Happy Birthday to Talvorian

On January 12, 2009, Talvorian Dex stepped out of surgery and began his life as an immortal capsuleer. Back them, I knew nothing about the game, only that my brother-in-law loved flying an interceptor.  I didn’t want to travel too far from my home system for fear that I wouldn’t have enough “fuel” (capacitor) for the return trip.

I didn’t know capacitor recharged. I didn’t know anything about null-sec and was generally leery of PvP as a whole. My only MMO experience was some Lineage II, where twitch reflexes and overwhelming alpha strike were the recipe for victory.

I was as green as any newbie, and asking all the same questions.  And I stopped playing for more than two years.

My real life in Eve started around early March 2011, when my last continuous subscription run began. I dedicated myself to becoming a capable solo PvPer. I faced my crisis point when I faced loss after frustrating loss, and began to wonder whether I had it in me to do it well. I knew nothing about fight selection or the tempo of an engagement. I was ignorant – without knowledge.

But I did have a drive to learn, and a willingness to look at my decisions, actions, and preconceptions.  I was willing to change and become better.  And today, while I don’t know everything, I know more than I did back then.

I had a lot of help from the community, from bloggers, and from corpmates. In the process, I made friends and learned that while I’m not anything particularly special, in that ordinariness was something worth writing about – the daily struggle to meet this challenge and try to do better the next time, to never think I had “made it”, to never stop assessing whether I’m doing the right thing.

But it all began on January 12, 2009, seven years ago.