Homework...Fiesta or otherwise

Right on evening time again! The family has gone to bed and I'm alone with my thoughts... Scary :). Actually it is very good as I have had at least a few of them lately. Some of them have even been about Fiesta. One in particular that comes up is that I don't know how long I'll be playing Fiesta. As I am getting into better habits, I find that I'm feeling better and better about life which is causing me to do other things with my time, which leaves less time for gaming. We'll see, I've noticed many things happening in my life lately. I feel like I'm observing my life right now, listening to what my feelings are saying as well as the experiences that are coming up for me.
Another thought I had was concerning homework. How does that fit into Fiesta one may ask, but it does! Consider the excel document that I have been working on. I was just at the part where I thought I was done and actually using the sheet to collect data when I noticed ONE CELL WAS NOT WORKING! Course then consider that I'm dealing with SHEETS of like 30 units to a sheet and the one cell in ALL of them is wrong! It's actually a fairly easy fix, but it'll take work and I find that I have to take time away from the game to do this. Which is very good. The writing of the blog is work... taking away from game time that I could be spending playing, but it's good that I'm writing, as I find that it inspires me. I suppose what I'm getting at is taking a break to to the work before the play can be a VERY valuable habit. I find that the homework option I have struggled with for most of my life. Play has been so important to me and at times it's not easy for me to see the value of the work right off the bat, but every time I have a finished produce I am reminded of the value a little work can bring, One would think I would be inspired to work more when I do this , but I find I have more time to play so up until lately I have played more, in whatever it is I'm working on or playing. Right now though I'm creating new habits, which in turn is doing good things for me in my life. I find that I'm doing more. I suppose tying this paragraph together, I still want to be able to have and do fun things, but I also want to be spending time doing my "homework" as the work I do at home can be some of the most valuable work that I'll do. Ooooh speaking of homework, I wanted to fit this into my blog somewhere and here is the place! MIT offers over 80%(I've heard) of it's courses online for FREE! Granted one does not get the paper degree... but for those of us looking for useful knowledge and to gather skills, what an awesome opportunity, yet it requires one doing their homework. For those interested in these MIT courses click here.

There have been good things happening to me lately, as I ponder these things I find myself asking "what's causing it?" The thought crosses my mine "oh! perhaps it's the Fiesta game." I find it's more than that though. I find that the Fiesta game is a bit of a distraction and could even be a detractor of the things I'm looking to create in my life if I'm not careful. I think what's making the difference in my life right now, are the habits I'm getting into. I am a spiritual person, yet for a while now I have not been praying, I mean I have most of the time but they have been sleepy right before bed prayers lacking in substance. I found that I wanted this to be different so I decided I would say my prayers BEFORE gaming and before I was anticipating sleep, and now I'm finding that I'm begin to really pray again. It feels good.
I've started to write. This blog has been enjoyable and given me a place to write some of my feelings about what's going on in my life. Granted I look at what I've written so far and think, "wait this is a blog about Fiesta!", and while that is true.... it's about my Fiesta Experience. The bigger thing going on though is that I'm writing again and I've always noticed that life seems to get really good when I'm writing :)

Okay so enough about these things, what's new in Fiestaville? The group I tend to hang with online likes to have dance parties and I find it's quite a bit of fun. Granted the characters only have a few dances they can do. I find that we make it more exciting by using other movements that are available to the characters to create some level of variance. I took a few pictures and just had to get them posted of my character dancing with the "PEPSI" girls :). It was lot's of fun and makes me laugh!

Buying and selling irritations

Today I wanted to discuss an irritation concerning my Fiesta experience, specifically when I have stuff to sell and I set up shop in Fiesta... and then nothing sells, I find that it irritates me and puts me in a somewhat irritable mood. I set up shop earlier today and just left the computer alone pretty much all day. Yet I sold very little. I have actually experienced this in real life when I trading stocks. I found that when my stock was doing poorly I was irritated. This is not something that I alone feel, as from some of the writings I've read about concerning the topic of investing the market can affect people's moods if we let it. I suppose the big thing I'm getting is that something I'm doing isn't working and the Fiesta economy is changing. I have put a lot of focus in selling one thing, Elrue, and I'm noticing that everyone else seems to now be selling Elrue and other such stones as well and are willing to make less of a profit than I, or they play more and gather more resources than I and produce their own. I find I'm more focused on the retail end of things where I look for people selling the product at a price comparable to what it would cost me to make it myself and then sell at a higher price later.

