Strength and Beauty

I have been walking a little more lately (for some good and healthy exercise) and my favorite place to go is Lions Woods. It is a small forest preserve a little north of my home and I treasure it. Lots of paths that go all sorts of directions and link back up with one another. I take Audrey with me in the jogger stroller and we walk at a pretty good clip. Recently, I went and all the wildflowers were in full bloom. Stunning. They must plant the seeds along the walkways because it is so picturesque to walk through. I am not sure what all their names are but I love each and every one of them. Queen Anne’s lace, black eyed susan’s, asters, cone flowers, goldenrod and the list goes on of all the ones I don’t have names for. And then there are all the grasses and stunning foliage that make for quite a lovely backlit sun garden. My most amazing discovery was orchids. Yes, orchids in the shade of a pine grove. I must show you for it caught me by surprise.

Such a tender and fragile little flower.

I picked a gorgeous bouquet of flowers and foliage.

And my favorite of all, Queen Anne’s lace…Diana Berry says to Anne, “Anne, this is the last of the Queen Anne’s lace for the summer.” As she pins the intricate lace flower in Anne’s cute cropped hair after dying it with green dye from the peddler she met on the road.

My gladiolas are starting to bloom.
I accidentally ordered 150 gladiola bulbs from Gurnee Seed when I had meant to order only 50. Oops. To my benefit though. I have planted clumps of them everywhere. And LoAnn had given me the idea to stagger the planting times so that you have them blooming all summer. Fantastic. I spied the first one popping up in its cool amphibian sort of way (they always look like scales). And this morning, Miss M and I were watering the yard and saw the first one bloomed. Made my day, literally. I showed it to Audrey who admired it in her own sort of way, usually by grabbing it and destroying it. Got to teach her to admire from afar. Maybe she is an “S” on the Myers-Briggs.

Here it is….(oh, and by the way, I have been trying to figure out how to use this one program to upload my photos on here so they are smaller, thus not taking forever to load on your computers. My blog administrator (aka Brendan) will be giving me a tutorial soon. Until then, the pictures will be awfully large.)

Some of you are going to be unable to relate to this or have any idea what I am talking about, but I will share anyway.

I have been playing World of Warcraft (aka WOW), an online multi player role playing video game, more seriously now for the last six months. *More seriously* meaning, I have been playing a lot; I probably have been averaging 10-15 hours a week. I created a Tauren druid, named Nukpana, who is part of the Horde (the mean, the bad, the ugly). When I first started this character, I was invited to be a part of a guild, which is like a team of sorts. Other characters are invited in and you play together, doing quests and running through instances (which are like really intense fights with big “bosses”). The guild had gone through a few different leaders, names and people, but for the most part there was a core of us who have known each other over the last 6 months and have become “friends of sorts”.

The maximum level the game has designed for the characters is level 70. I have recently hit level 51 which is significant. I have played over the last few years with Ivan and had actually made it to level 60 with a Night Elf hunter, which at that time was the highest level you could get. I was only able to achieve that level through the help primarily of Ivan showing me how to play, where to go, how to do the quests, which bosses to kill to get different loot. I played a lot with the family guild named “All Your Base” which was bonding and fun to do with Ivan’s brothers and sister. But Nukpana was different. I wanted to play the character on my own and figure it out myself; without Ivan’s help. So to get to level 51 on my own seemed like quite an accomplishment. Of course, I had my guildies helping me and coaching me.

Over the last few weeks I have felt like I needed a break from the game. I find myself more and more emotionally invested in my character feeling this strong drive to level, level, level and keep up with the rest of the people in my guild who were all starting to reach level 70. I also felt emotionally invested in the guild staying intact, happy, and functioning well. They had made me an officer a few months ago which was quite an honor and surprise for little peon me, Nukpana. Different characters would come and go from the guild not saying why they were going or where they were going. It would bother me but I usually would get over it and keep playing with the core of the guild.

However, more recently, in the middle of the night, the majority of the characters from our guild up and left taking all their alternate characters with them and even booting people from the guild they would want to take with them when they came online a little later. All that was left was the guild leader, her assistant and husband and a few of us lower level 50 something characters. I felt so betrayed and emotionally devastated by this action on their part. They had obviously been planning this for awhile and I was shocked by their lack of openness with the remaining few of us. Like I said earlier, I have become too emotionally invested in this game and I had felt like some of them were actual buddies. There was hardly anything left to this guild and I was angry. The four core characters that were remaining talked it out that we would keep the guild going and just start over.

But it was too much for me. It sent me over the edge in a way; it made me make the decision to take a long break from this game and get some perspective. It’s just a game, right? I know that is what some of you are thinking. You probably think I am silly and quite emotionally immature to get this attached to a character, to a guild, to a game. But I am honest; I have.

It was actually quite a hard decision to make, to go and cancel my account with Blizzard. But I did it. It felt good but sad at the same time. It has been two days since I said goodbye to Nukpana and some of my friends left in the guild. I feel bored, kind of lost on what to do with my time. I find myself still drawn to the created world of Azeroth. But I am resisting and searching for something different to fill my life with, for now.

I have all sorts of creative projects I would like to work on–quilts to finish, curtains to make, painting of rooms, gardens to nurture and tend, many, many knitting projects to complete, letters to write, books to read and reflect on. I want to spend more time with my husband and daughter. I want to walk more through Lions Woods. I think this is going to be good for me.

So here is a goodbye to Nukpana for the summer. I may meet up with her again in the fall with new perspective and more balanced life.