How beautiful

How beautiful, wonderful is my relief with releasing, pain throbbing in my chest yet it's one of the most reaffirming reasons to be alive. I've carried pain for this long and now I feel...free to have it.

How confusing. A WoW blog associated with these emotions. The person who manipulates XYZ movement for a representation of self. This is all related to how my self, in game and in real life have developed into something new.

A player has remarked several times of how he heard that I'm into pain. I always chuckle to myself, never elaborating on what it is because it's none of his/their business. Yes, I associate pain with change. My tears are a result of searching for a facility that has been buried with the gross mess of daily chores, relationships, to-do lists. I wish to flex it and to radically twist my perspective to accept something new, it results in a medley of reactions that bubble beneath the surface. The low boil has come to its peak. I've found my selfishness and I gladly embrace it. I will live for myself and not for my parents nor my brother, nor for those who do regard me highly and those who think of myself in a slight manner like one thinks of Barbie dolls and mopheads.

So why do I write here? I have a mute audience. It feels like I write on a wall where someone may happen to pass by and glance at scribbles. I think that's why I left Xanga. That need to see who approves of my writing, a popularity contest. There's no winning here.

I am not sorry for who I am or what I write. I will write about the things I love and experience because one day, I will forget and the memory will haunt me because I would not be able to name it.

I am glad because the day where my contract to the many will be on hold temporarily. I will play the game how I want to, be free in my aloneness and loneliness to be beholded to noone. All mothers need a break from their wills being for others, unconsciously listening for that question, ready with answers. In my breaking from the herd, I will relearn how to do things for myself.

This pain of feeling light as a feather brings a smile to my face. The intensive labor of anger had been productive.

Sunshine and lollipops

Sometimes I wonder how my brother does it. How he can live, having picked up dead, burning bodies from the rubble of war. How tense he seems even with his easy pace. He thrives on pretty girls and gourmet food, never skimping for less, always for the better.

I grind my teeth on wasabi peas, relishing the intense pain of a nasal burn one particular pea flares up. It comes and goes within 3 seconds. At the least, it distracts me from the inner pain that stems from fear, want, disappointment, and the darker bloom of thoughts of wishing to end this prickling of tears that threatens to spill onto my cheeks while people carefully watch for me as they exit the elevators. Or they completely disregard me. No matter.

My back is sore, aching on my left shoulder bone, blossoming around my neck and lower back. I am in pain. I think I'm more in pain because of the infatuation. I learned what I want from a guy and it's integrity. It's the drive to do more, do better. And it's a wonderful, terrible thing.

I am on the subway platform, rushing to catch the V at 5:20...I am late leaving the office. I remember feeling vaguely displeased for being in the front car as I'd have to take a long walk to the other end of the platform at my station. I remember thinking that a small gap at the door may not have made it a secure place to lean on. But I bury my head in my WoW raid strategy guides and meticulously figure out my role. The train rolls into Northern Blvd. A violent blow to my back rouses me up and I make a conscious effort to hear the insistent screeching, plastic shards flying, female conductor yelling with catching breaths and the gasps of the passengers. Me with my moods flashing from annoyance, to awareness, to gauging the situation in seconds and feeling my heart leap. Someone jumped in front of the train. The body is in the conductor's booth. There is a gap to look in the booth. Look away from booth, catch breath, cover mouth from rising smoke and potential burning flesh, just don't look at the body, look at anyone else' face to confirm the horrid limpness of the body and pray the conductor is fine. She's radioing it in, to turn off the power, raised voice, fighting panic and disgust.

As I murmur my excuse me walking to the back of the car, I wonder why the other people wish to have the image of a dead body embedded in their brains. There's an open door and I hop out, walking fast, looking through the windows at curious eyes, faces, mouths open. I'm glad for their ignorance.

The walk home is a daze. I observe my cold hands, the slight tremors, the fuzziness of my surroundings. I desperately want a hug or a hand to soothe away the dull pains of my back. I call a couple of friends, sit at my chair, looking, nothing, feeling nothing.

