Once upon a time, just about four years and change ago, I enjoyed little more than spending some time muttering to myself while listening to a podcast or two and putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It was very fulfilling, incredibly engaging, and a different kind of mentally taxing than literally everything else I was doing at the time. It was mostly refreshing to be quite honest, and while I would definitely make my back, elbows, and shoulders ache with how much I’d hunch over my table to do this work, it was still a net positive that fell by the wayside when I moved into my current apartment. I still have the table I used, complete with padding I’d place on top of the puzzle so I could keep using the table without needing to carefully move the partially-finished puzzle around, but I just don’t spend much time on that floor of my apartment when it comes to my own entertainment. I should spend more time down there. I should stop committing myself to my upstairs area with my video games and office and start finding ways to be more comfortable in the downstairs area. Clean off the mail couch and vaccuum the chair next to my bird’s cage more often, perhaps. Move some books downstairs so I’ve got stuff to read and no longer need to feel like I’m making a choice I must commit to every evening. Dig out those puzzles. Maybe even just build a lego set. Anything to get me out of that office and away from my computer. I really need to stop spending so much time in there.

I don’t know if it’s the burnout, the depression, or just… well, both probably, but I’ve been having a difficult time continuing to enjoy things. My last year and a half with Final Fantasy 14 has been the longest I’ve played and enjoyed anything and while I haven’t stopped enjoying it, I am definitely starting to hit a point where I am slowly losing my mind because I just keep doing the same stuff over and over again, with the same emotional attachments over and over again, with no real change in outcome, expectation, or even experience. Leveling. Crafting. Selling. Raids. Dungeons. Socializing. Everything is stuff I’ve done before and however I’m been feeling about it is how I continue to feel about it because my depression and burnout have teamed up to lock me out of any emotional shift but more negative apparently. Oh, I’ve got plenty I want to do, goals galore, and so much stuff I haven’t even touched yet that I could probably keep up my current pace for years. I shouldn’t, though. I am doing too much stuff. Stuff that connects me with people, that lets me socialize and be around my friends, which is something that I hunger for deep in my soul in a way that only ever seems to grow greater as the continued isolation of avoiding COVID-19 physically separates me from the world around me. And everything else I might do, all my old hobbies, are from back when I was alone and had largely given up on ever not being alone, so there is little room in them for other people. You can do puzzles with other people, sure, but you don’t need to. It gets just as done if you do it yourself and you’re much less likely to wind up missing a piece you need because someone bumped it off the table.

This is the balance I am trying to find. Time away from my desk and monitors and chair doing things I once enjoyed but that no longer pull at my soul, versus time spent socializing or at least being in contact with people even if it chains me to a place that has begun to feel like it is growing smaller and smaller. I know I could probably solve that particular problem by rearranging my apartment so that my desk and computer can go someplace more open and spacious (it would be so nice to set up downstairs, in the area with the staircase upwards and the lofted ceiling, though it would likely echo quite terribly). After all, part of the reason I stuck it all in the closet there is because I wanted to have it in a nice, “sound-proofed” room so I could make a bit more noise without bothering my neighbors and because it would help with the audio quality issues I had while streaming back in 2023 (which is a thing I was convinced I would return to eventually, though I never really did). While I absolutely still make a lot of noise (more than ever, probably), I don’t need to be as precious about the quality of my audio environment and moving my computer into the one place I can imagine putting it would also solve any “noise bothering neighbors” problems since the only thing I share with a neighbor over there is my floor (their ceiling). That could fix everything.

Or I could just get more firm with my old plans of taking one or two nights off a week. Maybe stop playing until past the time I should be getting ready for bed. Stop allowing myself excuses for logging in or showing up to do things for people when it would be fine to simply wait another day. Force myself to do different stuff or at least occupy different space until I find something that clicks again. I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t keep this up and it’s not because I’m doing too much or because I’m not liking the stuff I do. I just need change. And I’ve tried to make that change happen in the game, I’ve tried to engage with people in new ways or find things to do that are fresh and exciting, but it all winds up falling back into the same old patterns no matter what. I do not have the energy to continue returning to that well until something sticks or to force everything to change enough that something breaks though my haze/fugue. So now I should try some change outside it. Sure as hell couldn’t hurt…