I am working without a buffer now. Between building a new free company in Final Fantasy 14, work kicking my ass for a project that wound up having its due date moved back only after I’d done all the hard work in a record-breakingly short time, collapsing in exhaustion, and struggling to process all of my emotions from all of this and more, I just haven’t had the time or energy for writing much of anything. Everything else has felt like a higher priority than personal blogging and while I do not like writing the day before a blog post goes up, I don’t think I made the wrong call about how to spend my time these last few days. I wish I’d had more time, I wish I’d been less exhausted, and I definitely wish things hadn’t played out the way they did (but again, I don’t think I made any bad choices), but I’m here now, still absolutely wiped out and trying to write a post while forcing my eyes open so I don’t fall asleep at work or standing at my desk. Which I’ve done before. Woke up in time to stop myself from falling down, but it was quite startling, let me tell you.

Recovery and a return to normalcy are going to take a while. I have many little tasks to do yet, many things that are required to complete before things can settle, but none of them are particularly urgent, so I can afford to take my time. I also need to make sure I sleep more because, between the stress of last week and the unresolved emotions of also the last week, my sleep schedule is absolutely fucked. I just didn’t sleep last night. I tried. Believe me, I tried. But I could not fall asleep and so gave up at about four in the morning. Maybe if I’d gone to bed earlier, before I started nodding off and twitching awake in my computer chair, I wouldn’t have spent all night doing the same thing. Or maybe I just needed to run out the clock and going earlier wouldhave let me do that. I don’t know. I just could not sleep and really hope that tonight is going to go easier on me, even if only because I didn’t sleep at all last night.

Beyond that… Well, I need to rediscover my routines. Get back into my day-to-day swing long enough to figure out what needs adapting now that everything’s just different enough that the same-old-thing won’t continue to work. Instead of managing a small group and ignoring everything else, I’ve got to manage a larger group and also figure out what any of them are interested in so I can determine if I need to change my previous workshop structures to make room for more people or make room for different types of crafting now (like making submarine parts instead of just housing exteriors, for instance). Also need to reinvent the systems that made providing stuff for the old FC possible and figure out what, if anything, this FC wants to be provided with. And, you know, find some time to rest in there, pursue my own weekly/daily goals, get my alts leveled, set up the material farms I planned to use them all for in a timely enough manner that they’re actually useful in the coming days, and on and on and on.

I will never run out of things to do. That’s part of my normal. But my feelings about what is important, the pressure to do everything and complete everything quickly is not normal. The pressure to do things while also resting and relaxing makes it difficult to accomplish that. The ways my mind turns in the silence of a moment between activities, when my attention wanders away and I find myself in the middle of a bunch of thoughts I’ve been avoiding because they’re unproductive, have no answers, and are just more idle reflections on a world that never was or at least never will be again. It will be a slow process to undo all of that because I will need to weigh ignoring those thoughts and feelings against listening to them, so I can strike some semblance of balance and be an effective leader, such that I am these days. I also need to stop putting off some of the more visible things I am planning to do and to do them since I am, after all, the leader and need to be seen leading. I used to do a lot for that old FC and I need to get back to doing some of it again for the new one. As much as I can, anyway. It’ll be a while before everything’s back in place for me to run my good ol’ workshop projects, but there’s plenty that needs doing before then and I’ve got a community full of people looking for things to do. Might as well help direct that as much as I can.