Once again, time has shifted. All the clocks I’ve been ignoring for months are correct once again (or just a couple minutes off instead of an hour and a couple minutes off). The sun rises later, it sets later, and everyone is struggling to adjust our perceived notions of time to fit the new path the sun is charting through the various hours of our days. It is not a pleasant experience. It is even less pleasant of an experience when you are awake for it as I was this weekend. Turns out that having a lot going on does not mix well with the bevy of negative feelings I’ve been struggling with lately and it creates a degree of dissastifaction that makes it difficult to fall asleep. So I did not get a lot of sleep that night (nor did I get much sleep last night as my soul casts about for something to feel about anything other than the constant grinding negativity in all its various little flavors) and now I’m struggling to deal with waking up “earlier” than usual even as I struggle to fall asleep at a currently reasonable hour much less one that used to be earlier than it currently is. My entire sleep schedule and sense of time is already messed up from months of not sleeping well, so throwing an hour shift into the mix is just making it work. I really hope I can get this sorted out sooner rather than later since I’m not sure how much more of this I can take…
Continue readingexhaustion
An 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 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 readingInsomnia And Caring Too Deeply And Existential Identity Crises, Oh My!
I have not slept much the last couple days (as of writing this). It has been difficult for me to wind down these past few days because I am currently caught in an exhausting vortex of my own creation. It isn’t video games or TV shows I’ve starting watching (though my tendency to lose track of time while doing those things certainly hasn’t helped me these last few weeks), but just my good ‘ol insomnia. My mind will not spin down in the evenings and, in fact, seems to kick things into high gear when I’m trying to go to sleep. Most of the time, though, I can attribute a period of restlessness to a spike in anxiety or stress. These days, it’s all anxiety and stress to the degree that I’ve stopped registering it as anything but “normal” everywhere except in how much anxiety and stress I can manage in a day: that just keeps getting smaller as the world around me gets messier and messier. Still, despite this, I am pretty sure I know why I can’t fall asleep easily lately (this has been going on for a while but only recently has it prevented me from sleeping for long periods of time): I am having a small-to-moderate existential crisis. I joke often about having those, or at least have joked about that once or twice over the course of this blog, but my sense of purpose and self has been relatively stable for a while. After last year’s burnout (which is continuing into this year), deciding to stop my D&D campaigns troubling my self-identity as a storyteller, and the way that my thoughts about why I stopped that D&D campaign has grown in my mind to be applicable to so many of the difficult and draining parts of my life, all my mind can do is spin its wheels and get nowhere.
Continue readingBurgeoning Burnout And Undeniable Exhaustion
It has been a difficult week. Following my therapy appointment a couple days ago, I spent the rest of that day and all of the next at home, taking time off work. Today, the day I’m writing this a week before it goes up, I’m in the office for a normal 10+ hour shift and mentally prepared to not go in to work at all tomorrow since I’d only need to spend two days of PTO at that point. If I’m not going to get any overtime this week because of how acute my burnout is and how exhausted I feel from coming face-to-face with said burnout, its causes, and the things keeping it the same size at best or growing at worst with each passing day, I might as well give myself an extra day off so I can maybe get enough rest to tackle next week without needing to cut my days short. I also just don’t want to be here. I have described, in detail, how much things at my job have wrecked me over the past two years and I can’t pretend, even for a little bit, that I’m okay with this, comfortable with what’s going on, or happy about any of it in the slightest. I mean, it’s not like I’m being actively tortured or anything, or abused by any meaning of the word. I’m just being taken for granted and have Hard Work’d my way into an untenable position where my entire team not only expects me to do a great deal of organizational labor that isn’t at all a part of my job, but will actively make my life difficult if I’m not doing it by complaining to my boss that I don’t seem to be working much at all. It’s not a great position to be in, especially because my boss agrees with them, or at least he did six months ago when he brought it up during my yearly review, and I’m not entirely sure what to do.
