World of Warcraft

I have never been that big of a WoW player, at least not compared to many of the people I know. The highest level I've ever made it to is 46, which if you're familiar with the game is nothing. (The level cap is 80 and levels 70-80 take as long as the rest of the levels put together, or so they say, obviously I wouldn't know). In fact I canceled my account and went without for five or six months (and should have canceled it six months before that given how I wasn't playing). But a variety of circumstances brought me back...

The first was that one of my business partners moved to Portland (actually a town just across the river from Portland that's actually in Washington.) We used to have an "Executive Meeting" every Saturday Morning, but with him in another state that was no longer possible. Secondly the other business partner had not ceased to bug me about playing together some night (which we had done for quite a while over a year ago). Also I had go essentially without playing any video games except for work (I know a very weird concept but you'll have to trust me on that) for many moons and I was ready to start playing again. Finally "Wrath of the Lich King" had just been released. So the solution to all these problems was to start a Friday night game with the two other partners where we would play WoW in a group and have our "Executive Meeting" at the same time.

So that's what I'm doing right now (I'm on follow) and it's actually worked out surprisingly well. A long time ago I read this chess book by, I want to say Alekhine, I only remember one thing from the book, but it's stuck with me, he mentioned that everytime you move a piece you want to accomplish as much as possible with each move. So ideally you'd want to protect one of your pieces, threaten one of their pieces, firm up your strength in the center of the board, make room for other pieces to develop, etc. Now translating this into non-chess terms this mostly just means multi-tasking, and anything more than that may just be me looking for some weird rationalization. But I've always felt that there was a level to that idea beyond just frenetically multi-tasking. That perhaps there's a way to do things in a way that maximizes the benefit and enjoyment you get out of any activity. It could be combining exercise with watching the program you're never able to catch, or combining exercise with getting the time outdoors you never seem to have time for. I don't know if you get my point, or if I even have a point, but there there it is...

My personal favorite is to combine regret for the past, anxiety about the future, and paralyzation in the present moment.