A good scope isn't just for hunters anymore

I'm going to take a different direction today and attempt to write something actually useful. I suppose it's usefulness is entirely up to you, but hey, I'm givin' it a shot. You should be grateful.

I was lucky enough to be raised in a household where my parents encouraged me to do whatever I wanted; within reason, of course ('No, you can't quit school and wander around the country aimlessly'), but they generally let me decide for myself what I wanted to do with my life. For those with the drive and ambition, this is the PERFECT atmosphere to achieve your goals. For someone like myself, however, who lacks direction given such a care-free environment, it has become my bane.

This unintentionally-fostered indecision has carried over into my WoW experience, as one might have guessed. I have gone through countless characters (if you read my history... that's just the tip of the iceberg), never really 'settling down' with any single class. I love my ret paladin, don't get me wrong, but she's only been 80 for about 2 months now, so we'll have to wait and see where that goes. Speaking of my paladin, let me show you what I mean by 'indecision.'

I leveled my ret paladin when I became bored with my resto shaman. 1-80 was not much of a problem, stayed retribution for the entirety of my grind and never regretted it. Once I hit 80, however, I was at a loss of what to do. Run heroics for the somewhat lackluster upgrades they afforded? PuG a Naxx or two in the hopes of getting better upgrades? Farm BGs until my eyes bled and fingers eroded? More importantly, where did I want to go with this character? I was torn between PvE and PvP, as I wanted to do 2v2s and have a consistent partner in an effort to improve my PvP skills, but I also wanted to explore Ulduar and see all this end-game content that was all the hub-bub Jello puddin' pops.




















Just a little Bill Cosby humor there, back on topic.

So, unable to decide, I attempted to do both. I farmed BGs to build up my Hateful set, then did some 2v2s with an RL disc priest friend (yes, he's a disc priest IRL, ALL HAIL THE FRISBEE), and we eventually got 1850, which allowed me to purchase my bread and buttah. However, this grind proved to be fairly taxing, mainly due to the fact that I was brand new at ret paladin PvP and he has PvPed as some form of priest since vanilla. "What's BoP? Oh, that thing." All the while I was PuGing 25m Naxx, collecting some Tier 7.5 in preparation to applying to a raiding guild.

For some of you, this may not seem like a lot. Certainly, for a lot of people I know, they do this regularly, and then some. However, I have a full-time job (for the summer, at least) and I work out at least three times a week. Add the lack of sleep from raiding and grinding out a 2v2 rating and welcome to pain. I have to admit that I've called in sick to work multiple times because I was too worn out from this schedule to do anything productive. It became so overwhelming that I had to do something.

Finally, I arrive at the entire point of this post. If you made it this far, I applaud you.

If you are so blessed as to have been granted amazing situational awareness skills and cat-like, Lightning Reflexes, I congratulate the genetic lottery that has afforded you these talents, and strongly encourage you to use them to your advantage in whatever field you so desire, WoW or otherwise.

If you are more like me, whose situational awareness SOMETIMES includes 'Oh noes I'm in teh fire!' and have reflexes so quick that you let your touch-screen cell phone plummet to its death rather than letting your cheeseburger move an inch (perhaps this is a better example of prioritizing, but I digress), then I beg of you, LIMIT YOUR SCOPE.

After much 'ponderation,' I realized that I could not be a Furious Gladiator. Nor did I care to try. Why? Because the competitive, cut-throat, winner-takes-all spirit of PvP was not something I enjoyed. If it is something you enjoy, then by all means. However, given this, I decided to opt out of PvP.

With that decision, things started falling into place:

- I got into a raiding guild and have been fairly active (just ran my first 25m Ulduar with them last night and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it).
- I have been leveling a priest alt simply because I want to, not because it's OP or teh new hawtness or something. I will admit it's a Blood Elf, and I have no intention of re-rolling an Undead for WotF.
- I have been spending some more time with my family, which is always a plus.
- Also, the added sleep and reduced stress, which really are cause and effect most of the time, are VERY welcome additions.

Simply put, you can enjoy this game and do other things. It's possible, trust me. My parting advice? Take some time to get the rested XP bonus both in-game and real-life. Your unfried brain will thank you for it later.