I am officially one week into dropping streaming and specifically not replacing it with other projects. I have actually done my best to rest, even if I wound up spending an entire weekend busy and emotionally exhausted from a variety of frustrations, some disappointment (which has only contributed to my emotional exhaustion because I spent the time and energy to emotionally process it), and a very Midwestern party. I have not entirely succeeded in resting over this past week, since my sleep schedule is still royally messed up, but I actually had the energy to write two long blog posts and most of a chapter of Infrared Isolation (which will be going up the weekend after this post does, meaning I’ll have skipped another Saturday update) yesterday. It felt great to be able to work on something and actually have the mental fortitude to focus on it for more than a few minutes at a time. Which I mostly lost between yesterday and today because I was up too late playing a game (Cassette Beasts is great and I’ll eventually be writing about it), but that will hopefully be mostly fixed if I can actually get some sleep for once.

It feels good to see my efforts paying off. I’ve done my best to focus on rest and recovery, on making space for myself, and on not trying to fill all my “available” time with more work. After all, that time isn’t available. I’m supposed to be spending it on getting some rest. Hopefully it will continue to bear fruit, as long as I don’t overextend myself by not sleeping too much or by doing too much writing work. The variety of stuff I’m doing definitely helps, too. I’ve got preparations for my game of Heart: The City Beneath to work on (including my continued efforts to master this system enough that I’m not burying my nose in a PDF every session), most of which I do in small spurts so I don’t fry my brain with too much learning at once. Having it all on my Google Drive means I can access it anywhere I’m at, which makes it super easy to duck into and out of the book. I’ve got plenty of books to read, tons of games to play, a modest collection of shows to watch, and so much more. Puzzles, Legos, board games, and so on. Tons to keep myself occupied, no matter what piques my interest on any given day. All that’s holding me back from really feeling recovered at this point is my absolutely destroyed sleep schedule.

To be honest, changing up my routine by getting rid of my incredibly regular and regimented streaming probably hasn’t helped with that. Any change to my routine tends to impact my sleep first and foremost. This has done so more than usual, since I used to stream until I had just enough time to do my post-stream work, do a chore around my apartment as part of my mental decompression following my streams, and then get ready for bed. It was a pretty smooth system, most of the time, and the only time it didn’t have a positive impact on the regularity of my sleep schedule was towards the end of my streaming days since I was so stressed and burned out that I was staying up just to do something simple and calming. Now, I no longer have a clear delination between active and inactive periods of my day. I’ve lost that fixed, exhaustion-enforced point in my evening that guarranteed that I would start getting ready for be because I was just too tired to stay up any longer. Instead, I keep pushing my bedtime back as I tell myself I’ll do just one more thing in the game I’m playing or read just one more chapter of the book I’ve got open. It also doesn’t help that I had to do meal prep in order to make sure I ate before streams since my work-to-stream time period was so short I rarely had time to get takeout, let alone make food. Now I’ve got nothing to rush to do most evenings, so I sometimes delay my dinner and wind up eating late enough that it sets my bedtime back just so I’m not getting ready for bed too soon after eating (trying to sleep less than three hours after eating has, historically, been an incredibly poor decision for me).

Eventually, though, as I recover a bit and work out some better habits (and work through the backlog of chores and personal tasks that I ignored on the weekends as I desperately sought rest so I’d be ready for the next week), my sleep schedule will settle down once again. I’ll get back into the habit of going to bed at a reasonable hour, start waking up more easily most mornings when it’s time for work, and I’ll no longer be spending my days feeling like I’m just barely keeping up with my life (which is how all of today felt, since I’ve been rushing everything I do as I try to catch up with all the time that seems to be vanishing increasingly quickly today). It would probably help if I wasn’t so set on entertaining myself every evening, if I was more prepared to spend some time working on constructive stuff like folding my laundry, doing my dishes, and cleaning up the mess that is my futon (which has become the new Mail Chair). That will come in time as well, once I’m a little better rested. All things in their own time.

I’ve got a ways yet to go. I just wanted to take time to appreciate the progress I’ve made and set a benchmark for how this incredibly short-term improvement feels. I need to remember this so that, when I’m starting to bury myself in work and to-do lists and projects again, I can use this as a reference for when I’ve pushed myself too hard again. I need to balance physical, mental, and emotional energy recovery rather than my current method of haphazardly recovering one of them often at the cost of the others. I’m sure I’ll get there eventually, but for now I still need to be very deliberate in choosing to rest or to try to be productive in hopes of being better rested or internally balanced in the future. I still have a long way to go, but it is heartening to see the decision already paying off.