I’m doing better this week. I’m still depressed, exhausted, and burned out, but I’m feeling a bit better about it right now than I have in a while. Work is still busy as hell and I’m still struggling to get enough sleep most nights, but it all feels so much more manageable, even during a week when I did a bit too much over the weekend and didn’t end it feeling much more rested than the week prior. As I’ve gone through a very busy and exhausting day at work that has nevertheless felt much less emotionally taxing than previous similar days, I’ve been thinking about why that might be. Not that much has changed, after all. I’m still not getting as much sunlight as I’d like and maybe less than ever since the warm, almost-summery weather we’ve been having means I can’t take my midday walks at all and the time that the UV level has finally dropped enough that I can safely take my walks has progressed passed 5pm. Sure, I’ve had my tabletop games more regularly than usual, but that can also be exhausting. I haven’t had the time to figure out a solution for my desire to continue blogging without supporting a company that would sell my work to a plagiarism machine. I haven’t even gotten to the point of being able to fall asleep at a better time most nights since the rise in ambient temperature has made it more difficult for my apartment to feel comfortable and cool at night (and I refuse to turn the AC on when temperatures are dropping into the 50s overnight. It just feels too wasteful). So, if nothing has changed, why do I feel better about all of it?

Well, the easy answer is that so much of this stuff is within my grasp, now. In some way or another, anyway. I’ve adjusted to the current demands of my job and gotten my head wrapped around the future of my project enough that I’ve been able to start planning ahead during the less busy hours so that I can be prepared for whatever testing crunch will happen. The warm weather and sunlight, while still making it impossible for me to go for a walk at noon without sweating my sunscreen off and getting horrible sunburn, mean that I get way more daylight than usual, even when I’m not at home. My tabletop games are moving along in an orderly fashion and while I won’t be playing as many as I’d like, I’ve been able to find some other stuff to start filling the social gaps their absence leaves. I might not know what to do with the future of my blog, but at least I’ve been able to keep up with my daily posts enough that I’m not falling too far behind, and LLM technology is already starting to fail in ways that will grow increasingly obvious and hopefully take the whole market down before too much more damage has been done. What sleep I am getting has been better than usual, thanks to being every kind of exhausted when its finally cool enough for me to sleep and I’ve had enough new media intake over the last month that my mind always has something interesting to turn over in my head rather than start spiraling due to stray anxious thoughts.

All of those situations are still present and have not drastically changed, but it feels like I’m actually able to do something about some of them now. Sure, the going is still super slow and I would bet every penny I’ll make for the rest of the year that I’ll fall back into my usual fog of depression and stress multiple times as I work my way out of it, but I can feel myself moving again. One step at a time, still, but moving all the same. There’s even a part of me that’s scared that I’ll wind up plunging myself back into the depths of my depression just by thinking about why I’m not depressed too intently. This fear implies that I’ll just go back to being depressed again if I can’t find a reason to not be depressed, but that’s not true. My natural state isn’t “depressed.” My baseline is neutral and being neutral means that I tend to feel whatever emotions I direct myself towards. Which isn’t to say that my natural state is joyful or fulfilled, either, but just that I spend a lot of time working on ways to feel fulfilled and doing things that I enjoy, so I’d expect to feel those emotions a bit more “naturally” than depression. Or more frequently. Which, to be entirely honest, was definitely more true seven months ago than it has been since then.

It’s possible I’m just coming out of it. It’s possible there’s enough small changes in my life that they add up to this sum of feeling better about things. Maybe it’s because I got to spend time physically around my friends this past weekend. Hell, maybe it’s even my diet and the variety I’ve introduced over the last two weeks since eating the same things all the time gets super depressing after a while, even if those things are delicious. It could be all of those things or none of them. I’m just glad I’m feeling a bit better than usual, despite everything, and it was a significant enough change that I’m still feeling it after a long, exhausting, and incredibly busy day. I spend so much time struggling to feel alright and worrying that I’m filling my blog here with too much negativity, so I just wanted to take the time to acknowledge that I’m feeling better today, despite being completely and utterly exhausted as I prepare to dash home so I can scarf down my dinner and run the final session of a game (on the day I’m writing this) that you’ll probably here all about tomorrow (on the day after this post goes live). It’s exhausting, but at least it feels pretty good to be doing all of this stuff and to have people who are interested in what I’m doing, what I have to say, and the kinds of things I enjoy.