Yeah. I like it hard. You heard me.

>.>

I make things difficult. And no, I'm not just talking about the fact that I may or may not be *slightly* neurotic and therefore complicate the life of any poor sucker within a 10 mile radius, but sincerely and truly, I seem to be on some lifelong goal to make every task I endeavor to perform 10 times more difficult than it needs to be.

And I'm proud of it.

When I was in college, I had a roommate for my last couple of years. My roommate's parents were professors at the university we attended, so she had the benefit of free tuition. She worked a job for money, yes, but her parents also gave her a generous (well, it seemed generous to me anyway) stipend every month to pay her rent, groceries, etc.

I, however, busted my butt in college. I grew up in Texas, but went to college in Ohio, and I paid a fortune in out of state fees my first two years***. And with the exception of my first year (it took me five years to finish up my Bachelor's), I paid for it all myself, mostly through loans and scholarships. I know a lot of people had their parents support them while they were in college - but I refused it. My parents would send me checks and I would rip them up and send them back. I didn't want anyone's help - I wanted to do it the hard way. Not because I had to, but because I had to prove that I could.

And I judged my roommate. I felt like I was superior to her, because she struggled to make ends meet, even though she didn't have to pay tuition, even though her parents gave her a monthly stipend. I judged everyone I came into contact with. I looked down on everyone who didn't work as hard as I did, and take the hard way, like I did. This meant that I was a pretty crappy friend and girlfriend to everyone during college.

It was wrong of me. I'll give myself the benefit of the doubt, and say that I was young, and proud, and coming into my own, and determined to follow a very specific path. Years later the path suddenly became much less clear, and I got a taste of my own medicine. So now, even though I'm still the kind of person that insists on doing things the hard way, I learned a very important lesson - stop judging others who are more rational than proud.

I leveled my priest holy, and it was hard. I also leveled solo through most of BC, and it was hard. I refused to run dungeons with anyone more than a level or two above me. I wouldn't accept gifts of great gear from people that would make it easier. I felt bad looking up things on wowhead, because it made things easier.

Do you get where I'm going here?

So is it really a shock that I hate the ICC buff? Or rather, that I would prefer to not use it? The main difference is that it doesn't just affect me, but nine other people. So I caved because I understood it was what others wanted. And I don't think less of them for wanting to do that, and I sure as hell don't think less of the other million WoW players that use it. Never confuse the expectations and desires I have for myself as something I think others should try to live up to.

I actually think the buff for ICC was a fantastic idea on Blizzard's part. It was a great way to add a granularity to the difficulty level of the major battle raid in WotLK. I fully support their choice and creativity in offering this buff up - and I love the fact that players have a choice whether or not to use it. I felt that it was implemented a bit soon, but aside from that, I think it is for the benefit of all players to have that option available.

I also refuse to use a dishwasher, and wash everything by hand, mmmk? I don't use a mop, I get down on my hands and knees and scrub the floor like a Cinderella wannabe. I have very good logical reasons for all these things I do that are far more difficult than the norm, but I'm not really a role model of rational behavior over here. Don't take one blogger's thoughts and opinions as canon.


*** For the Non-Statesiders among you, what this means is that my public university education (tuition and fees alone) cost about 30,000 US dollars a year. When you go to a public university that is in-state, it is much cheaper.

I am a perpetual burnout. It's a side effect of being overly focused. When I was in college, I minored in Classical Civilization, and I read all the prose about philosophies revolving around the concept of moderation, and I have a great amount of respect for moderate lifestyles. Unfortunately, I'm completely incapable of following such rules.

You know that annoying person who finds a song he or she likes, and then plays it, on repeat, for six weeks straight? That's me. Or the chick who falls in love with a certain drink, and will drink nothing but that, and copious amounts of it, for possibly years on end. Me. Or the gamer who gets wrapped up in a game, and can't pay attention to anything else for hours, days, a week or more. Me again!

One of the (many) problems with having an overly focused brain is that I get so wrapped up in something, that one day I just snap and lose any and all interest in it. The past couple of months have been that way for me in WoW. I hated going downstairs on Monday nights to raid for two hours, and that was the only time every week I would play. I dreaded Monday nights.

The burnout started building pretty slowly. When we started our ICC raiding team, I was completely focused, and very excited. I was blogging every day, and spending hours putting together my posts. I was running our raids and doing research and write ups for our strategies. I was building SAN with Tam. I was reading hundreds of blogs and getting very connected to everyone in the community.

