Well, it’s been a while.

So it’s been a while away from EVE. The question I want to ask myself is, was it burnout?

This is important to answer because if it was burnout, then I need to find out what I was doing that was getting me burnt out in the first place, so I can minimise those aggravating factors.

If you could measure burnout, I’d say it was around 2/10 burnout. I still felt like playing EVE, but new responsibilities like my education poked me and said I had to start thinking about things other than spaceships. And yes, other games were involved. Jeez, I’m so disloyal sometimes.

But it wasn’t to the extent that, like the beginning of this year, I couldn’t bring myself to log into EVE at all. That was bad. However, it looks pretty bad if I try to put it off as nothing when the blog posts directly before this are laced with weariness.

Getting back into EVE, featuring shiny losses!

Curing burnout, refinding fun

The ultimate question all EVE players will eventually ask themselves:

“Can I be bothered playing anymore?” (known variations: “who should I give my ISK to?”, “should I create a forum thread to announce my departure to anyone who cares?” and of course, “should I just go ahead and win EVE?”)

My EVE playtime has been patchy recently at best, and these are the questions that have been floating around in my head, when last year I would’ve thought now would’ve been the most I’ve ever played. I mean, I’m sitting at 25m SP, I have most of the skills that constitute a solid foundation for PvP, and my goal of being a renowned solo PvPer only becomes easier to achieve.

Only yesterday I confronted the issue of why I wasn’t so interested anymore, and it wasn’t self-reflection but it was in the process of a conversation with some guy who somehow remembered my name from EDU, after months, contacted me when I logged in for the first time in a while, and offered me a corporation to join.

Earlier that day, I have to mention, as soon as I logged in, two old members of the alliance I failed to support (feel a little guilty, but what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger) contacted me and asked me whether I wanted to join them on their next chapter in their own EVE careers. They expressly told me they missed the roams I led.

These two events had a hand in reviving the spark that I feared I had accidentally extinguished by burning a little too brightly at the end of last year.

Immortality

Spoiler: not very EVE Online-related!

Spending so much time away from EVE reduced the game in my mind to its few core concepts, and those individual aspects stewed away in the magical cauldron I call a brain, and lots of interesting things spewed out. One thing I contemplated in relation to real life was immortality.

Whenever the question “What superpower would you want?” pops up, I’m always the guy that says immortality. Why?

The main qualm about immortality assuming you’re the only immortal is that you live whilst those around you pass away, even loved ones. Could I withstand that emotional turmoil? It’s hard to answer. I could say right now with confidence I won’t spill my secrets if I’m tortured, but if the torturer is creative enough, I could more than likely be willing to tell them everything.

So how will I know I will be able to keep my sanity as I live whilst the world progresses through its slow meander into the deep, dark unknowns of the future?

I don’t. -grin- And that’s exactly what makes it so appealing. Chasing the unknown seems to be something that strikes a cord within me, whether it’s diving into a maths problem headfirst and swimming through numbers to find the answer, reading through countless fantasy books and exploring other worlds, to flying through wormhole space in an online spaceships game, to even just gazing at the sky every once in a while.

I spent quite a few nights contemplating what it’d be like, trying to imagine being immortal. The negatives are outweighed by the sheer amount of possibilities. As a certain pair of step brothers would’ve said…

I could witness thousands not just a fleeting century, but whole millennia. Thousands, tens of thousands of years. My narrow-mindedness could hopefully expand over those years until I can grasp the true essence of the world and the human race and become some kind of prophetic old monk with an ancient beard who knows everything.

Am I being ungrateful to fate and destiny, for wanting something other than what I’ve been given? Am I just some hopeless romantic seeking to defy the stars? Perhaps both, but nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder what it’d be like never to die.

Anyway, beyond the initial trauma of processing your own immortality, the next hurdle would be time itself. What happens when you get bored? What happens to your concept of time, of life? Living forever would mean you eventually experience everything your body is capable of experiencing, perhaps even find a limit to how much you can fit in your brain. What occurs after that point?

Do you feel utter satisfaction, or utterly destroyed? Do you feel like you can peacefully live another thousand years, or wish you had left your natural lifespan untouched?

Again, I don’t know the answers to such questions.

But again, I would love to find out. I guess curiousity gets the better of me even with the doors that perhaps should remain closed.

In conclusion, I’m very curious to see how long it will take me to change my opinion of immortality. Perhaps in a thousand years I’ll look back at this post and laugh at such childish (ancient?) thoughts. Or perhaps I’ll scoff in a mere decade at ever wanting to live forever. The anticipation is killing me. Ah well, all will be revealed in time.

Words from the past

My first EVE ‘birthday’ is fast approaching, and once again I am worrying about how accurately I’ve depicted my journey through the rockiest and hardest part of EVE. I mean, some time next year, the learning cliff is going to plateau out for me, and all that will remain for the rest of the game is understanding null-sec politics, and learning another area from the foundation that has been established by my initial PvP focus. Which really makes me wonder whether bittervet syndrome occurs because of this flattening of the learning cliff. After the challenge of understanding everything there is about EVE, a challenge that can span a few years, what is really left to do?

Getting serious.

I started a blog just for myself here, just for myself to write stuff and see what kind of crap I could write. Then I realised that I actually enjoyed to some extent spewing everything I’m thinking about on a certain topic onto the screen. So here I am following others to what seems to be a popular free blog hosting site, mainly for a cleaner interface so that when I do start bothering to attract readers, it’s not just the content that makes them want to claw their eyes out. Right now, though, I’m content speaking to my ‘future self’.

Anyway. As I’m sitting in an Amarrian FW system capturing a plex during the dead hours of the AU timezone (all this free LP), it’s time to continue that post on how exactly I was inspired to strive to be one of the great solo PvPers. Essentially these early posts will be my backstory. Something for potential dedicated readers to have a look at, or maybe newbies who in 5 years want to know the humble beginnings of a legend. lol.