There are days, more and more lately, where I am heartsick at the state of the world or floundering and unable to escape the vortex of my own personal miseries. Unfortunately, the world does not give you space to have days like that. Life must still be lived. Bills mut be payed, money must be earned, food must be bought, and the necessities of life require you to carry on despite how much you want to take a moment to just reel at the enormnity of it all. How do you do that? What can you do to make some distance, create a little space, and find a way to take the next step forward because you have to no matter how much your heart demands you lay face down on the ground? There’s plenty of self-care tips out there for this sort of thing: log off, stay hydrated, make sure you eat, get some fresh air, ground yourself in the present moment, find ways to be active locally, in-person, so you can provide yourself with some measure of control to fight back against the feelings of powerlessness that are often at the center (or at least near it) of these overwhelming moments. That doesn’t always do it, though, because sometimes you also have to clean your apartment or deal with other people who are making reasonable requests of you or you need to find a way to write about something, anything, to help break your mind out of the paralysis gripping it. What do you do for that extra boost, the tiny bit of impetus required to break out of the rut you’re in so you can do the things you really should be doing today but don’t really NEED to do today? You can’t leave it all for tomorrow, you know? Tomorrow will have it’s own things, it’s own trials and miseries to make doing things difficult, so stacking up more and more important-but-not-necessary effort is only ever going to add more weight to your shoulders.

Lately, I’ve been watching JoCat and Worthikids videos. I’ve already seem most of them at this point, from both artists/animators, including a lot of JoCat’s streamed stuff, but it’s familiar and comforting. JoCat’s stuff, in particular, tends to have a level of warmth and sincerity to it that reminds me that there are just nice people out there. Nice people who can get put through a lot sometimes, for very dumb reasons, but people who don’t need a reason to say something supportive and who make things for the love of making them. It reminds me of the way I used to be and want to get back to someday, where I’d make things not because I needed fulfillment or control or whatever, but just because it was fun to make stuff. Plus, a lot of the stuff he makes is very cute or funny and that’s very good for countering the kind of overwhelming despair that tends to rule these moments of difficulty, stress, and exhaustion. It doesn’t fix any of it, but it’s like the often-expressed idea that faking a smile will often improve your mood but without all the bullshit aphorisms that go with it about choosing joy and not dwelling on things (because believe me, if it was my choice, I absolutely would not be miserable and paralyzed by an all-consuming nexus of pain). It’s difficult to stay trapped in that kind of mood when you can’t help but laugh at what you’re seeing.

I don’t rewatch Worthikids’ videos as frequently, but he recently posted a few videos that maybe wrapped up the series he’s been posting occasionally for a few years now (this is either the end of it or it’s going to go in a brand new direction somehow) so I’ve been watching them quite a bit more recently. They don’t have the same kind of warmth that JoCat’s videos have, but there’s an intensity of storytelling to them that still moves me even if not in the direction of comfort and fondness. Each video builds on the established universe, layering deeper and deeper storytelling or meaning as it goes and fills in a coherent universe around what seems like merely absurdist humor at first. By the time you get to the latest episodes, pretty much everything is explained and you are left to marvel at the foreshadowing and nuances that have been there, plain as day, the whole time, only standing out in retrospect now that you have the whole picture. It is difficult to not be caught up in what’s happening when you can finally hear the lyrics to the opening song, when a bit of perfect-for-the-moment music kicks in during a video, or when things click into place after you finally look up one of the songs on a streaming service and realize that it fills in so many blanks that hearing almost any other section of the track but what Worthikids put in the video would have spoiled so much. Or explained so much. None of the songs are released until the time you should know that stuff already or there’s enough metaphor layered in that you might miss what’s happening entirely until some new thing in the latest video slots into place to complete the picture. It’s all really well done, incredibly engaging at its worst, and engrossing enough that there’s no room left in my head for all the horrors of the day. These videos won’t fix my mood, but they will drive out anything lodged in my mind that might be contributing to it.

Between the two, it has been enough for me to pick myself back up and carry on for a little while longer. I’m writing this before doing my evening chores (things I must do in preparation for my siblings visit this weekend), so we’ll see if it’s enough to get me through them and dinner, but I don’t feel like laying down on the ground in despair anymore and that’s worth something, at least. Pushing myself to work might entirely tire me out such that whatever fun stuff I had in mind for tonight won’t happen (or such that I will sit down for “a break” and then fail to move again for half an hour [which is exactly what happened]), but I think I can get through one night without fun gaming time (there will be Chore Gaming Time, though, at the very least, since I’ve got people depending on me to keep plates spinning and cogs moving) won’t kill me. I’d like to have at least a little fun, if I can manage it, but I also probably need to make sure I go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight because my bedtime has been creeping later and the last couple nights due to getting caught up in stuff and that is absolutely contributing to my current malaise since I’m already tired enough to doze off in my chair. I just need to get through another couple days and then I can sleep more. And sure, there’ll be another week after that, but there’ll be another weekend after THAT and maybe, just maybe, I can keep my burnout from getting worse.