Weekend's finished

[silveradept]

While it was nice to play games, I feel like I procrastinated on something I shouldn't have. But I'll make up for it tomorrow - if there are office hours, I'm going, because I'm lost at the moment and could use some guidance on the paper that's due in a week. I have stuff, just no idea on how to organize it, what to put in, or anything else, for that matter. I need to visit the office hours.

Starbucks appears to be having trouble with some of their employees: After a Worker's Union has begun organizing, the management has harrassed some of the members about wearing alternative religious symbols. What I don't get is why they went at that particular tack - it ends in lawsuits like this one that's happening. If they're not happy about the union, they should work to resolve things so that the union is felt to be unnecessary, not targeting the workers. As this example proves, it's not a good tactic at all. And there might be just a touch of pandering here - the person noted is of a non-majority (not even strong-minority) religion and is taking flak - even the person who was of the strong-minority religion took flak for it, too. I might be just a touch more annoyed because of this, because I'm predisposed toward such aggravation.

If my journal doesn't give a sense of my personality, this might spell it out a bit more explicity:

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have low extroversion. You are quiet and reserved in most social situations. A low key, laid back lifestyle is important to you. You tend to bond slowly, over time, with one or two people. Conscientiousness: You have high conscientiousness. Intelligent and reliable, you tend to succeed in life. Most things in your life are organized and planned well. But you borderline on being a total perfectionist. Agreeableness: You have medium agreeableness. You're generally a friendly and trusting person. But you also have a healthy dose of cynicism. You get along well with others, as long as they play fair. Neuroticism: You have high neuroticism. It's easy for you to feel shaken, worried, or depressed. You often worry, and your worries prevent you from living life fully. You tend to be emotionally reactive and moody. Your either flying very high or feeling very low. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is high. In life, you tend to be an early adopter of all new things and ideas. You'll try almost anything interesting, and you're constantly pushing your own limits. A great connoisseir of art and beauty, you can find the positive side of almost anything.

The Five Factor Personality Test

Beyond that point, I've been thinking a bit more about my life, the fragments I inhabit, and some of what makes me less than self-actualized, perhaps.



I came to the realization today, out of reading the second .hack//A.I. Buster collection and a little of the gaming I've done, that there's a good chance that, given that I had the resources to do so, I'd rather live in the virutal world than the real one. But it would have to be a virtual world that was more than a level-grind and NPCs. It would need to be something more like the way I envision "The World" from the .hack series - an MMOPRG with millions of people who play the game, with a mystery at its heart, to keep the game going.

It's the hero complex, stronger than before. It's the thing that draws people into the game - the chance to be a hero, known for some deed, to have oneself semi-immortalized as the person who cleared X rare event or took down a unique monster. In a place where the epic happens every day (sometimes twice, depending on how long you spend level-grinding or adventuring in a party), the real world pales by comparison. Maybe I've got some strange ideas about a level playing field - a place where the quality of interaction determines the experience, where people are free to behave like themselves and be rewarded, punished, or PK'd for it. I get lost in story worlds and other fragments because I like them better than here, I think. Escapism, probably. A good solid grounding the inherent superiority of this fragment is either the perfect thing I need or the worst thing to do to me.

It's a vague sense of unease, of foreknowledge, perhaps, that the probabilities say that I will not do anything memorable to a large part of the population, that while I'm choosing a job I love, there's a good chance that it will put me firmly as an NPC in this fragment. It's not that I feel repressed by anyone or anything, other than the ones I put on myself, but that I'm not expressed and there isn't space in the consensus reality for it without further putting myself on a marginalized plane, well away from the coveted "Hero" status. I'm not sure how to resolve the matter, other than to split them - be the Hero of Legend on my own fragment, and see if I can't make an imprint like that on a virtual world, since the real one has no interest.

It's a little tough to express this - I'm not sure I'm capturing the sensation properly. It's the creativity, the imagination, the ability to play with someone else's world and shape it and work with it in my own head, and add things to it. It wants out, to spill out into this particular world if it can. I want to remake my own reality into something more like the story books. And not necessarily just square-jawed heroes and black-mustachioed villains - the complexities are permitted, encouraged, allowed (after all, The World is nothing if it doesn't have varied players), but the sense of individual power is greater. Being able to right the wrong and defeat the monster, and knowing that it's possible (even if it does take a little bit of leveling up, or joinging up with the right party) seems better than here.

Neuroses, anyone? Head-shrinking for the win, no doubt. After all, I just have to map the right things over from my fantasy land into the real world, and I'll be well-adjusted, right? Except I'm not entirely sure I ever did, for as much as I've tried to be well-adjusted. I'm still harboring the desire to be the one who develops super powers and goes about saving the world, I guess. Perhaps when I've been broken of such an idea, I'll be fine. It won't take too much longer after I graduate to do it, probably. Either that, or I'll get my chance, either succedd or fail, and be done with the notion entirely, completely content to be an NPC.

Comments

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite certain I'm getting everything that you're getting at there. But I do think I have some of the same tendancies myself. From my point of view though it's expressed differently. I could never involve myself that much in games. I can't quite make the jump to the suspension of disbelief, to justify the expending of time on something that doesn't carry over into the "real world."

Me, I just want to be a big fish in a little pond. When it comes right down to it, that's a huge part of why I'm going into fursuit making. There are only a couple dozen really good fursuit makers in the entire world. That's a small enough group that I, once I can join it, will be noticed, will have an impact. It feels more real to me, even though it's not heroic. I save nothing, but that's not my focus, and never has been. Creating is my focus, and I create characters, real, tangible, touchable beings that you can interact with, but that had no existance before I made them. *smiles* Something I hadn't really thought of before this.

[silveradept]

I think you're understanding quite well. Might be that I haven't found my niche crative outlet, either, and that when I'm happily corcheting or something, I'll feel better. It's more like knowing that for the things I do and like doing, there are always peopel who will be better. It's both a drive to improve and a depressing thought, that there's always someone better. I guess I see virtual worlds as a place where I can be the better person or at least equal with everyone else.