It’s been a rough week. Had a mid-week Final Fantasy 14 roleplay wrestling event in the middle of the week (and I’m behind on my blog posts, so this is written less than a week ahead) and that coming so soon after the last one (which was on the Saturday prior) left me with little evening space for much else. Doubly-so considering how sick I’ve felt the last couple days, how worn out I am from work and not feeling well, and how much of a struggle work has been despite having a long weekend just prior to it. I’ve been so tired that I haven’t had the energy to do much in-game other than what my friends are doing and I’ve barely managed even that. I probably should be more focused on the homework tasks I’ve assigned myself in the hopes of having my relic weapon ready to go when the new expansion drops in just under three weeks (as of writing this and two as of posting it), but I just have not had the energy in me to push forward on the grind. Heck, I haven’t even played much of anything else, either. I’ve just… messed around a bit in Pokopia and spun my wheels on an alt in Final Fantasy 14. And now, even as I try to think about doing the work I genuinely want to do in order to progress on my relic weapon, I find myself wanting to just… not do it. I don’t even want to do the video editing I’ve got lined up from that last wrestling show, despite how much I’ve come to enjoy it. I just… don’t have the focus right now.

It’s not like I NEED focus to play this video game. It’s not like something bad will happen if I decide to take another night off this week. I just… I want to make progress and I’m too tired for that, despite sleeping more than usual. I mean, heck, aside from the first night this week, I’ve gotten at least five hours of sleep every night, which is unprecedent in this calendar year. And I came into this week off of three 8s and two 7s. I absolutely should not be worn out unless I am, in fact, quite sick. It would explain a lot. It’d explain my cottony head (which is incredibly mild in its cottony-ness, but it is still a little cottony), my aching body, my inability to feel comfortable at pretty much any temperature, and how I’m both sleeping more than usual AND more tired than usual. Or maybe it’s my lower caffeine intake. I cut out a lot of the heavy caffeine over my little break and maybe this is withdrawal since I’m trying to avoid going back to my usual levels even if I am dead-tired. I mean, it’s not like it’s really that much less caffeine, but maybe that’s a part of it. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m exhausted and struggling because I overslept on wrestling day and had to leave work after only eight hours as a result, instead of my usual ten, and I did a similar thing on Monday (except by only a bit over half an hour), which means I’ll be working two very long days to make up for it. Eight versus ten hours doesn’t seem like a lot, maybe, but it is a huge difference. Not as huge a difference as ten to twelve, though. Or even ten to eleven. Which is a bit silly to say since I’m not even at hour ten yet. I’m writing this during a break at the end of hour eight.

Maybe it’s the workload. Between my job, my in-game workshop, my goals for my alts, my goals for my main character, and my goals for my relic weapon, I’ve got a lot going on! There’s also taxes (I don’t normally put them off this long, but I haven’t had energy to spare yet so they’re now getting done at the last possible moment, essentially), cleaning that I really need to do, my laundry from last weekend to fold (and probably more by the time you’re reading this), meals to prepare, hygeine to maintain, commutes, the pain in my shin that I need to schedule a doctor appointment about, messages from my dentist about open appointments since I had to cancel my last one (I was too busy and worn out to deal with going to the dentist, which has not changed), my to-be-read pile of books, a letter from my aunt to actually read and respond to, a P.O. box to check and prepare to close and on and on and on and on. A never ending list of things to do, never enough time to do them, and a renewed awareness of how long a day feels when you’re only working eight hours instead of ten. And how much easier it is to get up for work when you know you’ll have an entire evening to look forward to instead of whatever scraps you can cobble together around work and errands and how late you need to stay since you didn’t get in to the office until half-past nine, not seven like you’d planned.

I wish I could lean on Final Fantasy 14 to escape right now. I wish I could just retreat back into it like I have so many times in the past year. I’m just too tired for that. I’m too worn out to really even think about it beyond how much I wish I could settle in for a nice evening of gaming. Maybe I should just go to bed when I get home. Ignore dinner and whatever. Just hit the sack and lay in bed until I either sleep or my alarm goes off to work another day in this never-ending hamster wheel of busyness. I should probably just call it here because I don’t think I can turn my mood around at this point (far too sleepy to be driving anything anywhere anyway, even my own mood) and try to circle back to this idea of how I’m proceeding with my video games when I’m not so tired that I’m considering sitting down in my chair at work to let sleep claim me, no matter who might glimpse me asleep on the clock…