I want to talk about something that I've been thinking about for awhile now.  We use words to communicate: we talk, we type, we emote - we call, we text, we send emails.  We use them without thinking because they're so much a part of our everyday lives.

And we forget that words have power.

An Example

I'm going to start by sharing a particular story of mine.  This story has not seen the light of day before this, but I want people to see it and understand how deeply it affected me.

I've thought a lot about whether or I should post this thing or let it rot in my drafts folder for eternity. But it's real and it's honest, even if it's not very pretty.

The day that this happened was already an awful one.  I had had a rough day at work; a report I had spent a significant amount of time writing and angsting over came back for review.  It had to be rewritten and there wasn't much (any) time to rewrite it.

Personally, I think it's very interesting how we bring our emotions to the game.  But that's a different post altogether.

Like many of us, I sought to relieve a terrible day by playing in Azeroth.  The notable part of the night was a Wailing Caverns run on my resto shaman.

Mutanus drops a ring that has Intellect and Spirit on it. Both the mage and I roll on it and the mage wins. Pay attention now, this is where things go down hill. (Paraphrased to the best of my ability.)

Me to Guild: Ugh. Why do noob mages not know they don't need spirit?

Guild to Me: I will never roll a mage. Because if I forget I don't need spirit and roll on something I wouldn't want someone talking about me behind my back.

Why yes, I do feel like a douchecanoe now.

What I think I was hoping for something along the lines of "Hey, that really sucks. Sorry dude. Better luck next time." Because this does happen all the time and, barring the response I received, I wouldn't even remember this incident come Friday morning.

Instead I felt very... judged.

In the original write-up of this story, I spend some time justifying myself.  Objectively, I know that there are any number of reasons for a level 20-something mage to roll need on an Int/Spr ring.

Subjectively, of course, I'd had a terrible day.

I vented my frustrations in what I assumed was a safe environment.

The Bigger Picture

Words have power because they have larger implications.

In this case, the response from guild chat hurt me because it indicated to me that guild chat was not necessarily the safe environment I had thought. This isn't to say that Eff's guild chat is emotionally unsafe, either.

The lesson I learned - the larger implication, if you will - is that I can't share just anything that comes to mind and expect automatic acceptance.  This was a blow for me, because I believe that guild's should confer unconditional acceptance.

Please, don't misunderstand.  I don't think that everyone has to be BFFs and send kittens to each other and bake cookies and stuff.  You can have people in your guild that you never talk to.  Or you might even have people you don't necessarily like.  But you accept them.

You accept them as people.  They are sitting at a computer - just like you.  They have feelings, thoughts, emotions, opinions - just like you.  They have families, friends, jobs - just like you.

Also, acceptance fosters communication and teamwork which is necessary if you're going to be fighting internet dragons. 

Good Feelings

I've been careful not to say that words hurt.  Words also have great power to help and heal. 

Most of the time, our blogging community is exceptionally good at this.  We take the time to write about ourselves and our experiences.  We open up to eachother - complete strangers, most of the time - to find similarities and differences that broaden our world views and form friendships across the globe.

Some people write guides.  Some are good at explaining complicated math, or spell priorities, or crafting gear lists.  When we share these things with each other, our words are out there helping someone.  I think that's a powerful thing.

I don't want anyone to think this is just aimed at bloggers.  As I said at the beginning, everyone has words.  They might be spoken, written, typed - they might be on a website, on your phone, face to face, or in game.

It's important that we use our words - and their inherent power - for good.  Our words have the power to crush others or lift them up.  Use them wisely.

We've been here before.  My name is Mara, and I'm an Altoholic.  If there's an Altoholics Anonymous, I should be living there.  Really.

When I character switch in guild, it tends to be a bit more obvious.  [Marariel] has come online!  [Kiele] has come online!  [Jayse] has come online!  And so on and so forth.