Continue readingCoping With A Normal, Healthy Reaction To What’s Going On These Days
There are days, more and more lately, where I am heartsick at the state of the world or floundering and unable to escape the vortex of my own personal miseries. Unfortunately, the world does not give you space to have days like that. Life must still be lived. Bills mut be payed, money must be earned, food must be bought, and the necessities of life require you to carry on despite how much you want to take a moment to just reel at the enormnity of it all. How do you do that? What can you do to make some distance, create a little space, and find a way to take the next step forward because you have to no matter how much your heart demands you lay face down on the ground? There’s plenty of self-care tips out there for this sort of thing: log off, stay hydrated, make sure you eat, get some fresh air, ground yourself in the present moment, find ways to be active locally, in-person, so you can provide yourself with some measure of control to fight back against the feelings of powerlessness that are often at the center (or at least near it) of these overwhelming moments. That doesn’t always do it, though, because sometimes you also have to clean your apartment or deal with other people who are making reasonable requests of you or you need to find a way to write about something, anything, to help break your mind out of the paralysis gripping it. What do you do for that extra boost, the tiny bit of impetus required to break out of the rut you’re in so you can do the things you really should be doing today but don’t really NEED to do today? You can’t leave it all for tomorrow, you know? Tomorrow will have it’s own things, it’s own trials and miseries to make doing things difficult, so stacking up more and more important-but-not-necessary effort is only ever going to add more weight to your shoulders.
Continue readingNowhere Left For Escapism
Once upon a time, I used to take breaks from the work I was doing to go on social media. I’d see some art, look a whatever had gone viral, post back and forth with some friends, maybe idly browse for a bit, and then return to whatever I’d been doing. It was fun. It was enjoyable. It was a small hit of happiness during my long, often-boring days. Nowdays, I feel like I do everything else in my life as a break from social media before I eventually have to return to doom scrolling so I can keep up with whatever hellacious, objectively evil thing has happened since I last looked. There is no joy to be found there and, more and more frequently, not even any escapism. All I can count on getting from the internet these days is at least a modicum of despair and yet my brain keeps telling me to go back and check again. After all, maybe this time I’ll actually get that little bit of serotonin I’m craving. Maybe this time I’ll just see some nice art or a funny joke or an announcement about something of interest to me and not spend an hour scrolling up and down the page as I trepidatiously follow whatever unfolding disaster has occurred (such as “law enforcement” of various types killing someone in what can only be reasonably described as an execution or the various media and government personal talking about just how reasonable it is for Trump to consider acquiring Greenland through whatever means he desires). Nothing I have seen on social media in the last year comes even close to making up for how much absolute misery I’ve experienced as a result of scrolling around and yet I can feel the need to scroll, to bear horrified witness to these unfolding tragedies, tugging at my attention despite not wanting to see yet another post about how surely, this time, they have gone too far.
Continue readingMy Year in Haiku: 2025
2025 was the year I burned out. Utterly and completely in ways I might never recover from, given my inability to take the kind of rest I’d need to begin the process, much less complete it. It was also the year I made the most friends I’ve made in years, the year I connected to a new sense of community–something I’ve been withering away for the want of for a long time–and the year I finally admitted to myself, if no one else other than my therapist, that I had crossed a line somewhere and wasn’t sure I could find my way back. It was a bad year for a lot of reasons personal, professional, emotional, economically, politically, and so many more I haven’t the energy to summon to mind, let alone write out. I also found something I’m good at and am getting recognized for, and truly learned the lesson that no amount of positive input is going to make up for how burned out I was and still am. I can’t work through burnout. I can’t reprioritize around it. I can’t realign myself (specifically) to minimize it. And all I’ve got to show for working myself to that point is the knowledge that the instant I let up on the pressure I’m applied to myself, all of my coworkers started complaining to my boss about how little work it seemed like I was doing. Work that wasn’t my job, that they had taken for granted I would continue doing once the project was done, but work that someone needed to be doing and they decided it had to be me since I’d stepped up when that work not getting done would have burned me worst of all. It was not worth it. None of it was. And yet there’s nothing I can do about it now other than try to find some path forward that will limit any further damage. Which, you know, isn’t fixing anything. It just hopefully avoids making it worse.
