March 28, 2017

Wurm Unlimited, and (unrelated) Anxiety

A little bit of non-game related, before we get to the good stuff. Apologies for not diving right in!

I was diagnosed with agoraphobia a few years back after experiencing some intense panic attacks that left me vomiting up blood any time I tried to go anywhere outside of the house (especially the car, and the elevator in my building). They came on suddenly and I honestly thought I was dying. Thanks to some medication I was able to get things under control and as the years went by I decided to stop taking that medication on occasion. Every so often I’d get it into my head that I was fine (the fact that I was taking the medication that was making me fine was sort of lost on me) and that I didn’t need the help any more. Except with things like mental illness they don’t just vanish, and sometimes (like in my case) it’s an imbalance in your brain that causes the issues, and that isn’t something that goes away.

I had to deal with a lot of stigma surrounding mental illness. Some of my friends stopped talking to me and drifted away. A lot stopped asking me to do things because they knew I’d decline. I hated declining. I absolutely hate the fact that having this sort of an illness prevents me from taking advantage of some situations that are presented to me. It’s not logical, and it’s not something I can control, and it’s something I have spent many conversations apologizing for. I’m the person who will say sure lets meet up, and then cancel at the last minute. Not because of anything anyone has done wrong but because I simply can’t handle it. So I totally get why people bailed on me, I’m not the most fun person to deal with. A few managed to stick around and for those people I am eternally grateful, let me assure you.

Anyway. Recently an amazing opportunity presented itself to me and I accepted – only to decline again at the last minute. These things don’t happen often, especially for this stay at home with a 6 month old Mom. I hated myself for declining. Hated myself for having this mental block. Hated myself for many things. I know it’s difficult to talk about mental health. I know it’s difficult to look outside of our boxes and realize that the person we’re talking to is indeed a person and they have a whole bunch of stuff going on that doesn’t even register. I just wanted to say that to anyone else in this situation, you’re not alone, you’re never alone, and to just keep trying.

Lets get back to gaming!

Wurm Unlimited is going well. I managed to create a rare glimmersteel pickaxe, and improved it to 81 quality. I’m hoping to get more glimmersteel so I can improve it further in the future. I created a colossus over at Dwarf Fortress, and I’ve been enchanting tools for friends. Pretty basic stuff, really. The troll king went down last week, and we’re all hoping that a dragon spawns next. Whether or not that will actually happen I have no idea, but here’s hoping! My deeds are coming along really well. I built pens for the hell horses and the unicorns and then I created a slate (black) road along the side with the hell horses and a marble (white) road along the unicorn. In the centre I have marble statues of horses, along with a path of flowers. It looks amazing.

One of my beehives spawned a second queen so I’ve been trying to get it to migrate over to a new empty hive. That would make three. YAY! It’s fall in game so migration works a bit different.

Fall also means that winter is just around the corner and for the first time we’ll be able to make those snowballs and stock our larders! Awesome! All in all, I’m still having an absolute blast (as I always do) on the Sklotopolis server. If you happen to decide to play over there be sure to give me a shout (I play as Stargrace) and as always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.

Nomadic Gamer