Then little things started to grow into big things. Small arguments within our ten man raid grew into bigger ones. Some were petty, some weren't. But, as the person who put the team together, and as someone who is generally fairly approachable, all complaints came to me. It got to the point where it felt like everyone just came to me to complain about everyone else, and there was nothing I could do about it. There was drama in the blogosphere as well, and administrative problems in SAN. I spent entire days fielding complaints and strategy conversations on google chat and even the pleasant twitter chatter started to become overwhelming for me. I'd try to make light hearted wow-conversation with guildies in gchat, and it would get twisted under the assumption that I must have some agenda for our raiding team.

This sort of thing happens to me all the time. It's not because I'm "such a nice person" and therefore always a victim, woe is me. It's because I am a control freak, and try to take on too much at the same time. I'm a perpetual diplomat, trying to make peace between multiple opposing parties. I accept full responsibility for it. At the same time, I don't want people to be mad at me. I'm a wimp at heart, and therefore it makes it very difficult to be a raid leader when you can't just tell everyone to shut up, grow up, and either have fun or GTFO. But since everyone on my raiding team is someone I have seen face to face, and someone I intend to have in my life for the next 20 years, long after WoW has faded away, I fear burning bridges.

So, I gave my fiance the reins of the raiding group. It's a lot messier now. We used to have a sign up every week, and everything was carefully planned to maximize raid buffs and efficiency. But that is simply not how my fiance rolls. But despite the fact that everything is not planned out on one of my famous spreadsheets... the raid goes on, and it's working just fine.

I very rarely speak in vent these days, and to be completely honest, once we started using the buff full-time, I no longer had any interest in running ICC anymore - it just felt pointless to me***. However, I was unable to find someone to replace my priest, so I grudgingly remained. Whenever someone tries to talk to me about raid strategies, or complain about someone in the group, I completely shut down. Nope. Sorry. I don't want to hear it or talk about it anymore.

I guess you could call it unfortunate that I burned out so badly. The truth is, it's not the first time. I burned out from 25 man raiding for nearly identical reasons. I get too involved, too invested, and then I crash. After I crash, I play the avoidance game... I avoid people who I know will want to talk about the subject. I avoid emails related to the topic. I even avoid my dearly beloved twitterati. And I should add to that last statement that twitter is pure frivolous fun. For all my friends on twitter, I'm sorry I just sort of disappeared for awhile - I really needed a break.

So that's the story of Miss Medicina's nearly 2 month absence. In addition to all my tumultuous feelings about WoW related business, I also had the job on which I was completely focused. All the energy I had put into WoW I redirected into my job, no matter how temporary I knew it to be. And I think it was really good for me, I do.

As I'm slowly starting to ease my way back into the wowniverse, I'm going to try and be a little more careful about it this time. If someone starts raising a ruckus about something in the game, I'm just going to walk away, instead of getting so emotionally invested that I burn myself out again.

It comes down to that same old phrase that we all love and hate: It's just a game. And yes, it is just a game, but yes, the people within it are real. However, I'm not going to ruin relationships with real people over a fantasy game. I'm not going to get into fights and arguments with people that will do nothing but upset me over a giant mass of pixels. I have to keep things in perspective or I will simply go insane. In the past, I've had very good real life friends who have used the game to hurt me - and that is a direct result of us putting too much emphasis on the game, and not enough emphasis on the people who are playing it.

We are all victims of the desensitizing that can happen when you are interacting with people in an abstract space instead of face to face. We do things to one another's avatars that we would never do in real life (Trust me, I've never licked anyone at a dinner party). We all simply have to keep enough perspective to remember where to draw the line.



***I've given my thoughts on the buff before, and I've had my fair share of criticism about my perceived elitist attitude about it, so let me clear it up now and just say that I have nothing against people using the buff. I don't look down on people who do. It's just not something I enjoy. It's a very prominent aspect of my personality that has surfaced in many other ways in this game and outside of it. Maybe I'll get around to explaining it in better detail one day, but for now, just know that if you are in favor of the buff, I have no problem with that. It just sucks a lot of the fun out of it for me, specifically. Trust me, I'm well aware of how annoying it is that I always want to take the hard way!

This is what we call a "serious post". Do not go further if you have no interest in, uhm, well TMI about me I suppose.

I was going to write an About Me page due to a very exciting invitation for an upcoming event, but I didn’t know how. Due to the nature of my subject, WoW is supposed to be the place where I can escape being me… not talk about being me. That’s why it’s a Role Playing Game.

