It’s been just over a year since I started playing this game, and to be honest, looking back at how I spent my time, I’m surprised I’m still around. I started out with plans to make things. Get into Manufacturing and eventually get rich. I’d bet that you can probably guess exactly where that aspiration lead me.
Yep. You guessed it; Mining. LOTS. Of Mining. I mined until I saw asteroids in my DREAMS. Until my eyes bled and I was pooping solid tritanium. (Not a pleasant experience I assure you.) Naturally, I was bored. So after months of mining mostly alone, I started making changes.
The first thing I did, was buy a Gila and see if I could run Emerging Conduits. That probably went better than you would expect, but still ended in an expensive explosion that was my first (and only really) significant loss. I could successfully run them, but it required lots of warping in and out, and during one of them I found myself unable to escape in time. Discouraged but not defeated, I had at least learned something… Plan better. Mitigate risks you don’t need to take. IE: Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. The Gila was woefully under-powered with my limited skills and was not efficient at fun or isk-making.
I was probably a bit more butt-hurt about losing the Gila than I wanted to admit. After a couple weeks licking my wounds in a “■■■■ this game” state of mind, I came back with another plan. I was ACTUALLY going to learn to Research, Invent, and Manufacture. My first step? Buy a bunch of blueprints and practice with them. I didn’t have much in the way of ore as I’d sold it all to fund my idiot Gila adventure, but I did have enough isk left over to buy a full line of Minmatar Frigate BPO’s, which I immediately made some copies of. I researched the BPO’s to a decent level, and purchased the skills and materials necessary to start running invention on the Breacher and Rifter BPC’s I’d made. Thus far, invention is at least interesting, though I wouldn’t call it particularly lucrative yet. After about a week of running the jobs, I’ve found myself in possession of a small handful of Hound and Wolf BPC’s which I’m quickly realizing I’m NOWHERE NEAR ready to build.
Even with some success going with blueprints, I’ve been getting bored. I was still mining, almost completely alone. So I hopped ship to another corp and am so far enjoying at least having people to talk to while I cook up new shenanigans.
Todays shenanigan was the Yeet Heron. I purchased and fit 5 t1 Scanny/cloaky herons, tossed one Needlejack-5 filament in each cargo hold, named them all after 90’s songs, hopped into one, undocked and slammed the YEET button straight into Geminate. Which was D-E-A-D. Just the way I think I like it when I’m exploring… except that the number of sigs in the systems were ALSO very dead. After wandering around for a little while I’d found a myriad of combat sites that my Heron was very much underequipped to handle. In all those systems, probably 30+ I only found a single data and a single relic site. I managed to finish both, leaving behind a number of exploded cans from my ham-handed attempts at hacking… but still managed to gain about 20mil. The next sig I found was a wormhole that dumped me in Hisec-adjacent Lowsec only 8 jumps from my main system.
After a couple hours wandering around in Null, I figured it was time to yeet myself back home with my loot, which left me about 5mil in the green after making back what I spent on all 5 yeet-meister Herons. Honestly a better turnout than I expected. I hit the YEET button fully prepared to die in a fire.
I will definitely be doing more of this, and there will almost certainly be killmails to share.
After that long-ass ramble, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of you are thinking “Ok Roon… What the ■■■■ was the point?” (I’m not sure that I am fully following what I’m saying…) The main gist is that I’ve been working on some personal development, both in-game and in-person, so I’m dipping my toes into the terrifying realm of blog writing. Having never written a blog post before, my writing style may be less than stellar, (Hah. a space game joke.) but I’m sure my skills will become more finely honed as I produce content and find it to be a rewarding endeavor. Please feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments, as this will be my medium for at least my first few posts. Hell, maybe I’ll just keep it in a long-ass thread here. 
Small Disclaimer: If it isn’t already immediately apparent, my first few posts will likely be more of like this long ramble than an actual “Blog” post.
Tips, suggestions and hate-mail are all welcome. Torpedos only welcome on Sundays.