Playing for Yourself

Last Sunday, I found myself caught in a spiral of trying to make everyone happy but myself.

Before Wrath's release I chose to go Inscription for the cosmetic druid form glyphs and for the extra glyph slot, both of which never arrived. I also chose it to be an asset to my guild -- as did 5 young men, each more enterprising than myself. Sunday, I realized that even the one positive about Inscription, the shoulder enchant, didn't matter -- the rep grind it would save me is Sons of Hodir, who have a tailoring pattern at Exalted I'm determined to get.

When I was an officer, I served with several men who felt passionately about raiding, and I got it into my head that by not helping 25 man raiding, I was not helping my guild (unpatriotic). So when Wrath arrived and Teo asked for more holy priests, I volunteered to go holy at 80. Sunday, I realized I'm unable to do 25-mans because they're late at night and I just got my schedule fixed (from getting up at 1pm with late night raiding to getting up at 8am with no raiding). Not doing 25's, from my experience with IVV's more hardcore members, means I felt massive amounts of guilt and failure, even though I personally prefer 10's.

It's easy to pressure me into doing things I don't want to, which is why I hate when others beg and badger in guild chat -- it makes me frazzled, guilty, and frustrated. Sunday, with Alliance swarming over the daily areas so I couldn't do the quest chains to open up useful rep (and, in the process, ding 80), I gave in to doing things other people wanted but that I had little interest in.

The entire day filled with disappointment, failure, and the realization that I push myself to give to others and neglect my own needs.

You read this and you think "Well, that's dumb. It's a game, you should have fun."

This line of thinking is wrong.

It is fun to me to be useful. The pain came when I realized how much I'm not useful. No, I don't want to be useful doing menial tasks for others or being harassed to heal heroics all the time, but I do enjoy filling needs when I'm available (i.e. not doing my own thing) and in the mood to do heroics; or signing heals for a raid in a spec the raid needs; or offering my skills in a helpful profession.

The problem that I realized was I can't fill the guild's need as a healer in 25-mans, and my profession is . . . well, useless. I don't even enjoy it, and I've wasted hundreds of herbs (i.e. gold) leveling it.

And I'm so busy helping others and trying to hit 80, I haven't had time to farm any of the 1 in 1000 droprate pets I'm dying to collect (or, omgitssopretty, the 1 in 5000 purple parrot). I want a phoenix so badly, I don't dare raise my roll against anyone for any other mount, though I'm not sure we'd even have enough dedicated people to farm it if we tried.

Sunday was a pile of horribleness, compounded by people saying cynical or discouraging things, my brother getting camped, and the experience bar that kept shouting "You can get me to 80 in 3 hours, what are you waiting for?" while Alliance scurried below like ants (six of them, and if you're not on a PVP server, I'll explain -- even if only one of the six attacked, it is PVP code that if I fought back the others would be forced to help whether they agreed with him for starting it or not).

I spent the rest of Sunday out of the game, regaining my equilibrium, and came to the following conclusions:

Do what you love. There was really no way I could have known how disappointing Inscription would be, and I still don't mind being holy, even if it's just for 10's.

Find a way to help that makes you happy. I love mount farming runs, and I'm secretly trying to work up karma points with the people around me so they'll all pass the phoenix to me if we ever get around to farming it. I also enjoy fishing and cooking, so I take pleasure in preparing raid buffs for guildmates, even if I can't see those buffs in 25-man action.

Don't overhelp. I care about mount farming, and I do want to heal heroics for people, but I draw the line at "I'm bored" activities as well as attunement runs. I have other things I'd rather do, and I can't even participate in everything that is important and urgent. My sister-in-law advised me to do what she does and ignore every "Want to do something" request that doesn't involve a whisper directly to her. I'm not sure if I can swing it, but I'll definitely try.

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.
She's a writer and way too easy to talk into things.
Beth's been married since her junior year of college.