And then I read Tam’s “serious” post, and after crying for far longer than I care to admit, it occurred to me that if a Brit can expose so much emotional underbelly, then really, as a soppy American given to truly heinous and embarrassing acts of sentimentalism, why shouldn’t I feel free to do so as well?

So here you are. The truth is, I play WoW because I am depressed.

Does that seem anti-climatic? Maybe a disappointment? Are you rolling your eyes? I don’t really blame you. It's incredibly embarrassing for me to admit it out loud, let alone broadcast it on the internet. I'd love to deny it, that I'm not one of those gamers. It sounds like the same old boring story, pathetic and cliché. But it’s not. It’s a hobby I actively chose in an effort to allow myself, however ironically, to just be me – and in a very primal way, it was a last ditch attempt at survival. I used it to escape my life, but not to escape being me.

It began as a place to hide. Years later, it became the neighborhood bar I visit to catch up with friends and have fun. In “real life” I am not yet able to do this easily, but after a few years of playing WoW, I am determined to try again – with new friends. The ones I made in WoW. I want to go to Blizzcon and meet up with other bloggers. I want to take road trips to different places to visit with friends I've made in game. These are positive changes for me.

When I first started playing WoW in January of 2007, I was in a downward spiral, and this alternate universe, devoid of all the things in my life that left me feeling helpless and hopeless, provided a stepping stone to survival. No, it doesn’t really propel my life further. However, it does help me from sinking deeper. It’s the boulder jutting out from a sea of complete and utter despair that keeps me from being consumed by the hurricane in my own mind. It’s the bubble, the Divine Aegis proc. This is srs bzns.

I’m not depressed in some beautiful dystopian Picasso-blue-period sense. It’s not just a funk. It’s the clinical version, and yet there is nothing about it that feels clinical. The type that has been there your whole life, and just gets worse as you age. The kind that’s hereditary. The kind that explains why some of your relatives seem to drop off, one by one, into alcoholic or drug-induced self destruction, if they even last that long. The kind that translates into this heavy disease that calcifies into your bones, and makes the concept of moving your feet off the side of the bed and standing up on them in the morning tantamount to an Olympic competition. I know how pathetic it sounds, but this silly game is the tiny boost I sometimes need to help inspire me to at least get out of bed. After the first step, everything else gets a bit easier.

I don’t sit around feeling sorry for myself. I don’t try to bring down people around me. Every day most of my effort (and believe me when I say that every single tiny action seems like a gigantic effort) is funneled into keeping all of it contained within me, so that I don’t systematically destroy the threads that connect me to others I know I love.

If you’ve read my blog at all over the past year, you may have noticed that I take on the Happy Hippie Healer Hat. It’s true that I try to be a very cheerful and optimistic person. When changes happen in the game, I do try to look at them from the positive side, attempting to be bright, and warm and welcoming. By nature, I am a cheerful, outgoing, exuberant person. When you meet me in person I hover back and forth between giddy playfulness and self-conscious awkward moments. The first part is the genuine me, the second is the part I try to overcome. If I were to try and separate the clinically depressed version of me from the version that has trouble finding a reason to get out of bed in the morning, then this is what I get.

Tam pointed out something that really struck home with me:

And I know anonymity also makes us susceptible to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, but there’s a flip side to this – the shy can be outspoken, the awkward can be flirtatious, the insecure can find acceptance, the followers can lead and the anti-social can be social. I don’t necessarily believe virtual spaces miraculously turns us into people other than we are, but I do think it can allow us to tap into aspects of ourselves that may not find much expression in our chosen lives.

And there you are. The person I am here, in this silly little game, over vent… that’s the real version of me. The person that others may see day in and day out, face to face? That is the diseased, sickened persona. It’s twisted and backwards and completely counter-intuitive, but there you have it.

I often think of depression like a cancer. It’s this tumor that grows and manifests in weird ways. It covers up portions of your true self. The tendrils of that tumor intertwine into my very nature until even I start to get confused, and I don’t know where I end and the tumor begins. It’s like a snobold on my head. You see the snobold, and maybe you confuse that snobold with me. I wish I could ask all the DPS to switch to the snobold on my head, take it down, and everything would be alright.

This is why I get frustrated when I hear people say that depression isn’t real, that it’s just people feeling sorry for themselves. It is real, it does exist, and pretending it’s not has lead to an epidemic of people seeking alternate realities in which they can escape the tumor. Some people chose alcohol, others drugs. Well. I chose World of Warcraft. When I felt like I was collapsing, I reached out and grasped onto something that would still allow me, in some strange way, to connect to other people.

