Work has been hitting me on all fronts lately. It has routinely achieved the burnout trifecta of inducing mental, emotional and physical exhaustion in me on a day-to-day basis for the last month (all of March, really) and it does not look to be letting up any time soon. Hopefully my latest email to my landlord results in me getting the answers I need so I can make a decision there [it did], about whether or not to stay at my current apartment [I’m going to, but I’m mad about it]. It would be nice to be able to put that particular issue to bed so I can focus on literally anything else (having a place to live kinda takes precedence). The next highest priority thing would be to find a new job if I can, since this one is killing me a little bit faster than entropy does, on average, and I’d really like to no longer have such a drain on my existence be such a significant part of my day-to-day. I am so tired after everything happening this week that I’m practically falling asleep as I write this. Well, a bit more than practically, actually. Just briefly dozed off there. I haven’t been sleeping super well, either, which has made me all the more susceptible to the exhaustion work has been bringing to bear. Every single aspect of my job that is incredibly exhausting has come up just this past week, too: pysical labor testing, repetitive testing, complex testing, my coworkers being unreliable, my coworkers leaving me to do all the work, my boss being unreasonable about something dumb, pro “AI” conversations, and on and on and on… It’s enough to make me want to lay down on my office floor face-first amd weep into the too-thin carpet.
Continue readingBurnout
A Busy Weekend Is Enough To Wipe Me Out
I had a busy weekend. Not the busiest I’ve ever been, but I had stuff going on every day since Wednesday (of the week before I wrote this) on top of a being incredibly busy at work every day, and it has wiped me out. Only thing making today doable is that I’m working from home due to a blizzard. If I had to be around people and at least pretend to be nice and social, I would probably have lost it before the day was even half over. It is weeks like the one that just ended that remind me just burned out I still am. After all, it was busy but not horribly so. I still had time for fun stuff and social activities. I didn’t sleep as much as I’d have liked to, but I got enough. I shouldn’t be this tired. I shouldn’t be feeling like I need a vacation to recover from five semi-busy and mentally engaging days. And yet here I am, tired as well and wondering if one day of rest is going to be enough as I cycle through various tasks, trying to find something that keeps me engaged long enough for me to make any real progress while my mind wanders and I consider what it would be like to not have a giant list of stuff that needs doing and problems that need solving. I miss the days when I could just exist. When I didn’t have to chose between getting low-quality rest and burning more energy to get something done so that I can hopefully get better rest at some unknown point in the future when all the things on my mind that are stressing me out are finally done. I do not know when those days will return again, but it surely won’t be for a while.
Continue readingPracticing Radical Acceptance Of The Fact That I Should Stop Radically Accepting Things
Today–a random day because I fell behind in blog post writing–I read a post on bluesky by Taco Bell Quarterly, (self-described as “The World’s Most Prestigious Literary Magazine. Unaffiliated with Daddy Taco. We publish the boundaries of cease and desist.”) that plainly stated the truth that most writers face: “You’re not going to make any money doing this and no one is going to read it, so you must hope for a secret third thing to happen“. This, no matter how many people might wish to deny it or refuse to except it, is the truth of being a writer in this day and age. Whatever that third thing is, though, is up to you, and the replies to this post were full of people giving voice, in varying degrees of sincerity, to what that third thing is for them. Most (ignoring all the people who missed the point by trying to get around thing two by saying “someone reading it and enjoying it”) of them fall into pretty standard categories such as “spite,” “to have done the thing,” or “because I need to,” but the one that I keep thinking about is someone quoting the post and asking the respondants “At what point does ‘artist dies penniless’ stop feeling like the artist in question just wasn’t sufficiently zen?” Because that’s the side of this that doesn’t get considered enough, you know? We’re all so ready to find reasons to write other than getting paid or making a living or being able to support ourselves, and it’s a good thing that we do that since finding our own purpose is more likely to play out positively than trying to make a living at it, but it’s still worth thinking about the fact that we’re essentially papering over a massive, systemic issue with acceptance and inner strength.