I think it's time to look at some other avenues

This, I find, is not an issue that is limited to just my Fiesta experience. I find when I get into one comfort zone where I know how things work, I don't branch out very much. This very concept is discussed in the short story "Who moved my Cheese?" This discusses two mice who are in search for cheese, they find a big stash and one of them gets comfy and the other enjoys the cheese but is out looking around the area keeping and eye out for more cheese. In a nutshell one day the Cheese is gone and the mouse who had been exploring finds other cheeses and the one that got comfy just sits and stews wondering why his cheese disappeared and when it was coming back. I thought it was a really great read and it's short so I encourage anyone to pick it up and take a look. Again though, the concept I'm working with is that there are other things that I can do to make money in the game and I really ought to be focusing on those things. I suppose one of the reasons I like the Elrue & stones sales is that it tend to be bigger money when all is sold and sometimes it sells quickly, but a lot of the time, especially due to the amount of competition, it seems to be going a lot slower. I'm actually thinking just raw materials would be the better thing to start selling. At least during the day. The bigger sales I'll leave for the night time where I can just set up shop and not worry about it till morning.

I'm feeling that having successes in my sales in this game is important because when people buy and I'm successful it encourages me to sell more and I find it quite exciting. Not only that but as my confidence builds I find I'm much more open to doing stuff in real life like Ebay sales. I've got something I'm planning on selling on Ebay soon and I feel if I can just get the first couple of sales under my belt I'll be in good shape because the initial fear will be over. We'll see :)

Concerning my Excel tool I'm pretty happy with it. Turns out there are still a few bugs to work out and some minor things that I'm adjusting before it works just the way I want it to. I had a chance to use it last night but I'm finding as a calculator it didn't work very well as I'm still getting used to it. I find that my original intent for the the tool is a reference point, which may take a little bit of work getting all the info in.

Post #3 (I'm on a role)

Wow! Today was what I feel like a day was supposed to be like. I didn't get on Fiesta at all today due to I didn't really have anything prepared to sell and I also had a lot of other things that were occurring today that took all of my attention. I did however finish my excel spreadsheet that I was working on for the sales of my Fiesta items. I am really quite excited about that! Aside from that it does some really cool calculations, it represents me finishing a project. I mentioned in my earlier blog that I was a bit intimidated by excel, but now that I have finished this project, I feel like I have had the experience that my project was not nearly as taxing as I thought it could have been :) and every time I have one of these experiences, I find that it makes starting and completing other projects much easier to get started and finished. This has also got me thinking about my Ebay project. Tonight I found some awesome clearance items at Office Depot (lasers! can you believe it!). I'm keeping one for myself and then selling the other three. With any luck they cover a good portion of my Office Depot clearance shopping. I'm feeling like I'm much more able to handle working an Ebay business and it's time to get started. This excel file though... as I looked a bit more closely at it... turns out can also be used for my Ebay sales in calculating cost of product to purchase or produce and what it's currently selling for to get profit margins. In my next few posts I intend to get some screen shots of the spreadsheet and post here with instructions on how to use. I may also put in a link here to a place where people can download the file or perhaps to my email and I'll send it to them.
Haven't really looked into it much at this point sooooo don't know what available. For now send me a message and when it's done I can send a copy to you.

In other Fiesta news, last night had like a two hour dance party online, which is really quite amazing as the Fiesta characters only have like 5 dances. So we ended up getting down to our basic Noobe (new person) clothes and regular armor boots. Which means we all had really big boots on. It was quite enjoyable and I really enjoyed chatting with all the other people that were on. I've decided that for a little while I'm going to wander around towns in my Noobe lounge clothes. It makes me laugh that it's so much fun for me.

Hmmm I may want to make a note somewhere to take pictures of these events when they occur or other cool events as then I can post them on this blog. I can do that you know :).

In any case the highlight of today for me was the putting together of the Excel file. I may have other ideas for the future but for now it's in a form that I would be happy to share with others.

Alright! Post #2

Great! I'm doing my second post! This is working out so well.

Okay, where to start? Well I'm finding that today I'm experiencing a bit of "great day" withdrawal. That's where a person has a just plain fantastic day (which was Monday for me), and all of the other days of the week have a tough time living up to that one, but I'm open to that being different :) and it's okay as ups and downs are part of life.