I’m not a Psychologist. But it does seem to me, from my 25 years of experience with this disorder, that depression has a physicality associated with it. By that I mean that it manifests differently depending on the environment. We pick and choose our comfort zones, and in certain comfort zones, we can “trick” the tumor. We can escape from beneath its heady weight, and breathe freely. The weightlessness is like flying. I can be in top form in a raid, without getting caught up in worrying that others are thinking my gestures too wide, my face too animated, my exuberance too obnoxious. While I still retain some of my self-conscious nature, it is not as extreme. Occasionally my fiancé tells me I laugh too loud in vent, but that’s about as far as it goes. Can you ever really laugh too loud or too much? When you don’t find yourself laughing much on a day to day basis, then you treasure each chuckle.

In Azeroth, we’re all on an even playing field. It is very clear what is reality, and what is not. The world in which we play is a fantasy, it is not a true translation of the world in which we actually exist. However, the social interactions within are – or at least, can be if you choose to make them so. You might be a former cheerleader in the real world, working at a fashion magazine, whereas I could be an overgrown goth chick, who works a sex hotline number in off peak hours (well, okay, I'm not, but the point stands). But none of that really matters, because you tank, and I heal, and somehow, despite all the real world details that would keep us from becoming friends, we both chose to roll female Dwarves. So we must have something in common. And somewhere along the line, we became friends. What might have stood between us IRL is no longer there in game.

Anything can be self-destructive, if taken to the extreme. What some people call an addiction is actually a propensity to latch on to one thing and focus on it, single-mindedly, for a great length of time, to the detriment of all other facets of your life. One summer I was so wrapped up in my own misery, I tucked in with yet another Tolstoy epic and refused to speak to anyone… or sleep… or eat… until I felt like I wanted to jump under the train with Anna Karenina herself. Many years later, during one particularly devastating winter of personal failure, I latched on to World of Warcraft to keep myself from going back to my self-destructive Anna Karenina obsession. At least if I sank down into Azeroth, I wouldn’t be alone.

I’ve known a great many number of people who, in their downward spirals, grasped a bottle of Vodka in one hand, and a drug dealer in the other, and sank deeper and deeper until they simply disintegrated. Depression lends itself to self-destructive behavior simply because subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) you do want to destroy yourself. You want to push everyone else out, be alone, and just dissolve. I never allowed myself to get sucked into a drug or drink binge; instead I opted for an alternate reality that still enabled me to keep people in my life. The game forced me into social situations, without the physical awkwardness that usually inhibits me.

It doesn’t matter where the threads of connection between you and other people take place; What matters is that they exist, somewhere. I don’t need my Pally Tank BFF to talk to me about how I had yet another grotesque nightmare and today is officially a Bad Day. I don’t need her to come over and have beers with me to cheer me up. What matters is that she’s there, somehow, some way. That is a thread of connection that sustains me; It is an obligation to another human being, and an unspoken expectation from them that I keep on keeping on.

I'm not writing this to procure pity or sympathy, or even understanding from others. But I know I'm not the only one who has used WoW as a way to stay afloat. I suspect I speak for many people when I explain why I believe that MMOs don't make us depressed - we come to them when we are already depressed. I want you to know - you aren't alone.

It is, after all, just a game. But the relationships within it are real. And trust me when I say, it’s not the game mechanics that help me stay afloat in some small way. It’s the social threads that hold me up.

Recently, a bunch of my alliance friends invited me on a couple of their guild runs. We were laughing and chatting in vent, when one of them said "Jessica keeps interrupting me and asking me questions!" Confused, I said "What? No I'm not, you silly warlock!" to which he responded "No, no, I was referring to my daughter, Jessica." Slightly embarassed, after a short pause, I replied "Oh. Whoops. Guess the cat's out of the bag now, I just gave away my real name!" Much to my surprise, everyone else exploded in laughter, with rounds of "It wasn't really that big of a secret, Jess."

Well. I never claimed to be subtle.

I've thought about this a lot since. We play daily with these people, get to know them and their personalities, and often quite a bit about their personal lives - Yet a lot of the time we don't even know their real names, though we can recognize their voice over vent. While this sort of thing is becoming more and more common amongst my generation, the majority of people still aren't quite sure where to draw the line in what they say about themselves over the internet. In my own case, a strange mix of factors contributes to the internet paradox that is Elimeny, aka Jessabelle, aka Miss Medicina. After all, if you google Elimeny, I'm all over the place.

