What am I doing out here ...
09 Nov 2015SoliDeoGloria
Three weeks. Three weeks I've been out here.Five weeks ago I gave up on PowerPlay - I couldn't take the merit grind anymore. I tried twice to get to the coveted fifth tier, but life intervened and I fell short. I didn't realize how much I loathed PowerPlay until I stopped participating and had two wait for my accumulated merits to expire. I certainly wasn't going to throw them away, but it was painful just waiting for them to expire so I could leave ALD and fly unmolested thru space once again.
Four weeks ago I finished a Community Goal and purchased my first Anaconda. I fitted her out for trading and once again enjoyed flying. I looked forward to logging in and moving thousands of tons of commodities around the cosmos. I parked the Python and navigated in peaceful tasks - for a week.
Three weeks ago wanderlust hit. 'Why not go to the core', the voice in my head kept saying - see some sights and push your explorer ranking to Elite. So I weighed my options and purchased a Diamondback Explorer and rigged her for deep space exploration. The first two weeks were fun and refreshing ... no-one shooting at me, no one trying to grind me down on commodity prices - just me and the beautiful cosmos. Each session took me roughly 1,000 light years close to my destination. Each time I finished scooping fuel I would notice how the stars were a little brighter and denser. But then, right about the time I was 10,000 light years out, a nagging thought began to whisper in my mind, 'you have to go back - once you get there, you have to turn around and go all the way back'.
But do I really? What's to go back to? Is planetary landing really that intriguing that I need to 'rush' back for it? I've learned that waiting is skill in Elite: Dangerous ... waiting for the first round of bug fixes, waiting for INARA and Reddit reports to understand what the new features are really about.
I think not - I think that once I am out there I should take some time to enjoy myself - visit some Nebulae that I would not normally visit, find some neutron star fields as well as black hole fields. Get real comfortable in my own skin out here - point away from the jump in star, hit full throttle and truly enjoy the beauty of the cosmos sans light pollution.
I think I belong out here, and that's what I'm doing out here.