Today saw the completion of the tutorial missions after roughly 17 hours. Hoorah! About bloody time. 
 
So, I ask myself, whatever is next? The rookie chat tells me to go to do some Sisters of Eden missions, so I did a few. Kinda boring fetch quests. 
 
The thing is, these tutorials and missions probably would have seemed brilliant, but I know now that that's really not what EVE is about at all. I hopped over to Sacerdos87's thread on these forums and found a corporation to join: The Cronus Miners. It "only" took 20 jumps to get to their base, and then I signed up and became a member. Happy days! 
 
The Cronus Miners are, well, a mining corporation. Duh. There are three of us right now: me, Sacerdos, and SunburnSlap. What our operations consist of right now are Sacerdos and Sunburn mining while I go back and forth to the base, collecting and depositing the minerals that they have mined. Your standard monotonous, repetitive task. 
 
...Yet I'm hopelessly addicted to it. Like I said to the corp, it's like a second job, but in space, so it's okay. The key words here are: in space. When you've grown up on sci-fi, a life spent scouring asteroid belts is a goddamn great prospect. Shit, if I could quit my job and just do mineral runs all day for some real cash,  I totally would. The scary part is, that's probably a viable option. I've been reading about PLEX, an ingame item that you can seemingly buy and sell for either ISK or realmonies. So if you made enough ISK in mineral runs to buy some PLEX and trade that for real money on eBay... the implications are frightening. 
 
And it's not like you'd miss human contact: I've spent the last four hours having the same conversations I would have with people at work or friends. 
 
In summary: This game fucking frightens me. 
 
There was also a slightly hilarious moment today. While doing mineral runs for the corp, another player appeared and started stealing from our container, which resulted in Sacerdos87's ship blowing up and SunburnSlap on the run. Of course I headed back out there to find the container with a new yellow colour which I examined, to find it full of minerals. RESULT, I say. Until I mention it in the ventrilo to find that yellow means it belongs to the guy who stole it, and now he has a kill right on me. 
 
...Ohshit. 
 
So I try to warp out, only to find I've been jammed and the piratebastard is shooting me! KABOOM! Goes the ship. 
 
Luckily I had insurance, so getting back to the base reveals a pleasant surprise in the form a Reaper, which I instantly make active and head out to pick up the Wreathe I just bought to replace the lost one. 
 
Piratebastard's waiting outside. KABOOM! Goes the ship.