Continue readingEmotionally Beaten Black And Blue
I had a busy weekend. A wrestling event in Final Fantasy 14 Friday evening followed pretty immediately by editing the recordings, a few hours of sleep before I had to be awake and aware for roleplaying, catching up completely on Trigun Stargaze, hanging out with my usual Saturday crew, the absolute inability to sleep until around 4am, up again in time for plans that fell apart pretty much immediately since everyone else no-showed, a long couple hours of dealing with my frustrations, the start of a tabletop campaign, and then an evening of lingering frustration capped with, once again, the inability to fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning. Which is why I took a day off. It’s going to absolutely scuttle the roll I was on in terms of my income, but I was so exhausted and bent-out-of-shape by everything that I needed the time to resettle myself. Time that grew from one day to two days to two and a half days. Turns out that mixing a dose of frustration that is slow to leave into the tulmult of my unsettled life only exacerbated the problem. Which, you know, isn’t entirely on the frustration or exhaustion from a busy weekend. I’ve made very little progress on any of the larger problems I’m facing and that has entirely ruined my resilience to the point that things which wouldn’t normally be a big deal become one. I really need to get some of this stuff resolved so I can get any kind of feeling of control back in my life, so I can maybe stop feeling like cracked glass, emotionally speaking, but that remains easier said than done.
Continue readingAn Apt But Unwelcome Metaphor
There is this expression I first encountered in playing Magic The Gathering (which is probably used in a lot of card games, but I don’t really play many card games so I’ve got no idea) that I wish more people were familiar with so I could actually use it as much, and in as wide a variety of situations, as it pops into my mind. Sure, the explicit meaning of “top-decking” is that you’re using whatever you draw from your deck as you draw it, but the actual meaning behind that says a lot more. You see, when you’re playing one of these card games, you are generally using a deck built around a specific function or theme. You’ve assembled cards to enable types of play to help you win and the rest of your deck is usually built to get those cards into your hands or to respond to other types of play so you have the time you need to get a winning combination in place. So, when you’re top-decking, what that usually means is that you’re out of options, you’ve done everything within your power at the moment, and all you can do is respond in the moment with whatever comes into your hand. You have no ability to respond to other players’ actions and all you can do for the future is hope that you eventually draw something you need or that will get you what you need. Which is how living my life feels a lot of the time.
Continue readingFinally Settling Into Comfortable Activities In Final Fantasy 14
I’ve been bouncing between a lot of different activities in Final Fantasy 14 lately. A solid chunk of my time goes towards leveling (and supplying) an alternate character who will head up my storage and resource generation FC. Another solid chunk is going toward general play on my main character. A third, smaller chunk is going towards activities for the rolaplaying wrestling league I’m part of. And any other time goes towards the general maintenance work of my various crafts, monitoring my various sales attempts, keeping an eye on the housing market, and general maintenance work that I don’t really want to do but occasionally feel like doing anyway. I’m also back to taking Tuesday nights off of the game and while I’m writing this on my second (and posting it on my third), I think I can stick with this for at least a while. After all, while it is possible that I’ll make a lot of sales on weekly refresh days, I don’t really expect to (I’m playing a long game with most of my sales, waiting for the cheaper stuff to run out and positioning myself in the middle-to-middle-top of the pack so I can get a good price for my stuff but still get sold) and there really isn’t anything in the game that is so urgent that I’d need to play on refresh night. Wednesday is my weekly island night, that I also often fill with roulettes and working on my own weekly refresh stuff, Thursdays are a grab bag of whatever, and now Fridays and Saturdays are wrestling nights. Wednesday will also be a wrestling night on occasion, but it’s mostly Fridays and Saturdays, so all the plans I can make for those are usually pretty last-minute and focused on whatever I feel like doing. It’s a nice place to be in at this point, even if I still feel a tugging at the back of my mind that I should focus up and get more done with my time.
Continue readingInstability Makes For Poor Resting Conditions
Well, I got one decent night of sleep. Went to bed at my usual weekend time, fell asleep right away, and slept for a solid eight before I got up on my own and started my day. One night isn’t a lot, but it’s better than nothing and it hopefully signals the approaching end of this period of insomnia. I didn’t sleep as much the following night, but then I was up late editing videos for the absolutely smashing opening to this year’s Cross Realm Wrestling (the Final Fantasy 14 roleplaying wrestling league I’m recording and editing events for) season. That was a choice, as was waking up after not enough time so I could spend time with my siblings, so I’ve only got myself to blame for that one. Last night’s relatively sleeplessness, though, was back to good ol’ insomnia. I sometimes wonder if I have trouble falling asleep at night because I spend so much of my day struggling to stay awake, but that thought is really depressing so I try not to spend too much time on it. I mean, it’d make sense, you know? I’m constantly struggling to stay awake and putting a lot of effort into not falling asleep during the day, so maybe I’m just training myself to not fall asleep easily. Which fits last night’s sleeplessness really well. Lot of dozing off and then twitching awake, lots of shifting my legs to try to find a comfortable position without any pain for me to focus on. And a lot of desperate thinking of topics I can’t remember as my brain just fires off thought after thought so my brain can’t truly wind down. If that’s not at least a part of my sleep issues, I’d be genuinely quite surprised.
