Big changes.

Howdy. Been a few months since my last post. This is more of a personal post as I'd like to get some things off my chest.

There's no screenshots in this post as I'm on my laptop not my PC.

So 3.2 hit and with it came Midas Savage.

A5 was pretty straight forward, clearing it in a mere 3 hours. A6 was a bit more tricky. A couple of members in my group just couldn't get it and adding in the usual schedule conflicts that my group has, it took over about 5 weeks to clear. (We cleared it just before they nerfed it, so that made me happy.)

Then we came to A7, For me, this is my new favourite fight ever in FFXIV, with T13 being a close 2nd. I love challenging myself in melee friendly fights and so to date my record is 1650dps which I consider to be good considering I'm still missing a lot of gear and we're not skipping the 2nd jail set yet.

So we just hit A8, but sadly I've come to the difficult decision to take a break from the game.

This was far from an easy decision to make as I've been with my group for 15 months and love them to pieces. But with current real life events, I feel now is the right time to step away until things settle down again.

The main reason is that I got a new job. After 11 years of working in retail, I have moved on to something different and more challenging (I can't really say publicly what it is, but if you want to know send me a private message.).

With this job comes a big pay increase. 66%ish actually which is around £9000 (about $13000) and that is absolute minimum, I can work overtime which is paid at time and a half or double time depending on the circumstances.

The only drawback is that it is shift work. while they try to accommodate my preferred shifts there comes times where I have to work night shifts. Which I don't mind personally, but it's not good for my group and therefore I cannot commit to a set schedule. Our schedule is already pretty weak due to Andy's shift patterns also but since we like raiding with each other so much we've managed to make it work.

Lastly, From the first contact I made with this company to now, everyone has been nothing but helpful, friendly, supportive and professional. Therefore, I want to repay their kindness to me by giving this my 100% attention and effort, which sadly won't be possible if I'm having to try and move shifts to raid and since I have the opportunity to make a lot of money, I wish to take advantage of it.

For those of you who don't know, I used to work for a retail company called Argos where I worked for 6 and a half years. It started off pretty well. Hours were good and the money was ok. but over time it got worse even when I was promoted.

Firstly, the company took away a lot of benefits from you (annual bonus, time and half on sunday and other holidays etc) yet they expected you to do more and more in return.

Secondly, if you want to go anywhere in retail. you pretty much have to be your managers little bitch. The amount of people I saw get promoted because they were obviously sucking the managers dick was astounding, I couldn't lower myself to that level. If I disagreed with a decision made by anyone, I would challenge it, and that's one thing which retail management hate. They hate thinking they're not in control, everything has to go their way. How dare you challenge their authority. Progression was pretty much non existent to me. This behaviour in my new job is not acceptable and you're actually encouraged to challenge bad practices and behaviours.

And lastly. The additional workload and responsibilities I got with my promotion wasn't worth the financial reward. I found myself having to do my own job, plus half of my managers job and half of my teams work because they could get away with fucking around all day and the managers didn't have a backbone to sort it out.

I felt so unappreciated, stressed and unchallenged that I eventually just gave up. Next to nothing got done. I would rather just of sat on my phone all day then do anything that didn't require immediate action. I was extremely blunt and sarcastic with management and my team who were mostly fucking useless.

When I saw this job, I leapt at it. It was a long process. I have to pass a lot of assessment and security checks plus an interview, but I was eventually accepted and I am really enjoying myself.

So take it from a retail worked of 11 years. Don't try and progress in retail, there's so much better out there and even if you don't have too many qualifications like myself, there are avenues you can go down to get there. I pretty damn proud of myself for sticking at something for so long even though I fucking hated it. If you're stuck in retail at the moment, I salute you. Hang in there and eventually, something will come up which you can move onto.

All good things must come to an end. and It's easy to say this group has been one of the best things that's happened to me in this game. I'll be gone until at least 4.0 and may not be back if SE insists on churning out the same old recycled content. I am currently raiding still until they find a replacement but this might be it for me.

In other news. yet again, I have returned to FFXI! I have a lot to catch up on, but once again the community has been fantastic and I am slowly finding my feet again. Audacity was sadly taken on Asura, which is a very active server for all timezones so I am now know as Diluted (My PSN).

Thanks for reading and whatever you may be doing. I wish you the best of luck.

-Dom