“We never know the worth of water ’til the well is dry.”
–English Proverb

The proverb is the root of “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone,” and perfectly defines my return to FFXI after a short absence.

A couple weeks ago, my internet connection went down (locally I had connectivity, but a construction crew had taken out the cable the links small town I reside in with the Intertubes). Then The Great Pumkin hit me with a full body tackle for Thanksgiving keeping me out of the game for awhile.

To boot, real life (mostly work) has been extraordinarily busy.  Not to mention it’s started being a real struggle with not going medieval on the plethora of people that seem hell bent on pissing me off.  Finally, to complete a perfectly good whine, the holidays have got me down — I’m not ready to call it the holiday depression people talk about, but suffice it to say I’ve been in a funk.

So, last night things took an odd turn.

I was not tired enough for bed by 10PM, and oddly enough nothing else required my attention.  So I logged into FFXI; albeit with some clouds of melancholy hovering over me.

FFXI had gone through a big update that introduced new mechanics.  My linkshell, Paradigm was transferring shell owners (the leader had been on extended absence, and wants to start a new character to boot).  I’ve been part of a few linkshells in my FFXI career, and these transfers sometimes go swimmingly, but mostly not.  So while things were mostly the same, my absence and small changes also provided me with feeling slightly unbalanced.

Not long after logging in I started getting /tells from linkshell mates.  Not just “come get a new pearl,” but ernest messages of being missed and wanting to know how I had been.  As I was making the trek to pick-up my new pearl, the conversations continued on a variety of topics, and my mood lifted as these conversations, from light hearted to heartfelt, flowed.

I picked Thankfully the Linkshell swap was going just fine.

I hadn’t planned on staying in the game for long, but I was asked to sub inside of a level-synch’ed Linkshell party in the Valkurm dunes.  This was a great way for me to hang out with the LS mates that had spread some cheer my way, and get back into the groove of things as Paladin (see my previous post on level sync’ed parties).  The party went well (as expected), and after a few levels were gained, we decided to call it quits as sleep was over taking a few of us.

In courtesy, I expressed my gratitude to everyone for the good party and typed /shutdown. Suquamish knelt as the game counted down the number of seconds left before it exited, and at that moment I was struck with a feeling of being thankful.

I wasn’t thankful for something shallow, like gaining experience points in a game.  By the time I had logged out I had managed to gather up a honest feeling of being welcomed, and picked up the warm afterglow of being among friendly people.

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