I hadn't realized - until a couple weeks ago - just how bad it was.  I have WoW Armory on my phone and it will produce a full list of all my characters, active and otherwise.  My main is a warlock and, for better or worse, this seems to create a block for me in regards to mages.  Despite that, I have 5 low-level mages scattered throughout the realms.

Therefore, for my amusement and hopefully yours, here is a breakdown of my 30 alts.

Max-Level Characters: 2
            -Marariel, warlock
            -Aioka, priest

Project Chatacters: 7
            -Adaela, hunter, Project Levelling Loremaster
            -Annagaile, shaman, Project Healsauce
            -Cordelle, paladin, Project Ironman
            -Ixchell, paladin, Project Healsauce
            -Jayse, death knight, Project L2PVP
            -Kiele, druid, Project Healsauce
            -Lilliriel, priest, Project Lilli

Level With Other People: 2
            -Xianna, mage
            -Maradelle, paladin

These alts are all somewhat justified.  I have actual plans for these guys.  This is where it starts to get silly.

            Death Knights: 4 (all different races)

            Druids: 3 (all different races)

            Hunters: 5 (2 Blood Elves, 1 Night Elf, 1 Troll, 1 Dwarf)

            Mages: 5 (2 Draenei, 1 Gnome, 1 Goblin, 1 Blood Elf)

            Paladins: 5 (3 Blood Elves, 1 Draenei, 1 Human)

            Priests: 2

            Rogue: 1 (ewww)

            Shamans: 2

            Warlocks: 2 (1 replaced Mara on my old server)

            Warrior: 1

No, I don't understand either.  How about by level?

            Death Knights: 72, 61, 58, 56

            Druids: 49, 25, 9

            Hunters: 25, 16, 15, 10, 1

            Mages: 27, 10, 9, 7, 7

            Paladins: 38, 10, 7, 7, 6

            Priests: 85, 10

            Rogue: 15

            Shamans: 67, 44

            Warlocks: 85, 11

            Warrior: 16

Clearly, I have some sort of bizarre fixation with Blood Elves (despite being totally dedicated to the Alliance) and Mages (despite being a warlock who eats mages for breakfast).  Also, Hunters.  Go figure.

At least some, if not all, of the unjustified alts should consider seeing the delete button. But... but... they all have pretty names!

Can you help me?

I realized today that the shaman I'm leveling is a bit of dick.

Annagaile is female dwarf shaman, leveling as Restoration through the mixed-bag of awesomeness, douchebaggery, and gogogogo that is the Random Dungeon Finder. 

I know.  A female dorf?  Unpossible!

I have also been picking up the cooking and fishing dailies and some of the Hero's Call quests as they come up.  The cooking and fishing dailies are just easy XP for the most part.  If it's one of the ones that requires me to leave the city, I usually just ignore it.

But the Hero's Call...

I do mean that the only quest I do is the Hero's Call quest.  I thought I read somewhere that picking them up would help ensure you got the flight points for each zone.  I don't know where I read that and I do not have the facts to back that up.  (Meaning I can't tell you why I'm doing these particular quests and no others.  I just am.)

Imagine that you are Admiral So-And-So and you're stuck at some ridiculously out of the way Alliance outpost and you need help.  Lots of it.  The King, in his great wisdom (/cough), sends a message out to all the able-bodied members of the Alliance.  Admiral So-And-So needs your help!

Not so very long later, a dwarf shows up.  Admiral So-And-So is so excited!  Here is the first round of help he has been promised!  For the first time in weeks things are starting to look a little brighter.

"Nope, I'm just turning in this one quest.  Them I'm out again."

Admiral So-And-So is probably flabbergasted.  And possibly angry.  This shaman has delivered nothing but false hope.  Varian's so called "Hero's Call" has attracted only sightseers!  Angst!

So yeah... These quests make me feel like my shaman is a terrible person.  Is that weird?