Continue readingA Life’s Worth Of Problems To Solve
Last week’s anger is still around. It’s currently locked in battle with my exhaustion in a way that is amplifying all my other emotions in ways I do not particularly appreciate, but then very little that’s positive has happened. I mean, I had a nice weekend, that was good, but I haven’t been able to make much headway on any job applications, nor have any of my floating problems resolved themselves. They’re not even closer to being resolved than they were before. Hell, I feel like I’ve made negative progress on some of them. I’ve tried talking through what’s going on with some people and that hasn’t actually helped at all. Normally that helps a lot–normally thinking out loud like that helps me push towards a better understanding of what’s going on with me but I feel like that hasn’t worked lately. To cap it all off, I feel like this is all pointless because I’ve got practical problems I need to solve now and all this theoretical stuff, while incredibly important to my sense of self, doesn’t matter as much. I just got my lease renewal which stands to raise my rent by over one hundred dollars, there’s some big changes happening at my employer that necessitate reconsidering stuff I thought I’d already settled about my future, and everything I thought I’d settled about how and why I spend my energy is suddenly in question again as a couple interactions that should be inconsequential have bent me out of sorts.
Continue readingAt Least My Thoughts Are More Directed While I’m Still Unable To Sleep Enough
More time has not fixed my sleep problem. It has gotten better, but it hasn’t fixed itself yet. I’m able to think fairly clearly. I’m very tired still, and a day at work is still very draining, but I think I’m getting through the worst of the mental muddling that has left me in this state. I haven’t really figured anything concrete out, but I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I feel about all of the stuff going on in my life (namely my tendency to throw myself into projects with a dedication rarely reflected by those I work with, what part I wish to play in the various communities I’m a part of, how much should I temper my passions in order to avoid further burnout, and so on) and I think I’ve at least figured out what I don’t want and taken a couple steps on the road to somewhere. I know I don’t want to return to my old quiet days of playing games by myself and going entire weeks without talking to anyone save my coworkers. I don’t want to do nothing but what I need to. I also don’t want to give up on some of the things I’ve started, not entirely, even if they can be draining. I know I need to continue to work on balancing the energy I spend against the rest I’m getting. I also know that I want to be a part of communities and that community doesn’t happen without people to oragnize it and do the work. Someone has to be the person to say “let’s do stuff” and while it doesn’t have to be me all the time (and shouldn’t be me all the time!), I am a very organized person who does enjoy logistical work, so I need to figure out how to find balance between this truth and the just as real truth that I’m burned out and constantly exhausted these days.
Continue readingKeeping My Anger On A Slow Burn
There was a period in my life when I did not consider myself an angry person. A pretty long one, actually. I only began to question that assertion once I no longer had a (sometimes healthy) outlet for any aggression I felt, which was in my mid-to-late twenties. I spent my entire childhood miserable, my teen years surviving, my college years starting to get in touch with my emotions, and still didn’t realize how angry I was about a lot of stuff until I was forced to grapple with the emotional toll of my grandfather’s death and my separation from my parents. You see, I survived most of my childhood by repressing my emotions in a way that had a lasting negative impact, as perhaps best exemplified by the fact that I didn’t experience any kind of mixed or nuanced emotions until sometime in my twenties. I only ever felt one thing up at a time up to that point and it was only as I began to unpack the way that my grief touched everything else I felt that I started to recognize the complexities of what I was feeling prior to that. And thus came the anger. It had been sublimated into so many other emotions, into so many parts of my life, that it was differnet to pull out and understand on it own, especially because I was raised in a particular masculine tradition where not even anger was a “proper” emotion for a man to have. The only proper emotions where love (for god, of course) and remorse (for not loving god enough), so I tamped down a lot of stuff in order to play the part I was assigned.
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