My Final Fantasy 14 workshop has been chugging along this week. There’s new mail in my mailbox every day as people turn items in, there’s a slow trickle of item allotments being claimed in the discord, and plenty of work for me to do as I try to keep up with what people are bringing to me. Since last week’s writing on the matter, I’ve done what I can to address the stress all this has been putting on me. Complicating that, though, is that fact that it just clicked into place that I went from passionately putting in too much work for D&D and my job to adopting a brand new cause to burn myself out on the instant the D&D stuff ended. Beucase that’s what this workshop is: I think my guild in Final Fantasy 14 should have opportunities to make in-game money and, now that the FC leader isn’t doing the work anymore, I’ve taken up the mantle. I didn’t change anything, I just swapped how I was wrecking myself. So, in order to address that, I finally started modding a bit more heavily than I did before. I would argue that it’s still “quality of life” stuff, but I know that’s not what I meant the last time I wrote about this stuff. I mean, sure, being able to update the base texture of my character’s form was huge. Getting rid of the boxiness of their limbs and fingers, a thing that has always bothered me, for just a few days has left me shocked at how bad things look now when I turn the mod off. I’ve also tried out some picture-taking improvements, a mod for trying out looks and adding things to your pictures, and the one that has made all the difference: an auto-crafter.

I don’t really like it. I’ve got complicated feelings about all of these mods save the ones I already used and the picture-taking one because they re-emphasize the mutability of my digital avatar, shaking my sense of visual identity to its core. Even as they allow me to fix all the visual problems that have bothered me for almost a year now, they also serve to make me feel disconnected from the digital realm I’ve spent so much time in lately. But I recognize that this is an issue with self-identity and how I percieve/depict myself. The auto-crafting mod, on the other hand, just feels bad. I’ve spent so much of the last year carving out an identity as a crafter in this game and, even though I knew there was no way that the vast quantity of things being sold at the prices they were sold for unless there was some form of automation involved, I wanted to bring a personal touch to all my crafts as a part of my investment in the digital self I’ve created. But the influx of materials, the stress I’m under, and the desire to give up on the workshop worked together to convince me that I could not handle the stress of dividing my attenion between clicking crafting macros and other entertainment without messing up a ton or having a mental breakdown. And that I couldn’t focus solely on the crafting without also risking a mental breakdown. I also want to continue to enjoy playing Final Fantasy 14 and I can’t really do that if I’m spending four to five hours a night clicking the same macros over and over again to turn all the junk I’ve asked people to bring me into junk I’m hoping other people will buy. So I’ve gotten something to do the clicking for me. I’m still the one doing all the math, material gathering, recipe selection, macro creation, consumable management, and so on, but I’ve outsourced my need to actually click the macros so I can set up some crafting and go do literally anything else to save my sanity.

I’ve only used it for mass-crafting at this point. All the smaller-batch stuff, some one-off items, a gearset, and a couple dozen train minions were all done by hand, but turning 2500 corn into 1250 corn oil would have taken my six or seven hours of button-clicking and I would probably turn the game off for two weeks and lay on my floor until exhaustion and dehydration claimed me or the rot that is my sleep-deprived moldering mind has fully consumed me (I’ve slept 8 hours in the past 72 hours and my insomnia and stress show no sign of abating). So, to preserve my joy, while I wait to get some sleep so I can evaluate how all of this stuff will go when the burst of activity caused by the start of my workshop has settled into a steady hum of routine employment, I am outsourcing the button clicking and attention. I need less stuff right now and this is the easiest way to get that. Once I’m through this awful, sleepless week, and done some video recording and editing this weekend, I’ll hopefully be in a better mental space to sort through my thoughts on the matter. I’ve only had this workshop officially open for a week (as of writing this [and two as of posting this]) and I’ve had enough success and income from it that I can justify the effort after-the-fact if I want to (I don’t want to), so I’d be able to close it down satisfied that I gave it a good, honest try. If that’s what I decide I want to do, anyway.

For now, though, I’ve got a mess of feelings to pick through, a whole lot of sleep to get so I can hopefully figure out where to start picking at them, and… well, what feels like digital body image issues I need to get a grip on as I try to find a happy medium between what I want and what I have to do to get it. There’s a strong part of me–a part growing stronger as my sleeplessness increases and my filters for what constitutes sensible action start to fall apart–wants to just uninstall them all and return to playing the game unmodified, entirely without any of the helpful tools I’ve picked up and rely on to play the part of expert crafter, business person, and supplier of all mundane consumable needs for my FC. Which, you know, when I put it like that, feels like another thing I’m doing because I’m passionate about and people are only interested in when it’s convenient for them. It’s going to be really difficult to figure out what to do about all this, isn’t it? I mean, I wrote as much yesterday, but I keep running into this wall again and again and while I know I can’t just not do things I’m passionate about unless I’m doing them with other people who are also passionate about them, I can’t keep up the way I’ve been operating for what feels like my entire adult life. I need to figure something out and I’m gonna make zero progress until I can unburden myself for a bit. Thus the auto-crafter. A small compromise, one I can revoke if I decide to later, just to keep myself from getting crushed under the weight of my own passionate desire to help people make money in this game. I mean, that’s the thing. Half the reason I’m doing all these projects is so I can make enough money to buy more stuff from people. Or just give them money in-game. Cut out the pretense. I dunno. What’s the point of being in a community if you don’t act communally?