NEOPIA CENTRAL - "A red malformed circle, it stood out over the pink background,
there were hairs sprouting from it and the skin was visibly irritated. Further
along the skin was discoloured with a deep purple bruise, the fingers of the
hand were splayed out as though gripping something that didn't exist and the
arm was limp. Shouting could be heard from just down the street, a scene such as this couldn't
remain a secret for long."
Since her English homework was coming along so well she decided she'd earned
a break. Saving the word document she opened Internet Explorer, once again that
familiar site popped up on her screen, Neopets. 'I'll just get my interest and
check my pets then log out," she said to herself.
One hour later…
Does this sound familiar to you? I can tell you that this is a true story
and the paragraph at the top of the page is part of my creative story for English
due on the 15th of October - don't you hate holiday work! I'm sure if it happens
to me, although I am one of the sorrier Neopets addicts, it happens to other
people. Me, myself I find it very hard to concentrate on my school work if I
know I haven't seen my pets, fed them, played with them, collected my interest
and stocked my shop. I said I was sad.
So slowly over the year my marks have steadily improved as I've learnt to
fight and manage my addiction and concentrate more on my schoolwork. As I have
so much trouble concentrating I decided that the first thing I must do is get
all the distractions out of the way. Yes that means locking my little brother
in a cupboard or at least out of my room and not starting on my homework until
about 5 or 6 PM.
What used to happen
3:30 PM - School finishes
4:00 PM - I get home (I walk - slowly)
4:10 PM - I've gotten changed
4:12 PM - I turn my computer on and it has miraculously found it's way
to Neopets.com
4:15 PM - I'm engrossed on the Neopets site
4:30 PM - Still on Neopets
5:00 PM - Still on Neopets
5:30 PM - Still on Neopets
6:00 PM - Still on Neopets
6:30 PM - Eating dinner (yes, we eat early)
That's just over two hours of Neopets per day. Don't worry I still play for
about the same amount of time now that I've sorted myself out, it's just not
all in one huge slab like that. To turn myself around I slowly after much trial
and error worked out the things that my subconscious says I have to do every
day in order to live. Those things are:
o Feed my pets
o Collect my interest
o Restock my shop
o Play Tombola
o Visit Coltzan's Shrine
o Play the Fruit Machine
o Play the Scratchcard Kiosk
o Get my free Omelette
o Play Potato Counter
o Play the Wheel of Excitement
o Visit the Water Faerie at the Healing Springs
o Visit my guild
All of these things are very easy to do and very quick to do save restocking
my shop and checking my guild. So do what every teacher tells you not to do,
cop out and do the easy stuff first. Everything else on my list involves visiting
a page and clicking once maybe twice. The best way to do this is to have these
pages saved to your favourites or bookmarks so when you log on you just load
the individual pages rather than going through the Explore Map - it saves you
a lot of time. The only downside is probably less chance of random events. Once
you get efficient you can do all those things in 3-5 minutes and that does include
the three games.
With those things out of the way I then restock my shop. The reason this takes
me so long probably has a lot to do with how I restock my shop. I stock 10,
5, 2 or 1 of each item in my shop so I need to restock exactly. Exactly takes
a long time. So my method has been perfected somewhat, I open two windows and
take the NP out of my Shop Till in one and go to my Sales History in the other.
In the Shop Till window I now go to the Shopping Wizard. By looking at my Sales
History I buy the items that there were 1 or 2 of or that are sold out then
I stock and price them and clear the Sales History. The items that are left
are usually faeries, codestones, motes and potions and they hardly ever all
sell out so I look at my shop stock and buy the missing ones. You probably didn't
want to know that but that's how ladee_Sarah stocks her shop. On average for
150,000 NP of items that takes about 15-20 minutes and I only get 1,000-8,000
NP profit, which I usually spend anyway.
Then I go to my guild and locate my last post on the message board and read
like mad replying to the posts that I feel require my opinion (I'm a guild leader)
or I want to give my opinion on. After that I check to see if anyone has earned
a rank upgrade and upgrade him or her accordingly.
That only takes half an hour or 45 minutes if people have bought lots of stuff
from my shop. Believe me I'm the only person who curses on Monday to Friday
when people buy stuff from their shop. Saturday and Sunday are of course an
entirely different matter; I have the whole day to spend on Neopets. So it all
comes down to time management and making yourself feel like you weren't cheated
out of precious Neopets time by your English homework. Nowadays I start my homework
at about 5-5:30 PM and finish around dinner time and then go back on Neopets
and play games.
On a totally different note and subject I'd like to say that when I opened
this word document my intention was to write a story about writing an article
and that obviously didn't happen either. Sorry, you probably didn't want to
know that. | 
