Feeling terrible, but in a new way.

So… yay that.

Well, a change is as good as a rest, they say.

Today, instead of feeling muzzy-headed and squished and confused and all that, I feel over-awake and have a headache and my back hurts.

So, there’s that.

I think I might be burning out on Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). Playing it is feeling like work, even after starting a new character with a different class and species and going to a region I had never been to before.

Then again, I had this same headache when I did it, so my ennui might more reasonably be attributed to that.

There was also a rather nasty shock involved in making my new character. I had been planning to make him a necromancer, a class that had been added since I last played back in 2018.

But it wouldn’t let me. Told me I had to pay for the Elseweyr content back. And I was shocked, because I thought my ESO Plus premium membership got me access to absolutely everything in the game.

But I guess I can see their point in not including it in Plus, because what if I make a Necromancer character and then stop paying for Plus?

They would have to disable that character, and that could get messy.

Still, I was really looking forward to playing a whole new character class, and I am kind of pissed off that I don’t get to do so.

The character I started earlier is an Argonian Warden. Argonians are lizard-people, and Wardens are sort of like rangers in more traditional RPGs. They have nature based powers and abilities. Special attacks based off some of the creatures in the game, ice based magic, that kind of thing.

But to me, being a warden means one thing and one thing only :

You get a pet bear.

A full-sized motherfucking bear.

And he’s no non-combat pet, either. He kicks serious butt. Makes a great companion for an archer like my new guy. I can hang back and pluck arrows at the baddies while my bear handles the melee attackers.

But still, I am not quite feeling this new character. I might ditch and switch. Maybe make a honking huge Orc that uses two handed weapons and wears heavy armor and goes around thumping things to death.

Evil things, of course. I’m not a monster.

Got to level 38 with my previous character, a stabby thief assassin type. Not my usual choice, which is why I chose it.

After doing the main plot with a wizard character of the exact same type that I usually play, I felt like going in a totally different direction.

I have to admit, part of my unhappiness with my character is that the Argonian racial skills are pathetic.

My dude looks awesome, all scaly and sleek and sexy, but the racial skills are all designed around being a support character and I am strictly solo.

I dunno. I should probably lay down and try to get some more sleep before I decide along these lines.

More after the break.

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This could get awkward

If the English language made sense, “awkward” would mean “in the direction of awk”.

Anyhow, here’s this :

I want to talk about social awkwardness,

As patient readers know, in the past, I have defined social anxiety as a paralyzing fear of awkwardness. To the socially anxious like myself, those moments depicted in the video are far more than mere moments of discomfort.

They are huge. devastating, horrible events of enormous emotional amplitude and that slide very neatly into that big box of self loathing labeled “all the reasons we suck”.

They are a terrible condemnation of our very right to be around people, they are a sure sign that we are mutant alien freaks, and they will be remembered by everyone forever and that means everyone hates us now.

This is madness, obviously. In the real world, it was an awkward moment, it passed, and life went on. That’s how these moments are experienced by everyone who does not have social anxiety or something similar. People do not remember them. They certainly don’t condemn us over them. And we would be way better off if we just shrugged them off and kept going.

It’s when we bring the conversation to a screeching halt with our outsized responses to these moments that the true awkwardness sets in.

Not that I am saying we can wish that away and get over ourselves just like that. It’s nowhere near that simple.

But I think it is wise to do a reality check now and then to remind ourselves of what is happening in the real world, the one outside our heads, and to keep in mind that our goal is to make that reality our reality too.

Myself, I have a strange blend of charm and awkwardness, charisma and cluelessness, authority and opacity, intelligence of mind and stupidity of action, and so forth.

So I give out a lot of mixed signals. This makes it hard for people to get a lock on who they are dealing with, something I make harder to do with my shifting sense of self and instinctive resistance to being labeled, defined, or predicted.

To the right people, this just makes me interesting. Or at least, I hope it does. One thing I cannot stand the thought of is people thinking I am boring.

I’d rather they hated me. Or thought I was obnoxious and terrible. Or anything, really, besides what I usually get, which is people not even acknowledging my existence, like I am such an odd phenomenon that their mind just edits me out.

Maybe I need to give people more of something they recognize and understand.

I have no idea how to do that and I am not inclined to do so, either. Come what may. I am ferociously myself at all times, and I am not looking to change that. Ever.

The only other defense, then, is to be who I am at full force at all times, and whoever doesn’t like it can go to hell.

That’s a tough one for me because I can sense people’s emotional responses to me and it is hard for me to not feel responsible for them.

But for my peace of mind, sanity, and future, I’m going to have to learn.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.