Day 03: Your First Day Playing WoW

When I first heard about World of Warcraft I couldn't imagine anyone paying a monthly subscription fee to play a video game.  I thought it was the silliest thing I'd ever heard.  I mean, I can pay once for a Final Fantasy game and play it for years too!

But my husband's (then boyfriend) college roommate played WoW every day.  And it was watching Kal (as I will call said roommate) that I began to think maybe there was something to the WoW thing after all.  It was late BC and Kal was a mage (sometimes a druid), raiding Tempest Keep: The Eye.  I still remember Kal, Sen, and I pilling onto Kal's bed while he raided on his laptop.  Once we sang into vent...  good times.

Sen caved first.  He rolled a gnome mage just like Kal and that was pretty much that.

My first day playing wow was actually on Sen's account, as a human warlock named Kapila.  I was hooked from the very moment a chick standing in a graveyard asked me to sneak into enemy territory to steal a book. (I don't think this quest exists anymore.  It used to be you had to complete it so that you could learn how to summon your first minion.)

Kapila didn't last very long.  I had to have my own account so that Sen and I could play at the same time.  I probably had no idea that Sen could delete Kapila so that I could keep using that name.  It didn't matter, though, I had a new name.  A better name.

I've been using Marariel ever since.  Three years later and I've never not been a warlock.  I've leveled other characters (only all the time), of course, but only once have I ever even considered switching mains.

*A brief historical note*

I was taking a class on World Religions at the same time that I started playing WoW and this is particularly evident in my early character name choices.

Kapila is a Hindu sage with strong spiritual powers. 

Mara is the Hindu goddess of death and the Buddhist demon of temptation.

Day 02: Why Did You Decide to Start a Blog?

What a great question. 

I have no effing idea.

I have always enjoyed both journaling and creating new things.  Anything, be they new characters, stories, websites, projects, anything.  I imagine the pull started when I first discovered other WoW-oriented blogs.  You mean I can create a new website-thing and journal about the things I do in my favoritest game evar?  Sign me up.

Of course, I was faced with the daunting question of what the heck I was going to blog about.  So I waited until I hit the level cap on my main and first toon.  There was the perfect thing to write about: I not only had a brand-spanking-new raider who had never seen a raid before, between my friends and I we had half a 10man of brand-spanking-new raiders... who had never seen a raid before.

It was (and remains) a fantastic premise.  Watch me and my noobcrew learn how to put together a semi-successful raiding guild, learn to raid, struggle with gearing, staying out of bad, and pugging.  Towards the end of Wrath of the Lich King we did manage to go 10/12 in ICC, despite having about 7-8 regular guild members.

My blogging adventures went on hiatus when Memento broke up.  We weren't flailing about in the Cataclysm raiding scene, so I had nothing to write about and the purpose of my blog was going unfulfilled.

I need a new purpose. 

I would like to say that I have one.  I would love to bring useful posts about warlocking to Daylight Shadows - posts full of helpful hints, gear selection, boss strats, and math.  Given both my schedule and my lack of said useful knowledge, this is unlikely to happen in the near future.

I am hoping that this 20-30 days of forced posting and self-reflection will lead me to discovering my new blogging purpose.  And if it turns out that that is journaling about the things I do in my favoristest game evar?  That's cool too.

Day One: Introduce Yourself

I very rarely know what to do with these types of posts - that's why I didn't start with one as my Omg, First Blog Post, Let Me Tell You About Myself.

I'm not precisely shy... anymore.  However, I do tend to be reserved, quiet, and mindful of my audience.  I would rather listen than speak and I would rather people thought me odd for my silence than dislike me for my words.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." ~ Abraham Lincoln

High emotions, of course, tend to change things.  I almost always say more than I want to when I'm frustrated.  I have a sarcastic sense of humor - my words can be entirely too pointed sometimes.  Those that have known me a long time know that I try to never say anything with ill intent, and I try to curb my sarcasm around those who do not know that.

