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A short story about my struggle with tanking, family and work, and how the three battled for my soul. Some of you already know me from long ago as "The Unicum Hunter" in the forums. Others knew me as the founder and commander of [-W-] The Warriors clan, and others as the co-founder and Deputy Commander of [M--M] Millard's Minions. The fact is that I spent the better part of my free time (and not so free time) for over 2 years playing WoT and struggling with finding an identity within the game and forum that I enjoyed and that kept me interesting in the game. During that time I made many friends and enemies alike. At the same time I battled what I saw as an addiction to gaming that highly interfered with my family work life. This struggle for identity and my addiction to the game had a hugely negative impact on my family and work life. In December of 2013 I hit the wall and uninstalled the game and have not played for 10 months now. When I started WoT in November of 2011 I absolutely loved the game, the tanks and the historical aspects. I didn't like the unstructured nature of Random Games at the time and played a lot (first 1500 battles) of Tank Companies in a clan called [Dadco] Dad Company. I was the father of a 2 year old son at the time and though it was a neet Clan concept. Once I got involved with the forums, many of the Unicum Trolls in those days happily let me know how terrible I was and introduced me to the rating systems of that time. I was pretty bad. Somewhere in the 51% win rate and yellow in today's WN8 terms. At that time I stopped playing Tank Companies and vowed to get better fast and to eventually make those Unicums eat their words. The problem was that as I got better and understood the game better I became consumed with becoming Purple myself and trying to embarrass any purple player I came across. This began an obsessive compulsive time of tanking for me. I would play the game from the time I got home from work until well after midnight on most nights. Remember, I at this time was the father of a 2 years old, and what I didn't tell you is that I am the Director of Sales and Marketing for a midsized technologies firm. Family and work life started suffering badly. This went on for the next year and a half. I was constantly tired and angry. I started blaming the game. Every little aspect of the game, WG and the player base just enraged me. I stopped having fun but would not give up on the game because I was still obsessed. Then in the spring of 2013 I met Millardthemk, he calmed me down and started working on me having fun with the game again and simply making better choices in game. We started M--M Millard's Minions together to share that knowledge and love of the finer details of the game with others. It was a great thing. My problem was that my family and work life was not fixed yet, even though my in game was. During this time we had our daughter (now 2 yrs old) further requiring my efforts in the real world. After many months in the Minions and finally somewhat being at peace with WoT, I had to make the decision to call it quits and work on the real life situations. This was Dec. 2013. Since then I have coached my son's soccer team for two sessions and have had the best year in sales at work in the 6 years I have been Director of Sales and Marketing for this company. My real world life has been great. This morning I walked to my home office before leaving for work and clicked on the "download" button on WoT. I am not sure why yet, nor do I know if I will actually play again or not. I am curious to see what has changed and been added since Dec. 2013. I am pretty sure this is not the right thing to do, but I am hoping that if my curiosity gets the better of me and I do play again, that I have learned my lessons and play calmly, with restraint and in moderation. Let's hope that I am not the one that chases the carrot again. If I do return I realy want to just focus on the finer details of tanking and having fun with the game again.
