Still dealing with a lot so even now I’m going to take another day to skip a blog post so I don’t get buried further than I currently am. It’s a lot to keep up with, between work and personal obligations, and trying to do work over the weekend to catch up kinda defeats the point of resting. So another skip, a small delay, and maybe I can dig myself out of this hole a little bit today.
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Rest Day
I’ve been really worn out, to the degree of starting to feel sick, so I’m taking a day off of just about everything, including blog posts, so I can get some more rest. There’ll be a new post on Monday, but this is all I’ve got for today.
Taking A Couple Days Off
I am taking a little break. Got a holiday at work on Friday the 3rd (love a “non-christian” workplace that still somehow manages to only observe christian holidays) and took off an extra day to keep myself from working too hard and burning out. I need the rest slightly more than I need the money, so I’m going all-in and am going to spend my time doing some fun little video editing projects. Maybe I’ll share some of that eventually, but right now I’ve carefully avoided crossing the streams between my writing and meatspace identity and my digital identity in Final Fantasy 14, and the videos would eventually just give it away, I’m sure. Or at least provide enough of a trail that someone could follow it from one place to another. Right now, I appreciate the distance even if I also desperately want to show off the cool work I’ve been doing. I’m not amazing at the video editing thing yet, but I’m getting pretty good at cutting and pasting things into an interesting and cohesive shape, such that some people don’t even realize I’ve done it. Which is most of editing footage. Special effects are their own thing. Which I will spend my days off learning about! It’ll be fun!
Taking A Much-Need Two-Week Break After This
The day I planned to write this, I arrived at work an hour into a five-alarm fire (a metaphorical fire, not a literal one). I spent the entire day running around, doing heavy physical labor, and didn’t stop to sit or rest until half an hour before I’d planned to leave for the day. I had accomplished nothing I’d planned and, worst of all, probably lengthened my illness by pushing myself too hard. Too hard for my own health, anyway, but only just barely hard enough to handle the problems plaguing my team. So, instead, I’m writing this during what I’d originally planned to be my first week off from blog writing. I’m taking time off for the winter holidays and giving myself a bit of a longer break than usual. I wrote just last week that I need some things in my life to change and I’m still not sure what that means for me, for my writing, and my game running, so I want to take some time away to figure that out. And what better time to do that than over the winter holiday season? Which means that there will be no more blog posts between today, December 19th, and January 5th when I will probably resume my normal schedule. Or at least something like it. Who knows what I’ll come up with while working through my feelings over the next couple weeks. I’m too tired and worn out today, from poor sleep and illness, to come up with much other than “something” and I already had that figured out last week.
Continue readingTaking A Couple Sick Days
I was incredibly sick last week. Not, like, dangerously sick or in need of hospitalization, just emphatically sick in ways I found difficult to work past. And, since capitalism required that I continue working (just as it demands that I go into the office today, the day this is posted, and risk the health of my coworkers because I can’t afford to take days off right now), I did not have the energy to come up with ideas for blog posts, let alone write them. So, rather than push myself to write a bunch of extra posts this week in order to keep my streak uninterrupted while rebuilding my buffer, I’m just going to take two days off this week (today and tomorrow) so I can go into this week on slightly better footing than I feel I have right now. Metaphorical footing. I do not have problems standing despite being sick. So, look for a new post on Wednesday and things will continue as normal from there. I’ll also have some interruptions during the holidays, but I’ll post about that when it happens. Hope you’re avoiding getting sick in this season of colds and flus.
Taking The Week Off
I will be taking this week (the 24th through the 28th of November, 2025) off of blog posts because of the holiday (US Thanksgiving) and because I will be traveling for all of that time! I will not be near a computer and while I can do some writing on my phone, I prefer to avoid it. Plus, I’ll have enough going on with traveling for the holidays. I do not need to add blog posts to that mix. It would be detrimental to my already burned-out mental state. Normal posts, most if not all of which have been written by the time you’re reading this, will resume on Monday the 1st of December, 2025. Stay well until then! And preferably after then, too, but you get my meaning.
The Price Of Burnout
After months (and perhaps even years, depending on how you want to measure it), I’m taking my first break where my depression hasn’t been a factor. Which means that, as I’m assessing myself and my well-being, my burnout is the remaining explanation for how awful I feel. Surprisingly, my depression was only about twenty percent of how bad I’ve been feeling for a long time and while it, and so many other factors, contributed to my burnout, removing my depression as a factor doesn’t decrease my burnout. It just shows me how bad things have gotten. Which is why I’m going to be taking a break from proper blog posts today and tomorrow. I’ve finally hit the point in this suddenly-a-full-week of vacation where I’m able to spend time and energy thinking about stuff, but I’m trying to avoid pushing myself too hard, so I will probably write posts, I’m just going to save them for maintaining my buffer after two days of posts and absolutely no writing as I felt myself by-and-large removed from reality by the personal collapse I’ve experienced as a result losing the tension and focus that has been keeping me going for the last eight months. So don’t look for a post tomorrow, but you can expect to see them again on Monday and I expect I’ll have plenty to say about all this which I’m sure you’ll be able to read next week at the latest.
No Post Today
It is Labor Day in the US and while the country is absolutely a garbage fire turning from a concerning blaze into the beginning stages of a city-destroying conflagration, we still have federal holidays for the time being and I’m absolutely taking advantage of that to rest up. No blog post writing for me today, which means nothing gets posted today. Go join a protest. Make a plan to call your representatives. Set up a schedule for calling payment processors. Labor Day isn’t exactly about rest, after all, but a recognition of the power of the laborers in this country and the things they fought for (and a reminder of what we’re slowly losing as unions are dismantled and power is coalescing into authoritarianism). Flex a bit of that power by reminding the world at large how strong we are when we work together.
No Post Today
I’ve been sick all week and it has been a little thought-consuming in a way that makes it difficult to write about other stuff, so I haven’t had the mental space to write about anything else and the nature of my illness makes me unwilling to write about that. I’ve been losing myself in a lot of video game time, though. I’ll have plenty to write about next week when I get back into writing, assuming this illness has fully run it’s course by then.
Thinking A Lot About The Antifacist Soldiers Who Died Decades Ago This Memorial Day
It’s Memorial Day in the US, one of the few holidays I’ve got with my current employer. I’m taking a day off writing, for the most part, as well so I can get an actually restful weekend of sleep and (hopefully) recovery in me before returning to the grind. I don’t typically have much respect for today, given how much it’s being used for pointless pagentry, political points, and trying to stir patriotism in a country with a bit too much pride in itself. I can’t much take a holiday seriously when all of the communication I see about it is either advertisements for appliance sales or attempts to create a sense of pride in my country will it tries to ruin the lives of the marginalized people who live here. So, to that end, ignore the fascist spinning up of nationalist pride in preparation for Trump’s Birthday Parade and do something else like call your reps about putting a stop to that or about how they plan to actually stand up the the fascists instead of demuring every time there’s an opportunity for the kind of endless opposition we need from every level of our government if we’re to survive as a country with any semblance of what we like to call “democracy” intact. Eat a hot dog or grill out or whatever it is you feel you need to do, but don’t let the holiday blind you to the continue rise of fascism rather rapidly consuming our country.