a look ahead

published: 2024.11.24
tagged: girlblogging, therapy
by mana

now playing - カノン by ＃ババババンビ

ah frick it’s that time of the week again, isn’t it! weekly blog time…

I have two sessions of therapy left after tomorrow’s session, which means I am in the process of preparing for post-attending-therapy life.

I’ve managed to get (mostly) back on track with journaling & bullet journaling. I’ve been working on saying no to things and establishing (and sticking to!) boundaries. There’s been some noise being made (not at all helped by me and my indecisiveness ^^;;) about my potential return to playing Final Fantasy XIV. I took a break from the game (I had been playing since May of 2021) starting around the Dawntrail (new expansion) launch this past June/July, and we’re sitting at a solid 5 months later at this point, and I still don’t super know what to decide with regard to that.

I really value my friendships with the friends I’ve made in my free company (basically, the ffxiv term for guild/clan, aka FC), and I miss all of them tremendously. I love running content with them, even if the game itself is mostly kind of unappealing to me at this point. I think basically what happened is I got sucked into the “must complete every task!” way of thinking and started grinding - leveling every job to 90 (before the level cap increase), doing every sidequest, etc.

I know for a fact if I do return, I want to focus more on the content I actually enjoy and not spend all of my time playing it, because I know it’s unhealthy for me, which is what makes me reluctant to return at all. That being said, there are still things I think would be fun to do with everyone else, and being more casual about it would still let me see my friends without potentially getting sucked back in.

However, on the other side, the game costs a monthly subscription to play, and there are a lot of people clamoring for my return (not to make myself sound overinflated or egotistical or anything)…I don’t find myself that important, but being the leader of an FC and founder of a …large-ish? (80+ member) crossworld linkshell/community, I find myself being pulled in many directions at any given time.

idk, the more I think on it, the more I think I need more time? I definitely don’t love the financial cost of it, and while I’m sure there are people who would “help” pay my sub just to have me playing again, I refuse to take advantage of people in that way…;;

I guess at the end of the day, I’m enjoying having free time to do other things, and I don’t miss the feeling of “having to do” x or y thing because of some self-imposed expectation of “what I should do” and I worry a lot that returning to ffxiv would just expose me to those situations where I have trouble saying no again and undo all of the hard work I’ve done thus far.

So, really, as much as I miss raiding with the homies and running dungeons with them, I don’t know that ffxiv is good for me. I’m sure I’m not the first to write about the addictive nature of massively multiplayer online rpgs, and I likely won’t be the last…

when I first began playing I really thought I was not the type to get sucked into things like that, and I still don’t think of myself as having an addictive personality in general, but I think games like these are designed to exploit certain patterns in human behavior and reasoning to keep you playing long-term, much like gacha games.

And, having seen this first-hand, I’m now reluctant to play, even if I think I might enjoy some of the content, because on principle, the very concept of the game (and its exploitation of players) kind of…disgusts me? I know that sounds very…harsh? judgmental? we’ll go with critical…but once I’ve seen it, I haven’t been able to ignore it, and knowing that it is preying on my worst impulses to keep my money going to YoshiP & co….frankly, I’m not sure that the fun is worth it.

It saddens me to say it, but…a lot of the things I’ve done since leaving the game, I would not have had time for had I continued playing. I’ve been not only branching out into other games, but finding time to work on personal projects (like this website!) and getting back into art. None of that would’ve happened if I had been playing the new content these last 5 months or so…

I’m eternally grateful to the community my friends and I have built over the past three years, and I know that without it, I would not have come out of my stint in the hospital in 2020 anywhere near as healthy (mentally) as I am now. I intend to stay in touch with everyone as well as I can, and I can always change my mind later on whether or not to return for a short time here and there (honestly, most people I know play it this way)…never say never, I guess.

But I think the safe answer for right now is very likely “no.”