Every Tale Starts in Highsec

Highsec.  Maligned by the hardcore.  Haven of the carebears.  Also, the first home of every single character in New Eden.  My start was, I believe, typical.
Tesla had a two week headstart on me (At the time that Tesla told me he was subscribing, I possessed a PC tower that required major retrofitting to reach the admittedly low 
requirements to launch Eve).  By the time I had a working computer, Tesla had completed the majority of the tutorials and started a career in highsec mining to build some capital.

Join me for some highsec mining, he said.  It's a great profession, easy isk, he said.  Don't mind the terminal boredom, he said.

To be fair, I can see how mining is a popular pusuit in Eve.  It is a low commitment, low risk pursuit with fairly decent returns (in that you will always have enough isk to buy the next step up in mining gear and hulls).  Both Tesla and I are married with kid(s), so being able to log on and earn isk and still have the opportunity to help the wife out makes sense.  Avoid waggro at all costs!  

On the other hand, my gaming time is very limited as there is a inverse relationship between wife aggression and time spent in New Eden.  It didn't take long for me to get fed up with the tutorials.  For a brief period, I hauled Tesla's ore to market for him.  At the same time, I tried my hand at mission running.

I hope that the brief mention of my highsec activities so far gives you an idea of how little I think of these activities.  The truth of starting in highsec is that it sucks.  It exists to give new players as safe haven to learn the intricacies of New Eden.  On the other hand, there is very little emergent gameplay possible in highsec (yes, you can create content in highsec, but there is so much Concord interference that it doesn't seem pratical in my eyes).  I don't see the reason why people want to spend their entire career in highsec.  I also don't understand why there are such great swaths of it.

Within two weeks, I was ready to get out and experience the side of Eve where you get to fuck with everyone else's game.  Of course, it didn't actually end up that way.

Tesla dropped the enrollment information to Open University of Celestial Hardship in my inbox just as my frustrations with highsec were growing.  He always seems to have a plan.

o7