Getaway

My chest is heavy with an upheaval of worry and disappointment, some self-berating swirling, aerating the mixture. I pace in circles, mentally trying to untwine this procedure of figuring out who is the person to prod to action. I'm referring to my high school reunion which is just...something, I cannot even think of the word. This mystery word inspires the want for a catartic release: soothing tears (temporary) or scarring myself (permanent). I think I should go with the tears.

There is so much I want to write but this duty is clouding my vision.

Illidan

I haven't been writing in Tankspot because I'm bored. I have plenty of projects to do and plenty of work but... I can't see the point anymore. I'm at a dreaded block, chipping away at the wall with fingernails.

So I'll write about Illidan. Last night, my guild made our first attempt where we got him to the last phase, finishing at 21% which was pretty breath-taking. I tanked one Flame of Azzinoth.

But earlier in the day, I rushed terribly to get to 260 Fire Resistence. I had naively thought that I was set with all the badge gear, not realizing that so many other materials were necessary to get to a set number. The generosity of a rogue with his leg enchant (I had collected all the mats before I was just about to head out to Dire Maul) and crafting my Flame kits, a mage who helped me with tremendous patience through my OCD tendencies to loot everything for a very long quest chain and a shaman who helped me finish off the elite boss. To think I panicked that I wouldn't be able to get anything done, especially with my mother visiting for the weekend. I'm just really glad that I know some really cool people.

I keep getting distracted! Drawing little sketches, checking wowinsider for Blizzcon updates, thinking of this website where they post funny tells from wow...

I must have a crush. Oy. I really want to ask this fellow out but, when I look at it honestly, I realize we don't even have a foundation of friendship to build on...only a mutual grinding of personalities where I enrage and he...enjoys the raging. I fantasize about pinning him down and making him endure a stream of bad grammar, just something to make him NOT right. Sigh, I'm twisted. At least almost everyone in guild knows and accepts this...even a raid leader made a crack of something S&M related...wish I remembered what! Anyways, I want to be friends with a guy I'm interested in, not just sex buddies.

Speaking of sex buddies, I truly don't know what to do about finding a committed relationship and playing around. I don't believe it has to be either/or but it's hard to find an open-minded fellow who can wrap their heads around it. I mean on Saturday, I had the opportunity to meet with two lovely men who were in a relationship and get simulateously stimulated with groping and having my hair pulled. My fine behind, washed with his perpetual hardon as his boyfriend lovingly gazes at both of us and kissing his other with a hard passion, nuzzling above the crowd as they grow heated with the beat of the music. My fingers teasing his ass, marveling how beautiful they look, especially giggling to myself of how "frat boy" they look with their flannel/jeans/baseball cap combos. How can I ever pass up that? Would I ever want to?

That night did come with a price of a very swollen foot that is recovering for a large, broken blister and ringing in my ears. We'll have to see in a few days whether dancing for 5 hours straight was worth it. But as a friend said, ears and feet heal, memories last forever...or something like that. :)

I should write more about Illidan and the crappy happy adds which are a pain to tank but it's time for me to limp home.

Temptation, thou sprout from the tongue and languish in dreams.

What I learned when I was young:

Attraction isn't sexual euphoria and vice versa.
Sexual euphoria doesn't fade over time.
Attraction will hold you until you can't deal with it anymore.
Love has nothing to do with these two physical states of being.
However, love enhances them like $500 an ounce truffles.

I am shamefully thrilled to receive such consideration of my abilites.

Him: I'm booking my travel to *** a few weeks from now. But I'm finding it's like grocery shopping when you're hungry. Because I shamefully keep wondering whether I should take the ***->NYC flight with the 2.5 hour layover.

I am a bad man.

And I respond accordingly.

Him: No no no! Your line is "that's a great daydream, but of course you know it can't happen, I can't take a full day off of work to be with you, people would find out, etc., etc." Not "ooh that makes me horny, when can you be here"

Me: *clears throat*
no no no!
How was that?

Him: Unconvincing.

Me: Yep I'm grinning the entire time I wrote that

Him: I read that as "No, no, no, why would I take a full day of work to have you trapped in my place tied to my bed where I could tickle your balls with my tongue and rub your head on the back of my throat until you were delirious"
which, as I said, is very unconvincing.

