Monday 24 December 2012

Hanging up my Tank Boots, and Christmas


Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I have to admit, I'm not really feeling it this year, the Christmas Spirit, that is. Ultimately, I'm down because instead of enjoying Christmas day with my family, I will be in the office, slaving away. No Christmas dinner, I'm in until 7:30. No early morning present opening, we, children are older now and the presents will begin opening at roughly the time I clock in. My parents have offered to drive me in, if I still want to spend the night at their place, which I have traditionally done, but it makes no sense, to the practical side of me at least, to have them wake up early to drive me in.

The whole situation just makes me seethe. I'm so angry, so angry that because I am my mothers daughter, all I have wanted to do, this whole month, is cry.

Because it's not fair.

Because there is nothing I can do about it.

I have never, in my life wanted to quit a job more than I do now. The truth is, I can't. Voluntary unemployment with no real prospects would be irresponsible and something that we couldn't handle financially at the moment. It's something that I can't do, but I want to.

I cannot see myself being anywhere near functional on Christmas morning when I go into work.

I hate to be such a downer this close to Christmas, but pretending that everything is awesome felt contrived and dishonest. I'm not willing to lie.

I know, that I'm being a huge baby about this. Believe me, I do. I know, that it could be worse, and that I am infinitely lucky to have a family that I wish so desperately to spend the holiday with and traditions that I hold so dear that it breaks my heart to let go of this year. Cy has told me more than once that I need to grow up and stop complaining about it. He doesn't have to work on Christmas. His advice just makes it worse.

Would you believe this was originally supposed to segue into a chat about WoW, and my Death Knight? Really, it wasn't meant to be an emotional over share, and I never intended to become so personal on here.

Back to that Death Knight post eh?

I had originally wanted to talk a little about what I've been doing this past week, since my school vacation started. The answer to that is levelling my death knight, like a fiend. Since I'm not raiding yet, and probably won't be, realistically, until the summer when I'll have time to seek out and devote to a raid team, levelling has provided me something to do in WoW since I'm not really feeling my dailies lately.

Really though, in discussing my levelling, I really wanted to talk about the quality of the dungeon groups I've been getting, or rather, the lack thereof.

It seems to me, that if your group has an asshat in it they can smell your insecurities. I've been a healer for 6 years now, and let me tell you, it is the ONLY role I fit comfortably into these days, which is ultimately the reason I'm levelling a class that cannot heal. I feel like some diversity in the role I play would probably be beneficial. I am not very confident yet as a tank.

I know the fights. I have a grasp on rotation. We almost never wipe and those wipes are not always caused by me. I would call myself a competent blood death knight, just not a confident one. I think that shows through my play style because regardless of how a dungeon is going if there is an asshat in my group, they will be taunting actually, I think I'd like to call it what it is, bullying me.

I've responded accordingly. I never engage the asshat. I initiate a kick, and if that fails, I leave myself. I'm just tired of dealing with this and because the only behaviour I have control of is my own, I went frost and decided to quest the rest of the way to 90. I really like my blood spec, and I'm going to continue using it to solo while I collect pets for raiding with leashes. I just don't think I'm ready to tank LFD yet, and that's fine.

Also, I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas, again I'm sorry that I can't share in the spirit right now. I'm working on it.

6 comments:

  1. oh Malk :( that's a bummer, but I wish you a Merry Xmas nonetheless. People can get you down but hey, a blog is where you do your talking, right?

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    1. Thank you, I hope you had a lovely holiday yourself Navi, and you're right there. I definitely use this as a place to talk about things after the fact to help me decompress.

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  2. I hope despite this, you had a good Christmas when you finished work. I think most people when faced with working Christmas especially if it's in a job you aren't passionate about to be begin with, would be miserable. I know I would be.

    My father spent about fifty percent of the Christmases I can remember working, first in the military and then more recently for an oil company and despite being a fairly typical soldier type (i.e. not given to displays of emotion), he always used to phone seven or eight times on Christmas day when he was away and you could hear the misery in his voice.

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    1. Thank you Erinys, I did get to go home early and have dinner with my family, which I was grateful for.

      I'm sorry that he had to miss so many. My father is a very stoic man too, I think he would have handled working Christmas in much the same way.

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  3. I'm a little late to the conversation, but I hope you were able to have a nice Christmas evening with the family. Working on holidays does stink...and it's something I have done for easily the last 10 or so years...unless the holiday happens to fall on one of my regular days off. Just gotta make the best of it any way you can.

    On the topic of your Blood DK, have you tried running Scenarios much? Seeing as how there are only 3 people in them, that is two less chances of getting grouped with an asshat. Plus it's a good place to practice how all your "oh shit" buttons work without the risk of imminent death. I love running Scenarios on my Blood DK and Prot Pally. It's fun to pull a boat load of stuff (when you can...a lot of them don't have much "trash") and fight my way out. Helps me get better used to what works and what doesn't. When I'm in the mood for regular dungeons/heroics I que as dps...which by the way, DW Frost DK'n is a lot of fun.

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    1. I did enjoy getting to have dinner with my family :). This is only my second year working all year round. I'm still new to the game, and willingly admit I still get overwhelmingly hurt by the way that my company treats its employees sometimes. It's something I still need to work on accepting.

      You know, I never thought of running scenarios. I will have to try that. I'm going DW frost myself and I'm enjoying it. I've missed the spec ever since Blizz forced us to go blood for tanking.

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