(1/1)
Hope begets loss and
I cannot stand any more.
This is survival.
(1/8)
It is easier
To look away than confront
What is on my mind.
(1/14)
I change my alarm
To reflect reality…
Should I change myself?
(1/21)
Balancing my needs
Against my protective urges
Has left me frozen.
(1/26)
I wake up and go
From bed to office to bed
As a day passes.
(1/30)
Yesterday cost more
Than I was willing to pay.
What else could I do?
(1/31)
I’m losing my shit.
This dumb shit keeps happening
And I’m losing it.
(2/1)
I’ve avoided this
For my entire adult life.
Please pardon my grief.
(2/6)
Weariness claws at
My empty, echoing mind
As I look for rest.
(2/11)
I can feel my soul
Dragging through the muck and mire
Of this too-long year.
(2/20)
I still waste mornings
When my days are not dreary.
Change is not instant.
(2/23)
I feel myself yearn
For the same satisfaction
I get from this game.
(2/24)
I’m burnt to a crisp
And it gets worse every day.
I might never heal.
(2/27)
A new chance to rest
Is spoiled by people needing
Me to be present.
(2/28)
A slow start today,
But avalanches start with
a single motion.
(3/1)
My recovery
Is held captive by burnout.
Can I ever heal?
(3/4)
Burnout bringing me
To the edge of a breakdown
I cannot afford.
(3/10)
What’s left of me wears
Down to a nub while I work
One just one more step.
(3/12)
A moment of breath
Amidst the ceaseless effort.
I must carry on.
(3/19)
Another aching
Day spent trying to get rest
So I can work more.
(3/24)
Another week starts
As I struggle to get out
Of sheer exhaustion.
(3/30)
My final structure
Looms large in my afternoon.
It should be fun, though.
(4/3)
I wake each morning
In aching silence that ends
Only when I sleep.
(4/10)
My body twitches
With the perceived exhaustion
Of long-term burnout.
(4/14)
Dissatisfaction
Lingers through my time to sleep
And I watch dawn rise.
(4/18)
I needed the rest
I got these past too-short weeks.
It was not enough.
(4/21)
Rise and shine for work
So no one can tell how much
This project broke you.
(4/29)
An empty day, blank,
With little recorded thought,
As I parsed the fog
(5/1)
I woke peacefully,
But my day has stirred in me
A rage I can’t quell.
(5/5)
Even my poor dreams,
Scattered thoughts with no clear plot,
Say I need more sleep.
(5/8)
I’d be quick to leave
Everything I know behind
If given the chance
(5/9)
I can feel my bones
Collapsing under the weight
Of mere existence.
(5/12)
Am I resigned to
The need for stability
Or just scared of change?
(5/23)
Waking up feels good,
The day gets worse from then on.
I’m so fucking tired.
(5/30)
Rebuilding my life:
A ship of theseus in
More than name alone
(6/5)
I’m unravelling.
It looks like fraying until
I’ve fallen apart.
(6/6)
It’s a pity you
Feel best-served by my silence.
I’ll remember that.
(6/8)
I can’t help but feel
This could have been avoided.
My question was clear.
(6/13)
Bitterness fuels me
When all my good reasons have
Left me hollowed out.
(6/21)
This will be the end.
A decade of gaming done
In less than six months.
(6/22)
Sweating distraction
Logged in to occupy space
While my mind’s elsewhere.
(6/26)
Low expectations
Gird me for battle against
Today’s nothingness.
(7/7)
My spirit broken,
My burnout worse than ever…
Just one more summer.
(7/25)
I am restless not
Because I cannot rest but
From fear of stillness.
(7/31)
Burning my candle
Until all that remains is
Smoke stains on the wall.
(8/5)
He scares me more than
A Scammer’s threat ever could.
Twisted irony.
