Life Lessons, courtesy of World of Warcraft.

If you’re a roleplayer, and you play World of Warcraft…who you become…who you portray…what you do, and who you do it with…tells you far more about yourself than you probably are comfortable knowing.

Here’s what I’ve learned about myself in the last 3 months.

I make friends easily. Most of the people I run across like me. Well, unless they’re a complete jerk. But if you’re being a jerk in a pretend game, it’s unlikely that you, as a player, actually like anyone, including yourself. Having as many friends as I do…not bad for a pretty healthy introvert.
I’ll make friends with member of the Horde…I routinely greet them, and always have a ready smile…dance with them…generally have fun being around them…however…

I have a very dark streak that comes out to play once in a while. Sometimes, I enjoy chasing a member of the Horde halfway across the map, toying with them like a mouse, before killing them very dead, someplace utterly inconvenient for them. Repeatedly. Until they log out in disgust, and hope I go away.
The very best gift Tryxy ever got was from a Warlock friend who exhaustedly shared a hammock with her in Gadgetzan overnight recently. She left her a black rose in the morning, on a tray with breakfast. Best. Gift. Ever.

I’m surprisingly generous. If I don’t think you’re simply looking for a handout, I’ll gladly give you the shirt off my back (Zyrah’s Black Swashbuckler Shirt), or my last Gold piece. (Snorii, who later gave me a Green Wing Macaw as payback.)
On the flip side, someone asked me last night if I had any “spare” silver. I replied that, in fact I did have quite a bit of spare silver, but not for them.
I am only a bit less generous in the real world, but only because my income is not directly influenced by my own actions not matter how hard I work, I get paid the same.
Oh yeah, and in the real world, I can’t just run out in the desert and spend 3 hours attacking tribes of bedouins for the contents of their wallets. But if I could, I would. =)

I’ve driven by thousands of homeless people in my entire life without helping them at all. However, about 5 years ago now, I gave a homeless man the very last bill in my wallet the day before payday. His sign said he was looking for work, and it was clear by the way he was dressed that he was serious, and the last bill in my wallet happened to be a Twenty…

I like being the person who gets things done for everyone’s benefit…but…
…I don’t like to lead. I don’t like telling people what to do. I prefer to suggest, and then let them run with it…or not. Or just do it, and present a fait accompli.

I work at work, the way I work in WoW. – that being….some periods of inactivity and boredom and helping others at the expense of my own overall career progress, followed by a flurry of intensely productive time, that ultimately leaves everyone around me gaping in awe of the spectacle they’ve just witnessed.
WoW example… Over a weekend, I levelled from 25 to 30 (normally, it’s a day or three of playing per level). Then the next weekend was slow…30-32…the following (long) weekend was 32-39…then a slow creep up from there…

My friend Kevin (who always seemed to be “the quiet one” when I would come out to California for an Adrian Event) is one of the damn funniest, most outgoing and boisterous people I know. To describe Toochen McGroyne…is a task…
Imagine, gentle reader, a redheaded Gimli the Dwarf from the Lord of the Rings…but…drunk. Always, always, always drunk, with a constant and true companion ever at his side, in the form of a Westfall Prairie Chicken named Chicken, with whom he regularly has conversations on a wide variety of topics.

I’m an absolute cuddle junkie. – and sometimes, I get wrapped up in the moment, and make poor decisions as a result. (story of my life – go for the cuddle, wind up with a relationship…)

I love the thought of being in love. …even though at my advanced age, I still don’t know for sure that I know what that is. I know what it is in my head…but I don’t know if that’s realistic…but I think it is. I see it in Jaime and Maedb’s postings about each other…all these years, and just the thought of one another…makes them smile. It’s a sense of…there’s nobody in the world you’d rather have pick you up at the airport… Not Paris Hilton, or Sly Stallone, or Allyson Hannigan, or Donald Trump. You want it to be your love…and nobody else.
I don’t think that’s something many people have. I know for a fact I don’t.

Ultimately, though, World of Warcraft has taught me that despite my many strengths, I have one major weakness.
I’m a dreadfully lonely person. – I know *exactly* what I want out of life, and have always believed that it was a matter of looking under every stone until I found it…and sometimes, I’ve believed that I’ve found it…but, upon reflection, I’ve really just fooled myself into believe it…why? Because I’m a cuddle junkie. So I settle. I take the cuddles, and miss the big picture.
I actually sat down way way back in the day, when I saw the relationship with Constance starting to falter, and I spent a day at the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, just people watching…with a notebook. I jotted down every positive or negative trait I percieved about passers by… Some 300-odd traits, all told, ranging from “Very Tall” to “Very Short” to “Doesn’t like to wear noisy shoes”
Then I ranked them objectively, comparing each trait to every other trait (yes, 300 traits compared to 299 other traits is a very large number – it took a while)
…And you learn something significant about yourself when you have to decide between some very unrelated things, that have varying importance to you…such as whether you’d prefer a love of your life who is either:
“Very Short or Politically Liberal” (Easy Cheesy. I’ll take the 6’6″ Liberal by a landslide), or
“smallish breasts or red hair” (ooh…um…tougher one…er…um…A. Love red hair, but not as much as I’m really not a fan of big boobs.), or
“Doesn’t have/want kids or Gamer Chick” (*tears hair out trying to decide, gives up, has heart attack instead*).
Eventually, by comparing each and every item to each and every other item, then seeing which items you picked most often…you get an objective picture of what’s REALLY important to you.

A few things floated very much to the top back then. I looked at the list again the other day…and all things considered, nothing has changed since then.

So…World of Warcrat’s ultimate Life Lesson?
That it’s time to love myself enough to be true to what I want out of life, and not settle.