The Gospel of Faff

The importance of pee

I just thought the sub heading would be humorous, but really it heralds some good news.  Yesterday my Grandmothers kidneys started working again.  Apparently when the body is dehydrated they completely shut off.  The body is all “nope!” no one can have any moisture at all.  This apparently was the last crucial step before she was mostly out of the woods.  She is still in pretty bad shape, but they have been waking her up periodically to make sure she is responsive.  They are keeping her mostly sedated however so she will sleep and rest.  All of the hospital staff have been impressed with just how much of a fighter she is.

So I want to thank all of you for your thoughts during the last few days.  This is the woman who at least gets half of the credit for raising me to be the person I am today.  I didn’t go to daycare, I went to Grandmas house, because she was local and available… and more importantly willing.  We’ve always known she is strong, but this whole episode just proved that to any shadow of a doubt.  So while we are not in the “all clear” yet, we are probably up to a 70% chance of her making it out of this little episode unscathed.  I am sure she will need some therapy after laying in bed for several days immobile.

The Gospel of Faff

This word has been in my vocabulary since I believe high school but I don’t really know how exactly I picked it up.  So when I encountered the Godmother of Faff, I latched onto it with both arms to represent a certain game play style.  However the more I use it, the more it seems to draw confusion among my friends.  Sometimes it gets misread with a certain “self flagellating” connotation, or if you are Scary you apparently read it as some kind of shorthand for flatulence.  So I thought I would spend a bit of time this morning clearing the air about all things faff.  Since this is essentially British slang, I felt we had to go to the official source…  the Oxford dictionary.

image So there is the definition, copied and pasted via greenshot from the oxford dictionary website.  The thing is…  this leads one to believe that it is a bad thing.  I tend to take a much more zen approach.  “Faffing about” is just another in a long line of words used to describe enjoyable but often purposeless activity.  I’ve used many versions of this over the years.  I’ve “piddled” and I’ve “dinked around” and occasionally “goofed off”.  I had a bit of an odd childhood, in that my mother to some extent lived vicariously through me.  She wanted me to do all the things she always wanted to do… but never could afford.  So as a small child I was drug through a series of activities like piano practice that I had no real interest in, but felt no less obligated to do.

As a result I felt like I never got to just be a kid, without purpose or direction.  When I was allowed that time I savored it.  Now as an adult, I am really cautious about anything that places undue burden on my “free” time.  While I feel like Godmother and I probably use the term “Faff” in different ways, our viewpoints are very complimentary.  For me “Faff” represents a play style of allowing myself to get lost in the minutiae of little things that happen along the way.  It is a freedom of not having to have a goal or a focal point for the evening.  That I have permission to log into a game and “mess around” for awhile without necessarily having a tangible reward at the end.

HDPlacard_BelFaffsAbout_720 So as I have begun to stream my game play when possible, I have brought this same idea there as well.  I am not doing something important or grand, but instead just doing what I always do.  I log into mumble, into a special channel called “Bel is Streaming” and then proceed about my normal business and what happens… happens.  Sometimes I do something really interesting, other times I just piddle around leveling.  Last night for example I recorded one of my normal Onyxia and Tempest Keep clear nights, where I run through characters through Onyxia and the two that can solo Tempest Keep all in search of mounts.  Sure there is purpose there, but it is not the kind of big overarching and soul crushing purpose that you feel forced to do it.  Before last night it had probably been three weeks since my last mount farm night… and I am perfectly okay with that.

As is the way with Faff

eso 2014-02-15 11-33-23-02 I had every intent last night to play some more Heroes of the Storm, however that simply did not happen.  Sometimes you get caught up in doing the things you are doing and next thing you know… it is bedtime.  Part of the “Gospel of Faff” is accepting that this is going to happen and being somewhat okay with it.  Some people thrive on goals, and lord knows I have a bunch of little ones.  But for me it is the journey that is so much more important than the destination.  I think in part that is why I have enjoyed The Elder Scrolls online so much.  The game presents before me a whole bunch of rabbit trails that I can get hopelessly lost following.  It is arranged in a way that keeps me from being able to “quest efficiently”.  WoW has made me really good at gathering a bunch of quests, and doing them all before returning to the hub to get more.

The freedom to wander around and get lost in the process of leveling is a really awesome thing.  While World of Warcraft is a really on-rails experience most of the time, I am trying to embrace ways to play it where the objectives don’t matter nearly as much as the journey.  This is far more about my mental state while playing, than what I am actually doing.  However I am trying really hard to always endulge the rabbit trails.  If my addon alerts me to a rare mob in the vicinity…  even if I am on my way to some important objective I try and pull myself from the path to try and track the foe down.  As a result I end up seeing things I may have never seen before in the process.  I had spent most of my time playing WoW trying to avoid the quagmire that is Kalimdor, and now I feel like I am trying to embrace it.

7 thoughts on “The Gospel of Faff”

  1. Yay for Faff! I’m pretty sure I spend most of my Rift time “faffing” about with achievements and “Ooh an unstable invasion – TO SCARLET GORGE!” It’s much fun having a guild that shares in the faffing glee. And starts giggling like schoolchildren on the puke boss. xD

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