Rushing to get everything into place so I can make money again in Final Fantasy 14 is exhausting. I have so much crap stockpiled that is valuable! That I will work through and make a bunch of gil on! But it is difficult to make the time for that amongst everything else, especially when I was pretty worn out on crafting random junk to sell even before all this drama happened, so it is gathering dust and everyone is clamoring for ways to make money while I’m still trying to get my systems in place so I’m not just buying junk I’ll never use and trying to keep up with my depleting funds by selling the high-value stuff. If I’m not going to benefit from this in any way, I should not constantly deplete myself for the sake of others. Both in terms of energy and my characters’ material wealth. After all, I’m already spending a lot of my character’s potential for income on providing things for the Free Company to make money on, free of charge. The whole thing pretty much only works because I’m not charging for the stuff I am providing. Which is fine. I just need to set limits somewhere or else I’m going to burn out again.

I have a difficult time telling people “no.” I don’t like feeling like I’ve disappointed people and I struggle to deal with those feelings in a healthy manner given how easy it is to inconvenience myself on behalf of others. I’ve been practicing, but my current position as the leader of this FC is adding another whole layer to it. I want to give these people things to do, to help them grow and develop as players, to fund their projects and steward this community as best as I can along the way, but I am working fifty hours a week, spending another ten on recording and editing video footage of a roleplaying wrestling group in FF14, trying to keep the one money-making project the FC can do going, and trying to help establish some kind of new normal for this group. I can do it all. I would not be trying if I wasn’t confident in my ability to succeed. It’s just taking time and often doesn’t have much visible progress so I can understand how people might think not much has actually happened. I mean, no one sees the generation of materials I’m doing, or how I’m trying to find ways to make sure that the FC’s project is long-term sustainable even if the people in the FC get tired of participating in every aspect of it or never even start considering how little of a bite I’ve gotten so far on it.

It’s just a lot and I’m pacing myself. I’m doing a reasonably accomplishable amount of stuff every day. I’m making time for myself at least a little bit every night and trying to not use it all on maintaining my apartment. I’m working long, exhausting days for my employer, trying to make sure I get at least five job applications out a week, and also trying to spend less time at my computer so my arm can recover. But I can’t just take days off. There’s too much that needs doing for me to actually rest even if I did attempt to do nothing one night. All I can do is repeat the message that I am working on it, that I will do my best to get to it as soon as I can, and then follow-through on what I’ve said as I can. It’s far from ideal, especially because I’ve already offloaded the stuff I can and am still struggling to keep up, but it’s what I’ve got.

This shouldn’t take more than another week or two. I’ve got a long weekend coming up in early July and, at the very least, that will give me the time to finish whatever outstanding items remain. And hopefully clean my apartment. I’m very tired of living in a space that has only been surface-cleaned for the last three months. It needs a deep-cleaning and I will feel so much better once I’ve done that. And once I’ve worked through the entire list of to-do items I’ve made. I can maintain this pace for that long, as long as nothing else happens. If something else happens or needs my attention… Well, something’s going to give.

Something will go undone and time will flow on and I’m sure it won’t matter in the long run. But, just like when I move apartments, I can’t REALLY feel like I’m resting until everything is settled. I need a semblance of order and regularity in order to unwind and it has been a long time since I’ve had that, thanks to my depression and the crumbling FC I tried my best to hold together and now all this. Not to mention the contact I made with an aunt last winter and how I still haven’t read the letter she sent me because I got to the part where she wanted to talk about visiting and freaked out enough that I set it aside and haven’t picked it up again in five months. Not a great way of dealing with things, let me tell you, but I can only take so much and processing my decades of negativity about my biological family enough to be willing to even see the nice one in person is going to take some real effort. Just like everything else. To paraphrase a cartoon I hate to be quoting, “life is effort and I’ll stop when I die.”