As far as hobbies go, there are few things I do not enjoy and few things that I would consider myself good at.  I read, write, draw, cross-stitch, and play video games.  I will read just about anything, but my preferred genre is fantasy.  Naturally, when I manage to write it also tends to fall into the fantasy category.  I used to work very hard at drawing reasonable-looking people/animals/scenes.  It was never a skill that came naturally and I didn't enjoy it as much as writing, so it's not something I endeavor to maintain.  You most likely will not see any drawings or sketches here.

World of Warcraft is my video game of choice, of course.  That's why we're here (at this blog, specifically).  My main is a warlock - always has been - and I've been playing for about 3 years now.  I have rampant altoholism.  My old "home" server is full and my new home server is rapidly filling up.  I would love to say that each of my characters has a well developed personality and story.  That would be a lie, however, as I'm just not that creative.

I like to play a new alt for about 20 levels or so and see if a distinctive personality develops from my interraction with the character.  This isn't a gurantee that the character will see more play time than others, but it is interesting.  I frequently wonder if a person's preferred interractions within the game world is indicative of any psychological norms.  Someone should do a study.

I also greatly enjoy the word indicative.

There are some more normal, mundane details in the various "about" sections. I personally view my life as hectic, but not particularly interesting.  I suppose some people (myself included) might be amused by my learning to balance things just like a real adult.

I use to-do lists to manage my daily and/or weekly work loads.  Write a post on Nov 1st?  Check.

You can't see it, but I've been working up to a first post for about a month and a half.  This is indicative of all my usual problems with blogging.

• Time

There are times when my schedule is  insanely busy.  I know, this is true for every one, but other people seem to manage Blogging, Work, Chorecraft, Family, and WoW.  What's my issue?  Honestly, I don't have an answer for this.  I only know that I manage a never-ending cycle of lesson-planning, research, and grading at work, and never-ending cycles of laundry, organizing, and litter boxes at home. 

In the small remaining smidgens of time?  Hanging out with my new husband and raiding with Eff the Ineffable.

• Motivation

Every blogger hits this point at least once, or twice, or a hundred times: you run out of things to talk about.  Personally, I tend to write journalistic posts about what my guild and I are getting up to.

In the early parts of the year, my old guild (Memento Mori) fell apart and I was essentially doing nothing but wandering about Azeroth aimlessly.  Not so amazing for blog posts.  What blog posts I did manage from that time tended to be angry and/or angst-ridden, so it's probably for the better that there were so few of them.

Later I was lucky enough to join up with Eff the Ineffable - which is so full of other amazing bloggers, that it seemed to be totally redundant to post about all the cool things Eff was doing.

• Self Perception

And on the other hand, it's entirely possibly that I'm using both Time and Motivation as an excuse to not put myself out there.  After all, who could possibly be interested in what I have to say?  That didn't stop me much when I was raiding with Memento.  I wrote what I wanted and nobody read it and that was ok.

There are times when I ask myself why now should be any different.  I can't imagine that anyone from Eff would say no, don't write about us, we don't want your journalistic nonsense clogging up the blogosphere.  Especially when it's entirely possible that I could continue to write what I want (new guild, new expansion, but the same old struggles with dps and boss strats and floor tanking) and nobody would still read it (except a couple of guildies) and that would still be ok.

Alright, so what is different now?

I miss writting.

That's the long and the short of it.  I don't have a lot of time.  I don't know what I'm going to write.  And I don't know how other people are going to feel about it.

But I'm going to write anyway.

Some of this determination comes from NaNoWriMo - it starts tomorrow, folks!  There's no way I'm going to be able to keep up with the demanding schedule of writing the whole 50,000 words in one month.  But maybe - maybe - I can write a little something everyday.

I'll most likely be starting with 20 Days of Blogging from Saga, over at Spellbound, to ensure a little daily inspiration.  For the other 10 days?  Who knows.

Let the challenge begin!