Let me count the ways

There's a conspiracy out there. They're all out to get me.

I don't get it, but it is really starting to seem like EVERYONE in-game is deliberately doing everything they can possibly do to prevent me from leveling my MNK. No... leveling ANY job.

At first I thought it was just my MNK. I was stuck at 59 forever (ok, partly my fault for not being online while I was home sick for a week) but I swear I still spent somewhere around 24 hours lfp since then and I'm still barely inside level 60.

Yesterday was a great example. I'm sitting around trying to think of what I could be doing, so after a couple hours I decide to go on a choco-quest. (I always do Bastok-Sandy.) I finish the quest and FINALLY get a party invite... too bad the invite apparently came during the 60 seconds that I switched from MNK over to NIN to use the Exp Scroll. :-P

An hour later I get another invite (this time actually for my MNK60) but I didn't reply immediately because I was starting to look up what I could be crafting to start boosting my smithing. I reply 60 seconds later... and get a response of "oh, sorry. nm."

Another hour later that evening, another invite comes but, as my timing would have it, I'm afk. I come back and reply not even 1.5 minutes later... and am told "nm. pt disbanding"

Oh, you think I'm exaggerating? Check it out:

And that's just one time where I decided to actually grab proof of this.

Tonight was fun too. A couple hours lfp on MNK60 finally just convinced me to switch over to WAR30. I get an invite almost immediately asking me to come out to Kazham. I tell him I'm omw but it might take a while due to airship schedules. I finally get out there... and he's already logged-off. No "sorry, nm, pt disbanding" this time; no warning whatsoever. Just not online anymore. {fun}

So I get an invite to come out to Bibiki Bay "and we have a PL ^^", so I'm thinking "sweetness! my luck has finally changed"... but the Fates had a different plan for me. I get out there, meet the pt and we kill 2 dhalmels and our PL says "this way" so we follow him our onto the ferry to Purgonorgo Isle. We kill 1 Mandy... wait.. I need more emphasis on this... we killed ONE STINKING LITTLE MANDY and the PL says "ok, gotta run"... and then our DNC does the same. So we do a bunch of this:

Since this is getting pretty long, I'll speed it up ("That's what SHE said!") We find a new member, and by the time they are almost out to us, one person leaves the party without notice. We find another person and ANOTHER person leaves. (I kid you not, this honestly happened. Again, no exaggeration here.) So we're waiting on ANOTHER person to come out and one of our members aggros a Viscous Clot and dies. We have no PL and no WHM/ so we have no Raise. So she HPs and heads back out. (ok, I'm not shortening the story at all... so here it goes:) We finally get a full pt. We fight our first Mandy, and another wanders close enough to link... thus killing us all horribly fast. I'd say it took less than 15 seconds for the party to die, HP and completely disband. {fun}

And for the record, I logged-on around 7:00pm and the party disbanded around 12:30am. Yes, 5.5 hours to LOSE about 200xp on my WAR. /slap <me>

Too much negativity here so I need to change pace...

Well, on the bright-side:

1. I made 2 new friends (the 2 that were in the party with me since I first met up with them)
2. I got to see a new zone that I've never seen before (Purgonorgo Isle)
3. I learned that new places to level typically SUCK and that's exactly why noone goes there to level
4. When Treubond came out to Raise me at the end of the hours-upon-hours of shenanigans, he realized he could do something for a quest while he was out there, so it wasn't a complete waste of his time to come out and help me. (and I got to watch him kill a dozen Mandys all at once)
5. I raised my smithing almost 2 since yesterday

This Karma payback should be awesome. After all of this agonizing, I'm thinking I deserve to win both the Mog Lottery (Rank 1 of course) as well as this Friday's MegaMillions. ^^