So I have differing experiences with Fiesta. While for the most part I really enjoy the game, I find that when I'm playing it when I really should be doing other things I don't enjoy it so much. I spent a good part of the morning getting my characters organized and checking out some of the new stuff that the Fiesta people have added to the site. So I found that the rest of my day was not particularly effective, or worse yet, I was in a hurry for the remainder of the day. I really don't like my little one(Jasmine) to feel rushed all the time. To be honest I don't like to feel like I have to rush all the time either. I suppose that I've just gotten used to it. My little one is still at the age where the world is magical and wants to see and do everything along the way which I not only want to foster but would really like to bring that aspect into back into my life... the "life is a journey", not destination idea.

Getting to my point, I think it serves for me to work out some basic ground rules concerning my playing of Fiesta. Having some basic rules to go by to keep the rest of my life in balance. I'm thinking that morning Fiesta time really ought to be kept to a minimum, I'm noticing I really don't like to play in the morning very much anyway. When I connect in the morning I really ought to just set up shop with items I have prepared the night before and just let my character sell.
I'm also finding it to be a great experiencing making the time to write about my experience . I have found that through out my life writing has seemed to bless my life. I think the issue where I am unhappy about my Fiesta time is where I'm missing out on the other things I really like in my life. I find that the things that are fun for me are even more enjoyable when I have completed all my other more important responsibilities. Such as my daughter. My little one asked me today why we didn't play together at all today. That really struck a cord with me. I only spent a few hours this morning getting stuff together and organized, but when the rest of the day came and I wasn't ready for it, or I had all of this other stuff to do, all of my priorities got mixed up. I'm going to take this a step further than Fiesta though. It could have been anything that took my time this morning. The big thing is to come up with a plan first and make sure that I have that precious time with my daughter set up first. More than that again, morning Fiesta time should be very limited.

So what's new Fiesta wise??? I have started making an excel document to manage my buying and selling of Fiesta items. I'm really excited about it. Not only for being able to manage what is happening with the stuff I'm selling, but I've always been apprehensive about working with excel, fear that maybe it wouldn't turn out the right way or that I would fail or something, or that the learning process would be grueling and a lot of work... but it wasn't and has been quite enjoyable. Not only that, but Excel is beginning to make sense to me. At least more than it did and I'm starting to see why people like it so much and that it really can be, or is (for those of you Excel guru's out there) a very powerful tool. Oh and I suppose I should clarify, I'm using Open Office Calc, which I think is a great spread sheet. In fact I really enjoy Open Office. I like what they stand for and what they produce and being open source they are free! :) For more information on Open Office click here. Spread the word!

I have already mentioned in my previous blog the characters I have but here are the pictures!

Post #1

Okay I've been thinking about doing this for awhile but wasn't sure what would be the best way to start. I've found though it is better to have humble beginning and strong finishes, rather than being concerning about an amazing beginning & never starting anything.

I have found a game that I enjoy quite a bit... so much so I've asked myself the question, "Why on earth do I like this game so much?" Just the other evening I was up till 5:00am playing. Yes, I realize that was a bit irresponsible, but ever since I have started playing this game I have had a feeling that there is something for me to learn here. Over the last few days I've begun to get in tune with what it is.

The game is called "Fiesta" and made by a company called "Outspark". The game and company information can be found here.

This one seems like a watered down version of World of Warcraft. But as I have only played WOW a few times, it's tough for me to make any comparisons. But if it's watered down that's okay with me as I find there is a lot to be done just with this game and if there was any more to do... well we'll leave it at "I probably play too much as it is".

I have three Characters, Merconious which is my Main Character, a fighter. I have Wyrven a cleric, and I have Ackron an archer (which is a character my four year old daughter Jasmine created). On one of my next posts I'll put up pictures of each of the characters.

Okay enough of the introduction, for me one of the biggest reasons the game appeals so much is due to a few things. The social aspects of the game at this time is paramount to me. There are things to constantly be learned during the game. The game has what I think is an amazing economy which if a person wanted to, could learn things that would apply in real world markets. The game gives quests to beat, which leaves a feeling of accomplishment.***<--Side note, want to come back to this later. Plus there seems to be plenty of places to go and explore, though after being in the game for a bit I think that's where games like WOW really shine, as they are even bigger.

