The road so far
I've started playing Eve in 2007. It was my second MMO and being an Anarchy Online player for the past 3 years, I was already used to a certain approach to gaming. Like no hand holding, 30 minutes "tutorials", learning by dying , using 3rd party software and spreadsheets (Yes, it's stereotypical. Yes, I know. Yes ,yes. Try station trading & region hauling without it , then come back). So, after floating adrift in my Ibis for a few days and gaping at space scenery , I've decided to join a corp. There were some guys in newbie channel advertising EVE University as the place to be for the clueless new pilots (Raising hand!) , so I posted an application. After a few days of waiting for the interview queue to clear, I was in. It was a fun time and an extraordinary learning experience. But after a while, I was starting to feel restricted. E-Uni at that time had stricter rules about war time operations , low sec and null sec expeditions , etc. So basically, if there was a war going on and you didn't have few hours to join a fleet and roam ... you were restricted to station spinning or playing with an out of the corp alt. And wars just didn't want to stop. Time to leave.
Next year I was dabbling with almost everything high-sec had to offer. Mission running , exploration , mining , trading , hauling. With a lucky drop from a couple exploration combat sites - 2x adaptive invulns - I was able to kickstart the rest of my solo goals ahead of time. Was on the lookout for a fitting corp, but nothing piqued my interest at that time. To be honest, I didn't put much effort into it. Set myself a goal of running my own POS , so the immediate future was filled with standing grind towards Caldari. Even started an one man corp to be able to put it up. T2 invention and BPO research kept my coffers nicely filled. All that became a cloud of rapidly expanding gas and debris , after I forgot to tuck it away before one of my breaks from Eve. Results were predictable.
After the break I've suckered a couple of gaming buddies to try out Eve. And found out that high-sec has changed in the meantime. The semi-safe(ish) bubble sprouted entities like Code. and became a breeding ground for ganking-for-lulz. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the player driven content. I'm all for gankers making ISK by blowing up stuff. I'm all for scammers to make a living. But I'm all for not waiting on being fired upon first too. I suck at PVP. I loose ships and pods. But I still want that option. So I dragged the corp kicking and screaming into null sec. I don give a flying frisbie about bloc politics. Or alliance tantrums. With my work schedule I just want to relax and not respond to every CTA when a scout cries Ishtars!!! And I'm certainly not renting or sub-renting a system & paying for being a meatshield for profitable moons. To the last bastion of NRDS we go - Providence. Took me a month to get Intel chan access, and by that time my friends dropped out one by one. With screams of : I cant mine and play World of tanks at the same time! and Goddamit ... I can't afk rat here! Set up a POS to do some moon mining and dabbled into reactions. Went on a week worth of holidays. Forgot to top up the fuel on that damn thing. Results were predictable ... again. Sigh. Now we've almost caught up with the present. At the moment I have a bunch of alts doing PI and one doing the station trading , so I can PLEX my accounts. This way I am free to return to my first love : Exploration.