No, I don't publicize my real name or too many identifying details of my personal life for a lot of very legitimate reasons, though I suspect it would be very easy to get that information, should someone want it. For one, my fiance is intensely private, and it would be disrespectful to him if I were too open about myself since he values his privacy so much. Secondly, if it were not obvious before, I do a lot of work in a research based academic field... one day I really do hope to publish some of my research (if I ever get around to finishing it), and once you do that, you have to be pretty protective of your name.

The funny thing is, I grew up on the internet, and it's very integral to my personal life. I met my fiance online, and several people whom I count amongst my best friends I only talk to over the internet (that includes Fulguralis and Fuubaar!). Relating to people via a handle is not a difficult task for me, nor does it keep me from connecting with others on a very personal level, real name or not. But I always hate these awkward conversations...

Jessabelle: Hi! My name is Jessica :)
Sneakarillio: Hey! Nice to meet you. My name is Sneakarillio.
Jessabelle: ...

There's always this sort of awkward moment as we try to figure out how much personal information to give someone else. After all, we don't want to push people beyond the line at which they are comfortable. When you give people personal information, sometimes it makes them uneasy, because they feel they are expected to return the same amount of information - an amount with which they are simply not comfortable.

I guess my name became obvious, because Jessabelle got shortened to Jess over vent and party/raid chat, and everyone identifies Jess as a nickname for Jessica. I blame Kelly and Fuubaar, FYI.

For the record, most of my face to face friends (I shall now call them F2F) call me Jessie. I actually despise the shorthand IRL - Fulguralis is my real friend in real life. Just because all of our communication happens over the internet does not make him less of a real friend. To be quite honest, most of my communication with my F2F friends happens via the internet as well - I'm a total homebody.

So, maybe it's a psychological thing. I hear about wow being addictive, but I think *anything* can be addictive if you enjoy it enough. I think my grandmother was addicted to church. WoW combines my love of high fantasy role playing games, with my desire for social interaction that does not require me to leave the safety and comfort of my own home. I can be a gamer without being a friend-less loser, who knew? I think people hate PuGs because in general, it's a lot more fun to play with your friends - with the people you know. I know these people, even if I don't know their address. To me, raiding isn't fun if I'm not raiding with those I know - even if I don't know their real name.

I can't wait until the day Google finally invents a way to search for images that actually scans the pixels. About a year ago, I randomly found the picture from which my avatar was cropped via Google Image Search (My source for almost all images on this blog). Unfortunately I misplaced the original picture, and now no matter how hard I search, I cannot find it.


If you ever wondered, the original picture is of Alice (of Wonderland fame) standing on the dead bodies of the Mad Hatter and I believe the March Hare, blowing the smoke from her gun. With the crop, you can only see the smoking gun, so you miss the context. I love the original, because Through the Looking Glass always creeped me out... poor Alice, surrounded by a bunch of weirdos in a world that makes no sense to her - she cannot rectify it to her own understanding of reality.

I love the idea of Alice, in a world gone mad, in a world that does not function the way she knows it should, surrounded by people who do not process things in the way that makes sense to her, finally decides that instead of trying to act the way her new environment suggests she should, says Screw All Ya'll and takes back her own sanity by removing everything that tries to make her feel insane. The image makes me think that at some point she decided she'd had enough of everyone being non-sensical and illogical and finally decided to take control of the situation.

If anyone could find the original, I will be forever indebted to you.

p.s. I don't condone violence. Or shooting people who don't understand you because you're insane. Cheer up, that's what Effexor is for - don't bring daddy's guns to school, kids!

Do you remember when you first found yourself interested in RPGs? Very few of us actually began with World of Warcraft. After all, WoW has only been around for five years, and who knows where it will be in another five?

I was never a video game person. I still am not quite sure how to turn on the xbox. There are all these colorful buttons and I feel slightly close to a seizure wathing my fiancé play Guitar Hero. It’s all a bit confusing to me, thank you very much, and I rarely find myself impressed. I need real plot, and video games have always struck me as shallow entertainment, even though I know that’s really not true in many cases.

I, however, began my gaming career at the tender age of seven years old. Twenty years ago… that makes me feel old! It began with simulation games. You know. SimCity. SimAnts (seriously? Yes.). Civilization (the FIRST one).

