So I did something hard. I finally decided to quit raiding. It’s been four years, but raiding on Tuesdays was just killing me. When you get into a certain schedule and do it for four years, you get *used* to how things are. Before raiding ushered me out of my week, now it feels more like a roadblock as I come into a new week. Maybe it’s a weak excuse, but having everything crammed onto three days and then having my entire weekend just open really doesn’t work for me. I need ‘me’ time every day, time to work on my other hobbies and interests. I was spending quality time with my husband last night when I looked up at the clock and realized it was 7:30 and for a few moments all I thought was ‘I could get on. Look, it’s raid time and I’m just watching TV.’ but then I would be raiding, and unable to do anything else until 11 when it’s time to go to bed, at which time I would probably have to just leave raid because Koi’s been pushing past 11 *every* raid since we started in Cataclysm and I’m tired enough already without getting to bed late on top of it.
But whenever I think of raiding, I feel regretful because it’s a whole world that I’m feel like I’m losing. I have friends in the game and if I don’t raid, then we have no interaction. I could raid Wednesdays and Thursdays still, Wednesday might be pushing it, but then at least I could keep my schedule for Tuesdays. I went to Guild Ox this morning and realized that I wasn’t there for a single guild new kill, even when I was raiding because everything happened after I had to go to bed for the night or before we started raiding officially and I was doing other things, or after I stopped raiding. I’ve already been left behind and maybe it’s better to just stay that way.
But the time I would gain by no longer raiding, while hard to see right now. When you don’t have anything else to do, that’s when I could write, when I could play other video games that are piling up. It’s really a hard decision and I’m just not sure how things are going to go from here.
