There are times, more or less often depending on my mood and the state of my mental health, that I find myself thinking, usually unprompted, about how I have very little in my life other than my job. It is a difficult idea to refute. After all, I spend fifty hours a week working at this job of mine and spend nowhere near that much time on any other single thing. I don’t even sleep that much over seven days, most weeks. Outside of work, I don’t really have much in the way of variety. I have video games, which include a mix of solo games or some that I play online with friends, though I do most of my game playing by myself since I work late, most of my friends are in different time zones, or my friends play games I don’t have the energy for. I also have this blog, but it mostly feels like I’m shouting into a void and slowly realizing that the faint echo I hear is probably using my voice (along with the voices of many others) to learn to be a more massive and culturally destructive doppelganger than anyone ever feared there would be when they came up with the idea of doppelgangers. It feels bad to continue shouting when I still haven’t had the time or energy to come up with a reasonable alternative. Beyond those things, I’ve got my tabletop games but those are difficult to enjoy the way I’d prefer since they’re scheduled less regularly than I’d like and, as is true of probably ninety-nine percent of gaming groups, plagued with scheduling issues, cancellations, and the busy lives of the people involved asserting themselves in a way that demands whatever came up take a higher priority than fun. It’s disheartening to think through this all because I can never actually tell myself that these thoughts are wrong.
Continue readingAnxiety
Posting Through A Depression Spike
It has been a while since I’ve written about it as anything other than a tangent on a post, but I’m still struggling with my now months-long depression spike. It has definitely helped that I rarely leave work while it is still fully dark outside and that I’m able to get more sun than ever during my walks (though I’m needing to wear sunscreen now, which is not my favorite, since one of the medications I’m taking makes my skin incredibly sensitive to sunburn). That’s not enough, though, since I’m still struggling to get enough sleep and the constant grind of stress and long work days at my job are more than counteracting the positive effects of the longer days and greater exposure to sunlight. Not to mention that I feel like I’ve been struggling to connect with my friends lately and while that is probably just the depression talking, I still feel like I’m not as socially active as I used to be. I’m also struggling to make space for my own creativity and what space I do make (mostly these blog posts) feels tainted by all the stress and frustration I feel with the shit WordPress’ owner keeps trying to pull. I’ve still got my tabletop games, but most of those don’t meet as regularly as I’d like and they all have their own stressors as I try to avoid getting caught up in anxiety spirals around stuff my players said or did that could be interpreted as them not enjoying themselves.
Continue readingWaiting Beneath A Heavy Silence
I spent most of my idle thoughts today thinking about someone I haven’t spoken to in almost nine months. I have a lot of people from my past that I haven’t spoken to in various lengths of time, most of them greater than nine months, but this one occupies me in ways that the rest don’t. Most of the rest of these long silences are the result of walls I built or deliberate choices to make a change in my life that took me away from people. Some are the notable ends of long-running and incredibly unhealthy codependent relationships that I was unable to change for the better as I changed for the better–it takes change on both people’s parts to better a relationship like that and I’ve only ever been able to control my own behavior. Some were relationships I ended because they were unhealthy for me, because the other person only ever took from me, because it was clear I could not rely on them when it really mattered, or because I simply grew tired of needing to overlook the ways they frequently hurt me without ever learning to treat me better. Some just faded into silence as time and distance took their toll. Only one was because someone else set a boundry and I have kept my silence for these past nine months out of respect for their request.
Continue readingMy Experience Of OCD As A Whole
Content Warning for discussions of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, specifically the obsessions and compulsions that make it up, which, in my case, includes suicidal ideation.
I write about my mental health a lot. I’ve written blog posts, poetry, short stories, and even worked on longer fiction all about my depression, my anxiety, dealing with trauma/PTSD, etc. The only thing I’ve never managed to really cover in a way that felt satisfying was my OCD. I can write about it just fine and I’ve done plenty of blog posts discussing it and the ways it impacts my life, but I’ve never really been able to capture how it feels in a way that felt true to my own experiences, as I’ve done with the other things I’ve mentioned. The only bit of writing I’ve ever found that felt true to my experience of OCD (specifically as an expression of it rather than a mechanical depiction of it) was John Green’s Turtles All The Way Down, and even the best mechanical depictions of it are still fairly rare given how often it’s falsely depicted as different types of fastidiousness in popular media. Green’s excellent book felt incredibly reflective of my own experience, even if it still fell short because of the inherent distance between Green’s experience (which he wrote about) and my experience (which I’ve yet to ever convey in a way that feels true and complete). It’s frustrating to want to capture something that has such a strong and particular feeling to it and be unable to do it in a satisfying way no matter how often I’ve tried.
