I miss my Kalanna. Especially when I’m at work.

No, I’m not missing myself. I miss my character Kalanna that I play in World of Warcraft. She’s a night elf druid and along with the infamous night elf hunter Mecandes, she traverses the lands of Azeroth cleansing the world of darkness.

We just recently started playing again after a hiatus before and after the move. I’ve asked myself so many times – what is it that I love so much about an online world and friends that I know only between my Qwerty and theirs.

Truth is I love it for a million reasons. Exploring new lands, playing dress up with my character, being with my husband. My own money to blow or save on a whim, taking out frustration from work on some stupid troll and believing in myself. And I won’t lie – there’s addiction and the need to go that much further, get that much better, for the next loot, over the next hill, completely immersed in a fantastical world of your own creation.

I like to call it the WoW factor. Yeah, I know, bad pun. But it’s true. I couldn’t even count the moments when I’ve sat back in my chair and said “Wow,” breathless at the sight before me.

Partly, some part of my psyche is rebelling. WoW isn’t that far from all the novels I’ve read and fallen in love with over the years. But it’s a very long cry from the fundamentalist entertainment choices of my mother. Eminently practical she was, to the thousandth place. She did so many things right raising my brother and I, but she wasn’t so nice on the imagination. My favorite book, the one I’ve read the most times through life and done any number of book reports on, was Little Women. Believe me, I’d never put that book down but a sturdier more practical and down to earth tome one cannot find.

Did I ever tell you what the name Kalanna in J.R.R. Tolkien’s elvish language means? My husband had gone by his alias on the internet and in games for so long that one day I got jealous and wanted an alter ego of my own. And not just any, but one perfectly me and suited to her mate.

At the back of Tolkien’s compilation of Middle Earth history entitled The Silmarillion, he includes an elvish dictionary of sorts. Mostly, he gives word parts – roots, prefixes and suffixes – and then gives their meaning. I poured over it for hours trying to pick out something perfect when I found “kal” which is a root meaning shine and “anna” which is gift. And so, Kalanna, my shining gift to myself, was born.

P.s. Found this hilarious quote on the Sentinels forums… made my day.

“I legally married my keyboard. That way we’re never separated and we always raid together.”

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