(8/8)
A slow morning turns
To bubbling anger as I
Fight capitalism.
(8/8)
I want you to know
Apria Healthcare sucks ass.
Fucking burn it down
(8/10)
My day defies words.
I scrape the empty barrel
Just to make a sound.
(8/19)
Is it the burnout
Or all the insomnia?
Turns out that it’s both.
(8/25)
Is there no escape
From the bullshit slop machines?
It makes my soul burn.
(8/28)
Hard won victory
Will carry me through the day.
I don’t want to work.
(8/31 – late)
It was the first time
I did not think about who
I would not hear from.
(9/9)
Sore muscles, blisters,
And too little sleep make for
Such a tiring day.
(9/13)
Yesterday’s anger
Smolders like coals in my heart
As I acquiesce.
(9/18)
Time bends for the worse
And my carefully planned days
Arrive in a mess
(9/29)
A return to work
Is greeted with all the dread
Of a slow nightmare.
(10/5)
Today, I finish
A journey I just began.
Has it been nine months?
(10/7)
The drive I once felt
To write and make and play hard
Has burned itself out.
(10/14)
You would think after
Ten years I’d stop scheduling
Morning therapy…
(10/14)
I can’t help but wish
That you were already dead
So I could mourn you.
(10/14)
Instead, I am trapped,
Caught grieving for the living
Who can’t care for me.
(10/14)
If you haunted me,
Then I could exorcise you
And begin to heal.
(10/14)
Instead, my heart bleeds
With every letter they send
And I can’t forget.
(10/22)
A new letter sent
In a familiar refrain
I thought I’d finished.
(10/27)
An attempt was made.
Returning to bed won out
And I’ve given up.
(10/28)
I can’t hide from it
Now that I’ve said it out loud.
Something has to change.
(11/6)
Pinning my hope on
An evening with my friends
Was unwise to do
(11/9)
I don’t want to sleep.
I want to avoid thinking
As long as I can.
(11/10)
All that happened once
Will repeat as we refuse
To learn from the past.
(11/14)
Am I paranoid
When I’m proven right again?
This brings me no joy.
(11/17)
I don’t want to say
That I was right to worry,
But I was so right.
(11/27)
I am so thankful
That I get to spend today
With people I love.
(12/2)
I am cratering.
I can’t afford to be sick,
But that’s not my choice.
(12/6)
I’m a goop monster.
All I want is some relief,
But goop’s all I get.
(12/9)
I need a minute.
Could everything please just stop
So I can catch up?
(12/12)
A five alarm fire
Landed in my lap and I’m
Already burned out.
(12/17)
It’s never ending.
There will always be more work
Than I can get done.
(12/??)
Time slips away as
I vanish into my rest.
Days have no meaning.
New Year, Same Problems
I went into my two and a half weeks of vacation thinking that, by the end of it, I’d have found my voice again. That, after enough rest, even interrupted by the holidays, I would find myself gravitating towards the blank page that used to speak to me. Instead, I spent the weekend before the end of my vacation thinking about what I’d do today, the day I’m writing and posting this, since I hadn’t written anything and all I really felt as a result of my time off was more doubt than ever. I came up with a couple good ideas related to that, but whatever they were vanished into the haze of my incredibly disrupted sleep schedule and the emotional lassitude that followed an entire afternoon and evening of fun and rewarding roleplaying with some people I’ve gotten closer to over the last few weeks. This morning, as I prepared for work, I had some kind of idea about directing my writing in such a way that it was more of a means of giving voice to specific ideas rather than just giving voice to my otherwise silent thoughts and feelings, but my exhaustion from not sleeping well and the busyness of my workplace has caused whatever distinction I came up with to slip from my mind. I am running around empty-handed as the hours of the day tick past and nothing I can think of feels like more than the usual complaining and navel-gazing I leaned on so heavily before my break. Which begs the question, did taking my break actually change anything? Did all that rest actually result in some amount of recovery? Eighteen days have passed and did I do anything other than pass through eighteen days of time?
Continue reading