Continue readingThe First Step Is Sleeping. After That, Everything’s Doable.
It finally happened. I finally had people over to just hang out. Took three and a half months, but it finally happened. They weren’t my first house guests, since I’ve hosted an in-person tabletop game day for a Pathfinder 2e one-shot (that became at least a two-shot) and had a friend stay the night just a couple weeks ago, but they were the first people I had over with the express purpose of just occupying my space with me. It was really nice. We didn’t do much, other than hang out, go pick up pizza, and then idly watch the first two thirds of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring while we made idle chitchat, ate our food, and did stuff on our phones. Exactly the kind of chill, no expectations, no greater purpose type of hanging out I’ve been wanting. Now all I gotta do is make it happen again! Hopefully in less than three and a half months. It’ll probably be easier, what with the impending winter, but you can never know for certain. Some winters, people will just hole up in their homes and avoid leaving it for anything other than necessity. Some winters, people can’t wait to escape their homes for any reason at all. You never know until it’s happening.
Continue readingMy Exhaustion And Depression Teamed Up On Me
Between therapy, not sleeping well last night (I was actually in bed on time for once, I just couldn’t fall asleep and then I kept waking up throughout the night), and the general events of the last two weeks, I just do not have the energy for much today. I finished Sea of Stars and want to write about it, but the thought of even starting on that post (by copying over the relevant bits of a discussion I had with someone about the game) have me feeling so exhausted that I’d rather lay down on the dirty floor of my office and not move for a week than try to parse through all the pieces of that largely one-sided discussion (my mistake for engaging with someone without checking if they were up for in-depth critical analysis). I mean, hell, I can’t decide what I’m doing to do for dinner and tonight’s grocery night, which means I could guiltlessly cop out by ordering Chinese food from the local place since I’ll be getting home late. Nothing like buying a bunch of food and then not eating any of it. Sure, it’s because I’m exhausted from a long day of work and then going grocery shopping afterwards, but it still feels weird to do. Plus, as much as I enjoy getting takeout from the local Chinese restaurant, I tend not sleep as well after eating it. Seems like eating something else might be the better choice in order to address my exhaustion, but that will take a degree of effort that picking up my dinner would not.
Continue readingI Miss Pretending To Be Someone Else
I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve hardly had the time or energy for doing anything after work other than settling down in front of my TV and not moving again until it’s time to go to bed. I had plans to start putting a puzzle together or maybe work on a Lego set at some point this week (in an effort to spend some time away from screens and take a break from books. The book break isn’t because they’re bad or they’re twisting my mind in some way (though doing a massive binge of The Dresden Files has definitely influenced my recent dreams, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post), but because I’m spending too much time hunched over things or folded up in chairs. I need some activities that let me sprawl. Or, I thought I’d need them since I planned to get a full week of daily workouts in this week. Instead, I’ve done zero workouts, stuggled to get to sleep on time, and all the energy I have for any given day has been consumed by work as I juggle projects, prepare for a company event (that has happened by the time this goes up), and attempts to sort through my feelings about a whole range of stuff.
Continue readingIntrusive Thoughts and Getting Mentally Buff
Content Warning for discussion of Intrusive Thoughts and the ways I cope with them, along with their relation to my OCD, anxiety, and depression.
Continue readingToday Was A Grey, Smokey Day Inside and Out
Content Warning for a long, metaphor-rich discussion of my experience of depression.
Continue readingAvoiding Codependency And Fighting The Habits That Enable It
Content Warning for discussion of codependent relationships and the unhealthy habits that create them; non-specific mentions of childhood trauma that makes codependent relationships seem fine; and discussion of the struggles inherent in managing those things while under a great deal of stress and anxiety.
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