Gathering thoughts on Black Temple

I'm trying to write notes for the third guild podcast and I find it impossible to concentrate on the flow of text that I must write. I have plenty to say but hardly have the patience to figure out how to structure it so I write in this blog to let it come out without self-censorship of my vocal/mental voice.

It's been a pretty good July.

Mother Sharaz
From the beginning, getting the equipment together was akin to a frentic backstage fashion show where there's a mad rush to get to the specialists with all the elements in its proper place. The trash was unique which made many cynical raiders glad as they were sick of the same old, same old. We had issues with the Mother Sharaz addon which worked out once Thursley figured out that the announce function was off. We still need to work out how the addon works but once people got the hang of the teleportation and moving in the proper direction, Mother Sharaz was down within 4 tries. My role as a tank was to spam holy shield, judge wisdom and auto-swing, exorcise and consecrate when I can and watch the main tank to pop the Lay of Hands when appropriate.

Illidari Council
Illidari Council is down, despite the odds that it shouldn't have worked with my pally shield being up. Last night, the raid leader tested out it on some mobs...it shouldn't have worked as well as it did but somehow we succeeded by pure conviction. It's High King Maulgar 2.0...the pull and getting away from the Area of Effect abilities was what made this fight. I have to say it was a personal challenge for myself to use my abilities within a merciless period of time. Creating specific macros and focus targets helped my pull. It took multiple attempts, quite a few elixirs, excellent healing and vocal communication to make it work.

Today
I'm not sure why but I feel shaken to my core. Like I could physically fall apart if someone should touch me even with a slight touch. I feel like a mesh of spider silk, easily whisked aside, my feelings fragmented into nothingness. I feel the need to be mute, to not interact with other people. Even meeting my girlfriend for our usual lunch date took a lot out of me.

Interpersonal Relations
I'm having a problem with a player. I realized that he pushes my buttons and I with my insufferable rage, respond accordingly. It reminds me of this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html with his attitude. Does my distress really amuse him so? Or is this what he's used to?

Leadership Article

Revenge of the gamers: World of Warcraft is honing tomorrow's leaders

Why play games?
Byron Reeves and his co-authors contend that massively multiplayer online role-playing games -- MMORPGs -- can be useful simulators for modern business training. Here are a few of the reasons:
Pace: Leaders often have to make hundreds of strategic decisions during an hour of game play.
Risk: The relatively mild consequences of failure allow players to test a variety of strategies.
Revolving leadership: The temporary nature of many leadership roles allows people who tend to be real-world followers to try leadership opportunities and those who tend to be real-world leaders to get experience as followers.
Scope: One World of Warcraft game leader, a former
U.S. Army officer with a master's degree in human resource management, likened the leadership of an 80-person raiding guild to managing a midsize business.

May 12, 2008 (Computerworld) MMORPGs -- massively multiplayer online role-playing games -- like World of Warcraft, Eve and EverQuest may be the best simulators
of tomorrow's business environment. So say Byron Reeves, Thomas W. Malone and Tony O'Driscoll in this month's Harvard Business Review. The authors found that these games closely mirror the evolving world of business: distributed decision-making, rapid response, ad hoc teams, and leadership through collaboration rather than authority. Reeves, the Paul C. Edwards Professor of Communication at Stanford University and a co-founder of Seriosity Inc., a company that develops enterprise software inspired by online games, told Kathleen Melymuka that smart companies should be playing.
Tell me about the Seriosity study commissioned by IBM. They asked us to study collaboration and leadership in these [game] guilds. Moreover, these games are getting popular enough that, even if we don't want to take lessons from them, the people we're hiring are steeped in them, so we need to at least know what's shaping their lives and contributing to their expectations for software when they get to work.

What were some of the study's conclusions? The most interesting one is that leadership in these
games has less to do with the special qualities of the person doing the leading than with the environment itself. Tom Malone and I had looked at the leadership literature, and it's very biased toward leadership as a quality of an individual: Leaders are born, and you have to find them and nurture them. Gamers were saying in many ways just the opposite: A lot of people can be leaders when there's an environment that's conducive to making it happen. Maybe they're not the most socially extroverted communicators; maybe they just know what's going on. A lot of gamers told us, "I could [lead in a game], and it wouldn't happen at IBM."

