I'll add another one to the mix. This is a bit of a hard one...

I have never cleared an Extreme or higher fight while it was current content. I did not do ARR Extremes until SB when I could solo them. I have only done a couple of Extreme HW fights because I was dragged kicking and screaming.

Why, though? It's a bit of an explanation...

I have tons of social anxiety issues. That's why a lot of my threads / posts on these forums end up as rude, thinly veiled b****ing, or straight up complaining for something like more open world content. More open world content means more solo play, so it's more I can do without other people being involved.

I have no friends in this game. I have only ever been in two directionless FCs in the entire time I have played this game (shortly before HW dropped), and those I was in only for maybe a couple months. I ignored the people or grew to despise them for stupid and trivial reasons, usually. I have an exceedingly difficult time making friends both in game and out. I'm the worst kind of introvert because I am acutely aware of it and how much I hate it but I don't know what to do fix it.

I do not use the Party Finder to do anything. I have this constant nagging doubt about my competence in this game. Sometimes I feel like I'm fine, and then I read a guide or something on a fight and it goes in a hundred directions and I feel lost. I read a job guide and they talk about optimal openers, rotations, what to do when at what time at what phase at what second at what cooldown interval at what attosecond (heck you, spell check, attosecond is a unit of time) and I immediately feel like if I tried to do anything with any sort of difficulty I would hinder groups.

I read the recruitment requirements on Party Finder and it's always gibberish to me. "TTDDHDQWTFBBQ NORTH TURN SOUTH BANANASPROCKET", and everyone else joins up knowing exactly what that means. I'm sitting here like "Welp, guess that excludes me!"

I use my job as a bit of an excuse. It's a decent excuse, but still an excuse. I wake up at 2 AM to go to work at a fairly physically demanding job. I go to bed before most people even start their raid nights. I'm not staying up until midnight. I go to bed at 1830-1930 on average. I could move to a server in a different time zone, but I can barely socialize with people now, there is no way I'm packing up and moving so I can do exactly that somewhere else.

Even in dungeon runs, my interaction is mostly limited to me pressing the "Yes" emote button I have hot-keyed so my character will nod in greeting. And then I "Yes" again at the end before I leave. That's it.

It's bad to the point where I recently found out a guy at work plays the game. YEAH! Someone I have things in common with! Same music! Same interests! Same video games! I made a character on his server and leveled GNB / AST / MNK to 80 so I could party up with him and the guys he plays with! I haven't played with him a single time.

And Discord? Pffft. I "don't have a mic" if it ever comes up.

Playing this game is difficult for me, sometimes. I enjoy it immensely, and I know I would enjoy it even more if I actively played with other people, but my own mental walls keep me secluded and lonely.

This is probably the most embarrassing thing for me in this game. Not the silly mistakes I've made, or the dumb things I did when I didn't know any better. This, right here.

Anyone that reads this entire thing that I have come off as snarky / jerkwad / sarcastic / or flat out whiny to, I apologize. I tend to get more so the unhappier I get while playing this game. Which isn't to say I'm unhappy because I'm playing, obviously, but because of everything stated above.

...

I'm totally rambling at this point.

Sorry.

Edit - Definitely rambling, it was too long for one post and I had to edit it to include all of it.