It’s been a rough week. Had a mid-week Final Fantasy 14 roleplay wrestling event in the middle of the week (and I’m behind on my blog posts, so this is written less than a week ahead) and that coming so soon after the last one (which was on the Saturday prior) left me with little evening space for much else. Doubly-so considering how sick I’ve felt the last couple days, how worn out I am from work and not feeling well, and how much of a struggle work has been despite having a long weekend just prior to it. I’ve been so tired that I haven’t had the energy to do much in-game other than what my friends are doing and I’ve barely managed even that. I probably should be more focused on the homework tasks I’ve assigned myself in the hopes of having my relic weapon ready to go when the new expansion drops in just under three weeks (as of writing this and two as of posting it), but I just have not had the energy in me to push forward on the grind. Heck, I haven’t even played much of anything else, either. I’ve just… messed around a bit in Pokopia and spun my wheels on an alt in Final Fantasy 14. And now, even as I try to think about doing the work I genuinely want to do in order to progress on my relic weapon, I find myself wanting to just… not do it. I don’t even want to do the video editing I’ve got lined up from that last wrestling show, despite how much I’ve come to enjoy it. I just… don’t have the focus right now.
Continue readingexhaustion
Cursing What I Once Would Have Called A Blessing
Today, I returned from a very long weekend. Five whole days off in a row, thanks to a combination of a holiday and two days of PTO to give myself as much of a break as I can (barely) afford to. I took it because I was unceremoniously told early in the week that my assistance was not needed and rather than wait around until that inevitably proved to be false (as it always has been), I decided to take some time off and let my coworkers deal with their own problems for once. I was right, of course. They realized they needed me a couple hours later, but my vacation time was already submitted and I wasn’t going to rescind it, so they were shit out of luck. Especially because my PTO meant I wasn’t going to do even a minute of overtime on any day last week and wound up leaving quite early both days. It was really nice. It felt great to leave the building while the sun was still up, while the air was still warm, and while there was still enough of an evening left for me to feel like I could do more than one thing before I was forced to give in to my overwhelming exhuastion. It was nice to sleep in as late as I wanted five days in a row. I didn’t sleep for less than seven hours even once in all of that and got about eight hours three times in that period. It was an unprecedented amount of rest. And was largely spoiled by a bad bout of tonsil stones that kept me feeling like I was choking when I tried to sleep last night and then further spoiled by coming in to work and realizing that a five day weekend wasn’t enough to fix my burnout.
Continue readingIncreasingly Bitter Reflections Of An Exhausted Mind
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 readingA 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 readingDaylight Saving Time Strikes Again
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 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 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.
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