BDO: Training Expert, Camp NaNo Writing, and Dat Funk
I did, indeed, reach my goal of Skilled 1 Trainer in BDO last night. This gave me a new title, Training Expert, which I wear proudly.
I just wish it would give more female T4s when breeding, though. I’ve had absolutely no luck in breeding a single T4 female in four tries, and the horse breeding calculator says I should have over 50% chance at it given the levels I raised my horses to. It was right about getting T3 females… so either it’s just RNG hating me this weekend or something’s not quite right with the calculator.
So far, all my T4s look very much the same, too, which is a little disappointing. My painted T3 female remains my prettiest horse, so I think I’m going to hold on to her for cosmetic riding reasons. Maybe even try pushing her to level 30 before I breed her. Just don’t know if I have the patience to wait for all that, though. XD
Dat Funk
I don’t usually write about myself in terms of feelings and RL issues because folks have enough of that already. But over the weekend, I’ve been in a funk… that I have absolutely no reason or right to be.
Overall, things are going well for me. Work is fine, home life is fine, I have lots of great games to play and people to play them with, I just got my tax return money back (so money is fine), I’ve been working on re-writing Dreigiau and trying to stay inspired – I have no excuse for being in a funk.
I have, however, not been feeling so well as of last week. I’ve just felt the need to sleep and sleep and sleep, and have been dealing with flushed face and sometimes nasty night headaches. It eventually led me to just feeling unmotivated, unenergized, and restless over the weekend.
If you know anything about creative folks, one of the worst feelings is being restless… because it leads to all sorts of discontent and bummed-outness.
For example, I just wasn’t interested in any games I’ve been playing lately. I mean, I set my horses on auto-loop this weekend, but I had no desire to actually play BDO. I didn’t game at all on Saturday, but I had the itch to try something world-buildy or sandboxy… I just didn’t know what. I looked at my list of Steam games for inspiration, but nothing appealed to me. I resisted the temptation to buy something new (Stardew Valley was in my thoughts) on the restless whim because I already have enough games as it is.
I did end up playing some FFXIV on Sunday, mostly just finishing the Crystal Tower trio for the weekly. My monk is almost at level 53, which is something that should excite me a little bit. Just not feeling it. My zombie hunting troupe did sit down with a little 7D2D late last night, which did get my focus for a bit.
I’m actually feeling a little bit better this morning physically (though I’m still dragging and sleepy). So I’m hoping this will pass.
It probably doesn’t help that this is technically week two of Camp NaNoWriMo and I’ve been burning creative juices and inspiration hard to get this writing done. When I’m expelling more creativity than I can absorb, it often leads me to feeling burned out, so this could be part of it.
Camp NaNoWriMo
Week two is traditionally the hardest week for writers in any sort of NaNoWriMo. You’ve gotten past that new story smell, have made those initial introductions to people, places, things and ideas in your fictional world, and now the burden of actually doing stuff with them is upon your shoulders.
For me, the challenge is re-writing a story I started writing in 2001-2002 without looking back at the source material. Even though I’ve edited the original story several times since “completing” it, my memory is pretty fuzzy as to what all I actually did write. This could be a good (or a bad) thing.
Overall, I don’t feel like I’m parroting the original story at all. Everything I’ve written has been from scratch and, though it makes reference to the original plot and structure, flows very differently. I like what I’ve done so far, but I worry that other people might not.
I finally got up the courage to show Syn the first 6 chapters this weekend, and she seemed okay with it. She tends to not like when I alter things too much, so I’m using her reactions to get a feel for how other people might respond to it.
I am at the point of trying to start writing a journey that needs to happen in the story, but doing so with logic and reason behind it. Then figuring out what all needs to happen along the way. Don’t believe it when people tell you the fantasy journey trope is an easy one to write! Nope. In my experience, it’s always been one of the most difficult ones, though rewarding if you do it well.