Hell is anxiously checking for a response to a message you haven’t even typed yet, much less sent. It is having made a decision that you haven’t followed through on yet, essentially forcing you to make the decision over and over again as your mind picks at it. It is knowing that you have to keep making a decision every day for years if you want it to ever pay off, despite how far away that moment might be. It is knowing something and being unable to act on it, not now and probably not ever. It is all these moments of anixety and powerlessness and more besides. These days, I find myself steeped in such things: conversations I don’t know how to start, things I feel foolishly compelled to heavily qualify before sharing, decisions made long ago that I must stick to because nothing’s changed enough to reevaluate them, and recognitions of problems I can do nothing positive to resolve. All my other choices are worse than whatever I’ve picked, acting on anything will most-likely return bad results, and no amount of practice is going to make it any easier to start conversations I feel weird for having because I was trained to ask nothing of people and still struggle to ask for anything that might require other people to put in effort on my behalf. I hate being in these kinds of no-win-but-the-long-run situations and even my therapist agrees that my life is pretty much entirely made up of them these days. I just want problems that are easy to handle, a society that doesn’t feel like it is on the verge of collapsing, and the ability to ask things of people without feeling the need to preempt all the potential negative directions the conversation could go if I was misinterpreted.
Continue readingReflection
Fighting The Tide So Current Events Don’t Sweep Me Away
It’s all kind of a lot these days. The invasion of Minnesota, the planned invasion of multiple other cities, Trump posturing to stake a claim (likely violent) on Greenland, Trump’s government trying to manufacture consent for the invasion, the ever-present spectre of the Epstein Files looming over everything, and all of the patently obvious politically-motivation prosecutions of democratic-run states, democratic officials, and any of Trump’s perceived enemies. There’s just no end to it. I’ve been trying to rest, to get away from the constant churn of misery and awfulness long enough to unwind at least a tiny bit, and every time I go back to the internet or social media, I discover some fresh hell has been unleashed. More killings by cops or feds, increasingly violent rhetoric meant to justify the invasion of Greenland, cops and feds attacking protesters, some new neo-nazi has decided that it’s their turn in the spotlight, and so on. I can’t even remember everything that’s happened this week because it’s just so much all the time and I’m certain I didn’t even see all the most viral of this week’s events. The media environment is too fractured by all the big names joining Trump’s side or attempting to rehabilitate the bullshit he’s spewing as more and more of how we communicate and learn about the world beyond us gets consildated into the conservative grasp of a cadre of malignant billionaires. Our would-be leaders throw up their hands and repeat a bunch of out-of-touch bullshit about prices being too high and citizens being unable to afford groceries like it’s a mantra meant to summon donations or an additional term, all while people are yanked out of their homes and kidnapped out of their cars in the violent blitz that Trump has brought down on various cities in the US. And the pace seems to only be increasing as this desperate attempt to break Trump’s political opponents begins to turn the neutral parts of the country against him.
Continue readingAt The Heart Of My Desire To Run TTRPGs
As someone who has more than a passing interest in tabletop games, scholastic pursuits, and reflecting deeply on things, following Dr. Emily Friedman, a professor studying games with a focus on tabletop roleplaying games and the Actual Play media created using them, on social media was a no-brainer the instant I first came across her posts. I also wound up following a bunch of people she communicates with regularly for their insights on these interests of mine and, after the fall of Cohost, saw the tabletop scene of that website merge with the growing one on Bluesky, such that it isn’t uncommon for me to find someone proposing an interesting idea and them mutliple other people examining the idea or thought through different lenses. Lately, this has been especially important to me because Dr. Friedman has been writing more and more about how being a Game Master (or Dungeon Master) is a form of labor, how the labor of game-making happens falls so heavily on them, and what that means for the community that exists in the form of players and GM. It has given me a lot to think about as I reflect on what I want out of running games, why I care about games, and what am I actually getting out of all the time and effort I put into running games. This, itself, has sparked a lot of thought about the various games I’ve run over the years and the one lingering campaign I still have these days, even if we don’t play that often, and all of it came to a head when I read a follow-up post to the latest idea proposed by Dr. Friedman (that a specific corner of the hobby that is tabletop gaming is likely comprised almost entirely of poeple who did all the work in group work assignments to make sure it all got done right): RPGs are, in a sense, an unwelcome activity even while doing them.
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.
