Let me tell you something about my with and in Skyrim.

I have LOT of mods. And they all do something fun. So, like I have said before, I tend to keep adding mods until the damn thing breaks, then hit restart (which in this case means the “disable all mods” button in Nexus Mod Manager) and start over from scratch, as it were.

And for a while, I was doing this literally once a day. Which is totally crazytown. And it got me thinking about my relationship to the restart button, both in video games and what I am pleased to my real life.

At least one half of “real life” is probably true. But sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Anyhoo, the urge to restart has pecked away at me for a long time. It’s even making me want to start a new character, even though my current one, an Argonian (aka lizard man) warrior who specializes in fighting with a sword in each hand, has tons of experience and I’ve done huge swathes of the game with him and invested many many hours in developing him.

So why would I want to start over, and throw that all away?

It’s this kind of thing that brings out an inherent problem in my astrological chart. I won’t bore you with too many details, but basically my Sun sign, the primary sign of my personality, is Taurus.

And we Taurus bulls like things like reliability, permanence, investing hard work in things that are worthwhile, and things that last.

So far so good. The problem arises when you look at the rest of my chart, which is nearly all mutable signs and mutable signs hate things like permanence, hard work, and things that last.

Mutable signs need the freedom to switch from one thing to the next when they get bored or restless. They have to be able to change the channel in life or they will start to feel trapped and anxious.

That is, more or less, the exact opposite of being a Taurus.

So I have this conflict where part of me is sensible, practical, and reliable, and part of me is a freedom and autonomy loving restless soul who never wants to be tied down by things like responsibility and commitment/.

It makes it hard to know who I really am.

The Taurus in me finds the idea of starting over before I have completed the game with my current character absolutely insane. Total madness. I have accumulated so much value in this character. Why would I throw that all away to start over? That would be like stopping your car 100 meters from the finish line at the Indy 500.

The thing to do is see things through to the end. Only then do you ponder starting over.

And that is perfectly logical and sensible. But I can’t totally agree with it either.

Because the rest of me really wants to start over with a fresh slate, free of prior history and ready to explore anew. It would let me try a different kind of character (probably sneaky archer) and a different race (one of the sneakier types of elf), and it would renew my interest in the game, which has been flagging lately.

And it’s been flagging precisely because I have accumulated so many quests and so much loot and a whole gang of followers and I long to be free and fresh and unattached and uncommitted again.

It’s the desire for renewal, basically, and I should not dismiss it out of hand. I have a real problem with renewal in the spiritual sense. It’s a chronic issue with us Taurus types. We tend to hold on to things and keep trudging ever forward with giving ourselves the chance to refresh and renew ourselves.

In fact, we often violently resist our own renewal because we can only view it as sudden change, and we hate sudden change.

Even if it’s a super positive change.

It’s kind of tragic, really.

But now I am wondering what would be so bad about starting over. I mean, this is a game I play for fun, so whatever makes it more fun should be fine, right?

It’s not like I have promised someone I would finish the game with this character. I don’t owe it to the game to stick with one  character till the end. Starting over certainly isn’t a crime even if it isn’t “necessary” and it wouldn’t mean I was some horrible kind of person who can’t see anything through.

All it would me is that I got bored of being a hand to hand fighter and decided that I wanted to try being a sneaky sniper type.

And what’s wrong with that?

And my current character would not cease to exist. He’d still be there, in the save game,s ready to resume his adventure any time I wanted.

And yet, when I think about starting over, I get this stab of guilt. A stab that feels suspiciously like being gored by a bull.

So I dunno. It’s crazy in here, that’s all I can say.

I probably will end up starting a new character. One as different from my current one as I can get, more or less. And who knows, after playing her for a while, I might get bored and frustrated and go right back to my current guy and his awesome stats and gear.

I know there’s one thing I have to try first : taming a dragon. There’s this one quest where you can acquire your very own dragon by using your “tame beast” spell, and I have tried to complete it many times but the dragon always completely kicks my ass.

And the thing is, acquiring this dragon works by Pokemon rules, namely that you have to beat the shit out of the critter before you can capture it.

So I have been diligently working towards being able to lay a pounding on the thing until I can force it to love me. I have been building up my own power and strength, and equipping my followers with the best of the gear I have acquired, and hopefully I will soon be ready to take on the dragon and win.

SO I have to do that, anyhow.

But after that, who knows? No if only there was a reset button for life…

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.