Although I really want to hit each of these topics in due time, I find I want to take a moment to discuss the social aspects of this game. This is what is leaving the biggest impression on me right now. I was somewhat beginning to lose interest in the game when all of a sudden I started to make some online friends and over the last few days I'm finding that there is a gap in my life that seems to be filling up. I have found that over the last few years I have been closing up, mostly due to I'm not in a particularly fulfilling marriage. Plus I find that the person I seem to spend the most amount of time, aka my wife, tends to focus on anything that she can find that is negative. I find that over the years this has subtly, or not so subtly(only friends & family could answer that) left an impression on me. Hmmm I find it difficult to find the words... I have felt myself going through a shift lately. As I have begun to interact with more people online and have more exposure to people who see value in what I bring to the parties & quests, I find that it brings a sense of fulfillment. Of course one may ask "What about your other friends in real life?", but the reality is for me and I'm thinking most people is it can be tough to get together with people when a person gets married & has a few kids. There tends not to be enough time. Plus one interesting dynamic of this game and other games like it is a person can work together with others which gives a REASON to get together, and think about it, coworkers are those that most people are around consistently every day. Before I began working in a call center I would make bonds with those I worked with. I could be around them 8+ hours a day and generally enjoy their company. This game provides a similar experience where the entire time does not have to be spent speaking (and those who know me, know I LOVE to talk and have conversations). When I'm working in a party or group I find that if we're all doing our part based on our characters strengths, I don't have time to chat. Just enough to communicate what things should be happening or to find out how the team is doing. Yet we're working together, and granted it may be an online bond which has never been my favorite(those interested in why let me know & we'll start a thread), it is still a bond similar to what I have experienced while working a job.

I suppose the biggest thing I have experienced recently while playing this game is, it has brought out my leadership abilities, or the buds of them. I'm finding that while in the beginning I was not really excited or shooting to be the party leader I find I am at this point... more than that, I'm finding that I really like it... and I feel... and dare say I do a good job when I am the party leader. People are beginning to comment that they enjoy being in a party with me. I find that I am finding people that I also like being in parties with. When I am a party lead I do my best to keep open lines of communication, I make sure that we are meeting whatever quests or goals that my people and I are working for. I find that as long as expectations are clear we all do pretty well and it's a very rewarding opportunity. I have found that as I have really been exploring this over the last few days I have been much more cheerful in my regular life and much happier to interact with the others in my life.

Soooooo... how else does this affect me in my life? This experience has brought to light a few things that I really enjoy doing and has brought out some of my God given talents that I may have forgotten about. It has also got me looking at what I'm doing for a living in my life. What I am experiencing is that I love working with others. While I enjoy meeting new people to a degree, what I really enjoy is building relationships with people that I know, or if I meet someone new, building relationships with that person. I like working with others. While I really enjoy communicating, talking, having late night conversations, I find that I also like being actively engaged is working with someone or ones, where our focus is turned away from talking into building or doing something. I find that I like to be in leadership positions. I have shy'd away from this for the majority of my life, but what I'm finding is that I often times(granted I make my fair share of mistakes) do a great job and really care about the people that I'm leading. When I don't step up and let someone else do it, while there are times where I meet other great leaders I find I have had other experiences someone takes charge who doesn't care as much as I do and it shows. Plus if I have a level of excellence I want to achieve, that's where it serves me to step up and take the reigns. I find most people want to do excellent work and sometimes if there is just someone who is leading, it can make all the difference in the world.

This path I have described is a very different path than the one that I'm currently on. In the call center environment I talk w/ someone new a few times an hour. I don't have a chance to build longer term relationships, at least nothing that lasts longer than an hour. Plus I never see my team long enough to really build any friendships... I have been doing this for several YEARS. I recall a much more emotionally rewarding time working at DOD electronics, now known as Harman Music Group, I had people that I worked with everyday and I found very rewarding to work with them. As I grew in expertise concerning my department, I worked with others training them and taking on bigger projects. I'm getting the feeling that my current job may not be able to provide these opportunities.

To be honest I'm somewhat surprised concerning these discoveries, as it seems likes it's been so long I have forgotten a few of this gifts I have been blessed with.

Anyway the hour grows late and it's time to rest. I welcome your comments and feed back so please post!