Burnout – The Climb #798 - Adrian Faulkner

Friday 30^th April 2021

I think I’m possibly reaching a bit of a burn out stage with Warcraft. This is both a good and a bad thing.

I’ve started leveling a new character. The idea is that this is potentially going to be my new raiding main come 9.1. Yes, that patch is still months off but in the meantime, I need to level them from 0, get them through Shadowlands, get their legendary and complete their covenant.

Ordinarily, that would be something I’d power through… and yet… There’s just a big part of me that can’t be bothered. I go on to level, do a level and then log off. It’s even a zone I’ve not been through in a long time, but it’s made no difference.

Perhaps I’ve just leveled enough alts (15 at the moment) that I’m more interested in other content. Yet, I went to all that trouble to unlock Kul Tirian this week.

The positive side to all this is that it means I’m not going to be playing Warcraft for hours. It means, I’ll go on, play a bit, get bored, log off and work on some writing piece.

I rely heavily on World of Warcraft to power me through writing spells. I’ll sit down and write for a session and then come away from it a bit drained. A Warcraft session of twenty minutes or so, is usually enough o charge me back up. Consequently, if I chain them together, I can get into this mobius strip where I write until done, go play Warcraft until bored, go back to writing and so on. It works for me, even if I do feel I’m grinding both words and XP.

However, I feel I’ve been really good at not going down a Warcraft rabbit hole of late. I’ll do stuff, but can easily log off and do writing. Warcraft doesn’t seem to be holding up my productivity currently, so burn out isn’t really going to help.

The big downside to all this though is that, however fun the writing may be, the act of writing can feel like a chore. If I’m not getting the usual enjoyment out of Warcraft, it can leave me feeling as if I spend my entire day slogging words and XP out.

With the pandemic stopping me doing a lot of stuff and TV getting to the stage where I’ve consumed most of the stuff I want to watch, life can feel a little boring right now. I’ve been watching a lot of tornado videos lately, mainly because I find myself craving adventure. The last thing I need right now is for the writing to feel like a slog.

Maybe, if the weather is nice, I’ll take myself on another walk tomorrow. I’ve got a few plot problems with this detailed outline I need to solve and a walk is always a good way to come up with solutions.

Otherwise, I’ll be slogging through my new alt… one level at a time.