And then I progressed into RPGs, and fell completely in love. Hero’s Quest (or Quest for Glory) I, II, III, IV, and finally V. King’s Quest. Space Quest. Leisure Suit Larry. I loved those old Sierra games so much that I continued to play them up until about 3 years ago when I finally started playing WoW. I was skeptical and certainly not impressed by flashy realistic graphics. AGI is just fine, thankyouverymuch.


Quest for Glory turned me on to the idea of Paladins – it was truly an epic thing in QfG because you had to beat two games and import your character, and all these things that were always too complicated for me to figure out how to do when I was a kid. Therefore, the first class I rolled in WoW was my pally, Elimeny.

What got YOU started in the world of RPGaming? Was it D&D? Video games? Computer games? Or were you a complete gaming n00b, and dragged in by your friends?

Where have I been? Why so few posts?

I've been in a bit of a WoW funk for various personal reasons. I've been catching up on a lot of reading that I always enjoy, and I've been a bit down due to some bad news about our dog, a giant purebred black lab of the sweetest and friendliest disposition. Unfortunately, after dozens of vet visits, trying to find out why he's been so tired, non-hungry, and less animated over the past 8 months, we finally went to a different vet. Last week he was officially diagnosed with advanced Lymphoma.

It definitely hit me like a ton of bricks because even though I was convinced he was sick with something serious, he's not even 5 years old - so cancer didn't even seem like an issue to me. Lymphoma is already a tender topic with me because my father was diagnosed with it a couple of years ago, which led to a lot of changes in my personal life. Luckily, my dad is in remission, but it doesn't look like that will be the case with Chopper, the big black lab of love.

So in the meantime I've been putting forth a lot of effort in researching different recipes of things I can cook him at home, and trying to spend some time with him for his last few weeks with us. It's hard for me to get the inspiration or motivation to research WoW stuff, or find my muse to write about it, or even raid or play much more than a few dailies here and there when I've got a brain full of a drooling, bouncy black lab that may no longer be around in a few weeks.

In spite of all this, I will try to get some content out about the recent crappy priest Q&A, and some reflections on how the 3.2 priest changes have affected my own personal gameplay.

Several months ago, whilst surfing the internet in an ill-fated attempt to avoid all real responsibility, I ran across a blog post that discussed different types of healers. Not the different World of Warcraft healing classes, mind you, but the actual players behind the toon. What makes some people love healing, while so many others would never even consider it? I wish I could find the original post and link to it from here, and if I ever do find it again, I will come back and add it. The idea is that there are some people who will heal only when they have no real other choice (as in, the raid shall not commence without another healer). I see this type of healer all the time, and indeed I think most healers fall in this category. They run the risk of healer-burnout. Another type is that of the come-to healer. They originally enjoyed the DPS or tanking role, and then healed once or twice to help out, and fell in love with it.

I fall into the third category. Always was a healer, always loved it, always will be. I will occasionally DPS in a raid if there is a need for it, but usually I'm happy to let the other healers who are more at risk of burnout take on the task. My first WoW toon was a paladin - pre 2.4, when paladins were very different than how they are today. I was truly awful, but hey, it was my first character.

Then I started playing a dwarf priest. I actually leveled holy. I raided holy. Until dual spec became available only recently, I never specced shadow, and never bothered with deep disc either.

I have a Holy Paladin friend whom I met when I first started playing WoW, and she explained it to me once over a few ales in a Stormwind bar. She said that she had always loved healing, and it reflected her personality in ways that other roles did not. She is a healer through and through, heart and soul. It is the role she aspires to fulfill in both her real life, and in game. And though I did not really excel at healing until much later with my Dwarven Priest, I completely agree with her. I'm not always the kindest person in real life, and though I may often be selfish, I always try to heal everything I can - friends, family, and complete strangers.

I often think that the roles and classes we choose to play in the gaming world reflect the desires and aspirations of our true personalities. Sometimes it matches perfectly with how we are in real life, and sometimes it reflects a deep seated desire - something we wish we could be, something we would really enjoy, if we were able to truly exist and live in this fantasy world in which we spend so much of our leisure time.

I wanted this to be my first post in my new blog (encouraged by Fulguralis) for that reason exactly. I did not start healing so that I would always be invited to raids and instances. I didn't start doing it because I had to, or because one day I was asked to do so, and realized that I enjoyed it. I heal because I've always healed; Because it's who I am, and it may be the only thing at which I truly excel.