Good morning, internet!

Nothing much to report today, didn’t get to play much over the weekend.  Spent most of Saturday at Ikea shopping for furniture with the wife, and most of Sunday assembling said furniture.  It really blows my mind that there are folks with kids that seem to be able to play on nearly a daily basis.  How do they do it?  It feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day, but maybe I just need to be more assertive about how I allocate and spend my free time.  I have noticed that I tend to kill a lot of time in-between chores, just browsing on my phone or staring off into space.  Maybe I just need to really focus on getting my shit done without those little breaks so that I can convert all of those little chunks of downtime into a couple hours of gaming time. 

I am closing in on 50 with my White Mage.  I ran Dezmael Darkhold (sp?) through the leveling roulette, which took me to 47.  The more I get reacquainted with these old dungeons, the more excited I get to play through Heavensward/Stormblood.  I am really looking forward to progressing through the story and experiencing all of the new content, because ARR doesn’t really offer much more than a grind for me at this point.  An awesome grind, like, (Trump voice) the best grind, but a grind nonetheless. 

Speaking of grinds, on the Brave Exvius front I have been grinding the Bahamut raid and the new Type-0 event.  My two priorities for FFBE are ability crystals and trust moogles; in particular, I want to upgrade Lightning’s Crushing Blow and I want Shine’s TMR.  In general though, I am not stressing super hard about being efficient with FFBE.  I went through a phase where I was checking the app constantly to make sure I was spending all of my NRG, orbs, etc., and it started to stress me out a bit – because it never ends!  As soon as you have milked an event for all of the goodies you can get out of it, another one pops up in its place.  On the one hand, I think it is amazing that a mobile game is constantly churning out fresh content, but it also can wear you out if you let yourself become too invested.  Now, I just pull up the game and do a couple of things when I have the chance, without worrying about “keeping up” with it. 

With both MMOs and these mobile gacha games, it is easy to fall into the mental trap of “keeping up” – as if somebody is keeping tabs on you and judging your progress (or lack thereof).  In reality, all of that content is (usually) there for you to enjoy at your own pace, and unless you have a static group of friends that need you to be on par with them, the pressure to stay on top of things as they roll out is entirely in your head.  This is why I decided not to buy Heavensward separately from Stormblood; I know the Heavensward content isn’t going anywhere and I am refusing to buy into the mental pressure to “catch up” on content before the release.  FFXIV is such a strong, well-developed game, I am sure it is going to be around for many years to come.  I have time to experience everything at my own pace. 

Which is glacially slow.  Damn you, Ikea!