What can you do with what you learned? A lot of information work is dull and boring, and there are productivity and retention problems that come from that. These games are engaging, compelling and just the opposite. So can we marry the juiciness of these experiences with the productivity needs of business contexts and get people more engaged in their work?

A sales team meeting in World of Warcraft is not the first thing that's going to happen. But when you think about it, it's suggestive of how much fun it could be to be a guild in a game with goals and avatars and synthetic currency systems: I'll give you 10 pieces of gold for that PowerPoint I need tomorrow.

How are game players' challenges similar to those of business leaders? Recruiting, evaluating, retaining, persuading, compensating -- all those things are really the same. If you're a guild leader, you're looking for new players; you're looking for the best before you "hire" them; you need to figure out what they want and compensate them in the right way to keep them. And "I know we need 30 players on this raid, but [I] have to go put the kids to bed" -- how do you deal with that?

And in today's work environments, so much is about persuading people to help you rather than having authority over them.

Exactly. Decentralized work really means that coordinating people is much more important than commanding them. How are the game and business environments different? On the very legitimate issue of the consequences of failure. When something bad happens in a game, you're not taking down millions of people invested in a company. Some of the psychological feelings may be the same, but in terms of the actual stakes, the consequences are broader in business.

What would it feel like in World of Warcraft if the future of the company were on the line? It would feel different. But businesses say they don't want the seriousness of the consequences to be handcuffs for innovation and risk taking. And there are other differences. One is the whole notion of transparency. In games, there's a lot more transparency in the culture as well as the rules. You know a lot in the games. You see what gear people have, what level they've achieved, and you know a lot about their status. You're a priest or a dwarf, and people know what you bring. You can make inferences at work, but there's not as much transparency of expertise. There are laws about transparency in business -- privacy rights.

You note certain distinctive characteristics of leadership in online games that point toward skills tomorrow's leaders will need. Can we discuss speed? Certainly, things can happen more quickly in games. In a game, you might congregate with five people you've just met; you've got one minute to decide who will lead and what the strategy will be, and then the gate opens. So there's a lot more opportunity to do things quickly. Iteration is an important part of this. In business, we're not going to go to Step 2 until we know we won't fail on Step 5. The default strategy in games is, "That's a good idea; let's try that." Then, wham! "All right, we all die. Let's go left instead of right next time." There's a lot of opportunity to try things a lot of times, and there's
value in that: A lot of small failures add up to global success rather than being so careful about each step.

Are gamers less risk-averse in business? Tony O'Driscoll has studied several hundred gamers at IBM. It occurs to a majority of them that things happening in these games are similar to and different from real work and useful to think about in real work. People volunteer that they have made that connection.

Tell me about the honesty that the use of avatars engenders. In games, they are signals of your role and expertise. In respect to representing expertise, the games keep you honest in ways real life doesn't. You can't say you are a Level 50 when you're only 40, whereas you can probably do that at work, where expertise is more objective. That's one reason people like these games: because they're fair. It's not about who you know and how well you do in the hallway conversation; it's what level
you've achieved.

Finally, you note that leadership roles are often temporary in games. To some extent, people with competence rise to the top, but there is a lot of temporary leadership: I've been in this dungeon, so I'll just take over. A corollary is that leaders get experience being followers and that's useful also, because people who know a lot are being directed by people who know less, but for whatever reason, it's their turn to take over.

Getting back to the conclusion that the right environment may matter more than the right leader --
how can companies benefit from that insight? Build better environments, and leadership will emerge. There's a real interest in analytics in business now. You can have a lot of data about how things are going. Dashboard and analytics is a good example. They provide a leader board and a score card like games have, and they're right up there for everybody to see. It's very gamelike.

Watching NBC, I learned of a T-shirt business that supports a camp for traumatized children with their signature theme of "Life is good". What I garner from their mission is the importance of play for children who don't have the processes nor language to communicate their experiences which then they're unable to foster an understanding and remain in a locked fearful stance. Hence play lets them distract, put a story to what they went through and let them see it in a safe environemt.