Can there be a peaceful coexistence?

Do you feel there is a balance between your real life and your WoW life; if so, how do you achieve it?

Over the last two hours, I’ve sat here and written and deleted several drafts. This topic posted by Trackhoof over on Blog Azeroth caused me to be introspective in regards to how I balance real life (RL) and WoW life. I perused several blogs that posted links about their own balancing of RL and WoW life. Yashimi-plays, Tepisor, and Soul Kerfuffle (albeit an old post) all have very good posts about this topic. I absolutely love the raw honesty found in a post by A Couple in Azeroth regarding this.

I’ve come to the startling conclusion that I’m not truly finding a balance. Sure, my laundry is done, my husband and I are fed, the house is relatively clean, and I go to work daily. However, I spend far too much time playing WoW. I come home from work, flick on the computer, work out, shower, check e-mail, eat dinner, and then I settle in for a night of gaming. A night of gaming can consist of three things: running an instance with my guild, doing my daily quests, or mining.

Raid nights usually fall on the same nights each week, and of course, those are the nights where I stay late at work. On Mondays, we have staff meetings that go until 5 P.M. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I stay until 5 P.M. to tutor my struggling students. With inclement weather, it takes me roughly forty to fifty minutes to get home. Since raids are supposed to start at 7 P.M., this gives me roughly an hour and fifteen minutes to work out, shower, cook dinner, and eat dinner before the raid. Most times, the work out gets axed. Sure, it could stand to reason that I could gain that workout time back by not tutoring my struggling students, but what kind of teacher would that make me? One that sinks way too much time into a game; that’s what that would make me.

If I’m not raiding, I’m running daily quests. Now, I always knew in the back of my mind that really all these quests do is string me along so I keep playing. I just didn’t realize the depths to which they do so. I could easily spend an entire evening running just my daily quests in Skettis, Blade’s Edge Mountain, and in Shadowmoon Valley for my Netherwing faction. Thus, after a night of raiding, I stay up even later to amass gold from my daily quests.

When I’m not running instances, I’m mining. I will literally spend an entire evening strip mining Terrokar Forest. It’s to the point where members of my guild won’t go into Terrokar if they see me there. I joke that farming is in my blood because I’m half Asian, and that’s why I am out there so much. In truth, it is in my blood because it’s OCD; I always tell myself just one more node or just one more trek around the forest, but it always ends up lasting hours and hours.

Now, I’m not a complete shut-in whose only interaction is with her guild mates or her mining pick. I do go out with friends or have them over to the house. (Although, with the freezing temperatures as of late, it’s hard to coax anyone out of their homes.) I do carry on non-WoW related conversations with my husband. (We also do have WoW conversations as he plays it, too.) I do occasionally watch shows on the television (not that there is anything decent to watch). I do pick up books and magazines and read them from cover to cover. I do have adult conversations that do not deal with WoW. I do walk away from the game when I don’t feel well or am getting frustrated by something or someone within WoW.

Maybe I don’t have the perfect balance, but I’m getting there. Hopefully, the week off from WoW that I’m taking will help me figure out what part WoW will play in my life.