me both in terms of playstyle, skill, and life situation.  I wrote my ad without trying to embellish anything because I figured that I want a guild that actually wants me and I seem to have hit on it.

Perhaps all you have to do to find people that you can have fun with is to find a random spot on the internet and talk about who you are and what you want.  At least, that seems to have worked for me.