I'm going to make this brief, there isn't any death involved; from looking around at the boards this morning I'm not even being very original. ;)
I'm level 58; I worked freakin' hard to get there, I put in a tremendous amount of time, and for the most part I enjoyed myself a lot. But all good things come to an end, and I have a vast amount of personal issues that are going to take my undivided attention, at least for a while here.
I miss my LS enough to cry, so saying that I'll never again appear in the game is probably premature. But for those of you that I grew so close to, I still count you guys among my friends, and I don't want to lose touch with you. My absence has been more a clean break from the game than an abandonment of you.
To be honest the whole community was great to me. I'll even miss Illfearin, who used Flee while mining and always got out ahead of me. We were still civil to each other. And hey, somebody tell Illfearin that one point was mine fair and square, I was there way ahead on my screen. ;)
I have always used the same name in games and on the Net, which of course is Sioux. In the event it was taken I usually went for Siouxcourtesan, which never was. So if you're running around in some future game and see a Sioux, say hi, it's probably me. >.>
I can be harassed at the email address sioux @ mchsi.com. My AIM handle is Siouxcourtesan; I don't sign on AIM all that much, but I can be spied on there if I'm bored enough. ;)
For you guys in my LS: this decision pretty much made itself, one morning I just woke up and realized how much of my life was being negatively impacted by the amount of time I was putting into the game. I ain't no rich girl sittin' on Mount Olympus with all the leisure time in the world, and every minute I spent focusing on this, that was one more minute that wasn't going to something more important.
It might have just been that I called the imitation crabmeat salad in the fridge 'land crab meat'. You know, something had to give there, is all.
I'm still around, and once my feet are under me again maybe I'll pick up another game, and I might pop into ffxi every now and then to see how things are going.
Take care guys, I just felt I ought to say something.