A New Beginning

I've decided to return to EVE, after a few months' hiatus. I quit sometime during the summer (I don't remember when, and it's not important) because I had overbooked myself with too many things, including work, social and leisure time. I was also a bit burned out on EVE. EVE has a ton to offer, and I was trying to accomplish them all. At the time, I was running four accounts, trying to split my time between industrial work (mining, manufacturing, PI, etc), missioning, and large fleet PVP. On top of that I was an EVE University personnel officer, and I was taking every PVP course I could to certify myself for any and every fleet role. It was just too much, so I stepped back from the game.

Just for the record, my departure and return have nothing do with the CCP PR mess and subsequent Mea Culpa from the company. The timing was pure coincidence. That said, I have read up on it, and I'm cautiously optimistic about how CCP are addressing the problems. I hate to see any company laying off people, but I'd rather see a company do that to thrive long-term, so they can hopefully re-hire some of those people.

Back to the topic at hand. I've decided to return to EVE for a few reasons. One, EVE really appeals to my personality. I'm an analytical numbers guy by trade and at heart, and EVE is really just one massive deep space simulator. I could spend hours building my own spreadsheets and financial models, as well as spending hours fitting ships and planning skills (and I have). Two, I'm in awe of the community. The level of organization I've seen in some of the corporations is absolutely astonishing. Some of these virtual gaming communities put "real-life" communities I've been part of to shame. And third, it's one of the few good Sci-Fi games out there (I'm a sci-fi geek too).

The reason I took a break from EVE is an unfortunately familiar refrain in my life. Whenever I find something interesting, I jump in with both feet, but without a plan. This leads me in many different paths at once, and I get simultaneously overwhelmed and discouraged by lack of deep progress, and eventually I quit. It's not something I want to repeat, and in fact, it's a habit I want to try and break once and for all.

So my plan this time around is to choose a few activities, set a few goals for myself, create a plan and work it. This blog will be my journal. I'm hoping that by writing my journey down, I'll be able to learn by tracking successes and failures, analyzing that information, and coming up with plans for improvement. But more importantly, I'm hoping this blog will help me engage the community, so that I can learn from other capsuleers.

I'm going to close off this post with my initial EVE objectives. I have three in mind:

1. I would like to significantly improve my PVP skills. PVP combat has always been what I've found most exciting about the game, and so it makes sense that I should focus on that
2. I would like to join a low sec pirate corp. I've always played on the "good" side of any game I've tried, but I've always wondered what the dark side would be like. EVE seems like the perfect place to try that out.
   
3. I would like to experience null sec warfare. I've tried a lot of things in EVE (albeit some too superficially to say I've really tried it), but I've never set foot in null sec. I'd like to eventually join a null sec corp to try that out.

I'll need to refine those goals going forward, but at a high-level, that's what I want to do. I may find out I don't enjoy any of these at all, and that's ok: I can always change my mind later. After all, that's the beauty of playing in a sandbox.