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 readingInfo
Taking 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.
I’ve Decided To Take Another Day Off
I honestly haven’t rested much yet, between my day of going into work a week ago, holiday stuff, burning the shit out of my hand while making Christmas dinner, and then hosting my siblings, so I’m just going to take another day off. I’m gonna try to actually rest and get my head out of the weird funk I’m in as I’m writing this. I’ll have a new post tomorrow, to do one final check-in before the end of 2024, and then no new post on Wednesday the 1st. Starting on the 2nd snd carrying forward, I’ll be back to my usual “every work day” blog posts and, if I can ever get my feet under me properly, some new Saturday posts in the future. Not any time soon, though. Typing is a more laborious activity than usual on account of burning the shit out of my hand. It’s been a couple days, and it’s not horrific or anything, but it kinda aches unpleasantly, to the extend that I’m not even holding video gsme controllers with it. Just sort of literalized my burnout with thisnhand injury… So, maybe someday, but definitely not in January. The month hasn’t even started and its off to a rough start.
Happy Holidays! I’m Taking A Few Days Off!
I’m taking a few days off, this week and next! I won’t be posting anything further today (the 25th of December) through the rest of the week. I will have four new posts next week, every day except the first. I’m planning to take some time to rest, celebrate the holidays with the people I care about, and try to hope that nothing goes to shit while I’m resting during my last break before the project I’ve been working on since October of 2023 finally finishes sometime in March. Finally. After that… well, who knows? I have stopped trying to predict the future that far out and have resigned myself to taking it one or two weeks at a time. I hope you’re having a great day today regardless of what you celebrate and if you celebrate a holiday today, well, still have a great day. I’m going to be resting and doing nothing. Hopefully in a more positive way than my last few attempts at doing that. Happy Holidays!
Welcome To My New Home!
I really thought this would be a painless process, but between needing to figure out what features to add via community plugins, how to replicate my original blog as closely as possible, and trying to get my domain transferred, it was actually a constant source of stress and a giant pain in my ass for over a week. A week and a half, really. Turns out that getting domains transferred away from WordPress .com sucks because they’ll drag their feet about it, their listed support email doesn’t actually exist, their instructions are wrong, and their actual domain service website seems like a scam since it lacks anything even approaching the level of polish I’m used to seeing on the rest of the WordPress website. It was harrowing, but it is done now. Everything is cleaned up and put where it should be, or will be as soon as I find out that it is out of place. Turns out that it’s kind of hard to do that when you’re doing to be swapping domains around again after you’ve built your website. Especially when you’re writing the “everything is good now, welcome in!” post when the domain transfer has yet to actually go through and you’re still worried you might need to take down and put up your blog again for some reason when it finally does go through. This crap sucks. Thankfully, it’s all done by the time you’re reading this, so at least Present/Editing Me has that going for them, even if Past Me is struggling to feel cool about it.
Continue reading