(( A recap on how I’ve been feeling and a bunch of mushy stuff in regards to the trip to San Diego, if you’re looking for gaming specific things you’ll have to skip this post, feel free! ))
I mentioned in part I how lucky I am, and every single day I remind myself how lucky I am. I have such a wonderful and supportive group of friends and family, I hope they know just how much I appreciate them. I owe an enormous amount of thanks not only to the people at SOE for making this possible and Beckett for allowing me the opportunity, but to all of my friends and family for standing by me. They have such faith in me and even though I’ve been questioning myself and whether or not I can pull this off, I have not heard a single time from any of them that maybe I am in over my head.
A huge thank you to my parents, Brenda, Mike, Nick, Brian, Scott, Tom, David, Flavius, Kirsteen, Cory, the Bulsara’s, Matt, and especially Cyrus for listening to me these past two weeks as I’ve been going through everything and for helping me out. I know there’s people I’m forgetting (and no, that list is not in any particular order) and I don’t mean to. If you’re name’s not there just substitute it in! Another huge thank you to the people at SOE, especially Kiara who helped me keep my sanity, and Katie for all of the email correspondence not to mention those involved that I don’t even know about. I also have to give a huge thank you to the readers of this site, it’s grown to over 3,000 daily hits over the past three years and while I would write no matter how many people read it it’s also motivation for me and I appreciate it so much. I truly do.
I realize that I’m going there to do work, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still be thankful for the opportunity. You have to understand that if you had of asked me two years ago what I thought I’d be doing, going on site to work and that work being writing would not have been one of the things I mentioned. I’m nervous, and excited. I haven’t flown since I was 12, I’ve never flown alone (though I have taken the train to Nova Scotia alone before, not quite the same thing). I’ve never been to the US alone that’s for sure. There’s so many ‘first times’ for me here if I sat down and wrote them all out there would be quite the list. I stop in a few places and I’m worried about finding where I need to be next, I’m hoping to run into some friendly airport folks who can point me in the right direction. The Ottawa international airport is not that large, and certainly not that large in comparison to lets say, LA (which I stop in at on my way home). It’s 10 hours of flight, and a 3 hour time difference from where I am now. The weather will also drastically change from where I am now. Today it’s -5F and in San Diego it’s 80F. That’s a huge difference and it’s going to be a shock to my system since we’ve been in the midst of winter for a few months.
Above all of the nervousness and fear and stress is a huge bundle of excitement. HUGE. I am excited to meet people I’ve only written to or communicated via email with, I’ve done email interviews before with members of SOE for articles but never in person. It’s going to be one of those amazing experiences that I’ll remember for a long time to come and I’m hoping (personally) that it opens the doors to other things. Not only is this important as far as work goes but this is a huge step for me. An important step. I’m breaking out of a shell that I’ve had for far too long.
Throughout everything the one comment that keeps popping up into my head is how proud my great grandmother would be. I’ve always been a family girl and when I was growing up I used to write her letters every month, and she’d reply. This is back when I was 13-14 years old (I’m now 27, almost 28). She used to tell me that I needed to do something with my writing, and that I had such talent. Very few people ever take those sorts of compliments at face value, we tend to shy away and shrug them off, underestimating ourselves. While it’s good not to have too much of a bloated ego when it comes to our particular strengths, it’s also important to realize that others will have faith in us no matter what level we personally feel our skills are at. I never really believed her, but I kept writing.
She passed away a few years ago, and I finally understand what she was always telling me. I think I’ve finally listened and I know she’d be so dang proud of me.
So what’s next? Packing and trying not to need an actual suitcase because I don’t want it to get lost along the way (overnight bag ftw), hope my laptop fits. I need to get some money exchanged into US currency, I need to do some shopping. There’s a million other little details I need to go over and figure out. Thankfully all of these little things leaves me too excited to worry that much about everything that could go wrong. Am I nervous about meeting people? Only slightly.
I will be at the airport at 4am on Tuesday morning, flight leaves at 6am. It’s going to be a very long day, and I couldn’t be happier.
stargrace 
The screen shot on the left is one that I post fairly frequently, usually with a story (like the one that will follow) from my gaming past. It’s of lady vox, while I was helping out Allure on the Najena server finish off the prismatic 1.0 chains. I was level 45, and my character was Qutey, a templar. She’s wearing a robe there because of the saves vs. cold which were important. Since content can be out leveled it’s rare to find people who are doing those ‘old school’ quests any more. The reward from the chain (which includes four epic fights as well as the epic fight with Darathar on the isle of refuge) was legendary, and back then legendary was rare. The level cap was 50, and sub combines were a part of crafting.