I like upgrading my character. In the past, I hadn’t really focused on it’s well roundedness and I’ve just been doing what everyone else does. I finished putting my character through school to upgrade it’s intelligence level because that seems to be the first basic step. The next step was to get a job and that seemed pretty straight-forward too. The goal was to get a positive cashflow to upgrade my character’s finances. As time goes on and my character’s experience increases, I can add more skill points, get a better job and continue to increase finances with a higher salary.

I found fun hobbies for my character to do. The more time I get my character to play games I enjoy, the higher it’s skill level becomes and the better I get at these games. This does increase my character’s overall happiness and even it’s social skill level but it just didn’t seem as productive. I wanted to go through bigger level-ups.

I did a lot of research online and found strategies that will help me increase my finance level through wise allocation of money through investments. I also got a book that gave me an idea of what I needed to do. Excited with all this new knowledge since I found out how to optimize my money long-term, I reallocated my money and put them into highly rated and recommended mutual funds and the best interest bearing CDs and money market accounts. I feel like this is a great way to level up my character in the long run. Sort of like building moon wells in my base in the best locations.

Health and nutrition is another aspect of my character which I had neglected. I made sure to bring my character in for regular check ups and maintenance. My character is healthy but I have found strategy guides on improving nutrition. As of now, I am researching this and I will figure out the best way to optimize my character’s nutrition. When that happens, I will feel fulfilled again!

Here are the categories I focus on:

- Relationship – I think I’m doing great with this aspect of my character’s life. I’ve chosen to match my character with an amazing character that helps boost my level for every category.

- Happiness – I can never be satisfied. I always need to improve. I am happy with life overall but I always want to make things better.

- Job (Incoming Money) – I feel like I’ve made great job choices. It is always something that gives me a good flow of income, adds plus points to my happiness, and doesn’t stress me out too much.

- Finance (Money Management) – I think I’ve optimized this as much as I can. I am glad to have done my research so that I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I can just leave this alone now and let it grow. http://www.morningstar.com/ was my best friend.

- Intelligence – I feel like I haven’t done much since I graduated college. I have been increasing knowledge in a lot of areas in life to improve myself in multiple categories but I do want to be more up to date with the latest in web coding and technology. This will also help me increase monetary intake through work (not only through my main job but also through side jobs). I need to know http://www.w3schools.com/ inside out.

- Fitness – I am going to the gym twice to three times a week and I have dance once or twice a week. I feel like this puts me in about an average level in fitness. I do want to push some sort of exercise to five days a week and research more about how to optimize my strength, cardio and flexibility. I’ve learned a lot about men’s fitness and I’ve been following along with guy exercises but I want to see how to optimize toning within a woman’s physique and see if it’s any different o.Oa.

- Spiritual – I get a healthy serving of God in my life through church and small group every week.

- Social – I am constantly exposed to people. I do have fun with social activities but I get tired out quickly since I am highly introverted. I know I’m supposed to be reaching out and making new friends and networking more. I just need a lot of time alone to ‘reboot’ and get energy to hang out with people.

- Health/Nutrition – This is my next research project. I don’t like food much and I am not the healthiest eater but I do wanna figure out how to eat a balanced diet. http://mypyramid.gov/ is going to be my new best friend.

- Family – Considering I am no longer surrounded by my family, I can only keep touch by phone call, email and infrequent visits. I am doing what I can and flying to California once in a while and to the Philippines once a year lately. I do hope to be reunited more often in the future.

What is your strategy for optimizing upgrades to your character?

I do feel like I am my own character in this game of Life. I strive to improve. I want to be better. I guess that is the competitive gaming side of me coming out. It’s difficult to want to be better at everything since I have a tendency to spread myself out too thin. I guess my only way to focus is to obsess. The problem with this? I can’t relax. I can’t clear my head because I keep wanting to get back on my favorite MMORPG and use the time to upgrade. If I don’t relax I will stress myself out. Sometimes I just need to force myself to turn ‘it’ off, to relinquish control of the game and leave the character be, idling and having it go on automatic, or maybe even have it sleep more. I need balance in my life.. balance and sleep.

TL Blog Post: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=79119