On The Otherside Of Sickness
After a year of burnout, physical exhaustion, worsening mental health, and pushing my limits as much as I could, my body gave up on me. I was taken down not by Covid, the flu, or even that time I had E. Coli. It was the common cold that laid me low and while I was able to keep working through most of it, I definitely did not like doing that. Couldn’t even let myself rest while I was so stuffed up I’d go into my bathroom to steam out my sinuses at least twice a day, just to keep things manageable (nothing else was sufficient). Capitalism and modern society demands that, and going into the office today (the day I’m writing this), regardless of whose health it risks, since I am not in such a comfortable position that I can afford to take more days off in-between the holidays (or I could, but then I’d need to work during the holidays). I managed to mitigate the worst of it by putting in a hard day’s work while I was only mildly feverish (or not feverish at all while the acetominophen was working) so I could work from home the subsequent two days, but it was still not great. This is the sickest I’ve been in years. Even that time I got the flu (made more mild by my vaccination) a few years back and spent two days semi-conscious on my couch watching the freely available seasons of Pokemon on Amazon until they somehow turned into the Emperor’s New Groove on repeat was less bad than this. At least that passed [this post is going up on day 14 of me being sick, though now my ears are clogged and my brain’s still a little fuzzy rather than the “standard” cold symptoms I still had when I wrote this]. At least the medicine I had available worked. This cold, though? Nothing really helped for long and my last five days have been an endless cycle of soothing mitigations as I dealt with one symptom at a time until I somehow got a decent couple hours of coherence and decongestion before it all came back.
Continue readingI’ve Had A Lot Of Time To Think Lately
I don’t normally have a bunch of time where I’m not actively engaged in doing something. That’s an active choice I’m making, generally speaking. I’ve spent my whole life managing my anxiety and depression by keeping myself constantly busy with one thing or another so there’s no room in my mind for them to occupy. Music or podcasts while I drive, cook, and do chores. Books or TV while I eat. Video games when I’m free. Endlessly scrolling social media when I need a minute to myself at work. I’m always doing something. It’s not like I’m afraid to spend time thinking. That’s kind of what this blog post is, and my daily journaling haiku habit, but even that isn’t letting my mind be at rest. It’s an active form of thinking, a directed mode of thought. I rarely leave myself the space for my mind to wander wherever it wants since even the usual “wandering” is directed by whatever activity I’m doing. While driving, though, there’s not much else to do. Watching the road, being aware of drivers, and so on takes some of my attention, but when you’re driving a thousand miles in sixteen hours, almost all of it on one long interstate route, you have a lot of time where there’s no cars or trucks near you where you can’t afford to let your eyes wander but your mind is free to stroll about as it pleases. I rarely come out of a long drive with much in the way of clarity so much as ideas to pick at some other time, but this time I woke up the morning after my drive with a thought nestled in my head that had bubbled to the surface as a result of the time I’d spent and coversations I’d had with my friends over the days preceeding the drive.
Continue readingI Cannot Sleep For The Imagined Sound Of Roof Work
My roof was mostly replaced today. There is a bit, the only stretch of roof actually visible to me, that remains only partly finished. It seems such a small thing to be left incomplete, like an afterthought or something forgotten rather than work deliberately left until later, but I am not privvy to the minds of these roofers. I could only begin to guess why anything happened the way it did today, and it would all be me grasping at figments of my imagination and incidental observations. I did not speak to them. They did not speak to me. I barely even observed their work, instead measuring their progress in the tromp of feet above me, the grinding hum of an air compressor somewhere out of sight, the staccato five-beat pattern of their nail guns, and the occasional appearance of a worker using my balcony as a staging ground for moving materials from the ground to the roof. This happened twice–my day interrupted by the expected knock at the door and an apologetic smile from a man who probably would have felt more comfortable climbing a ladder to use my balcony rather than being told to move through the apartment building, and I still do not understand why it had to happen this way. I didn’t mind the interruption. It wasn’t like I was doing any deep or focused work, distracted as I was by the constant noise of their activity and the rattle of my apartment building as an unknown number of men walked across my roof. It was just odd, this strange set of circumstances that led to me being home all day and my brief, wordless interactions with this poor, uncomfortable roofer. None of my neighbors interracted with the roofers at all. Only me. And even then, all I did was open a door for the roofer and then lock it behind him once he was finished passing sheets of plywood up to his coworkers. It was as distant a remove as could be possible when your roof is being replaced and your balcony is needed as a halfway point for passing materials up.
Continue readingMixed Emotions About Doing Different Activities Instead Of Final Fantasy 14
Not playing Final Fantasy 14 for a few days has been a weird experience. I wrote Monday’s post about taking a break from FF14 before I actually put it into effect. I stayed up pretty late on Sunday night to wrap up the Dawntrail expansion and solidified my decision to take a break betwen then and writing my blog post the following day during breaks at work. Then I left work early so I could participate in my Monday night Ultimate raid practice, spent a few hours making alternate characters on my now-open server to combat my anxiety, spent a few hours last night working on the final raid in the Alexander Savage raid series my group is doing, and then spent another hour and a half after that hanging out online and unlocking an activity that I was planning to do tonight. I haven’t really played all that much less than normal, at least looking at it on the basis of daily participation. I did, however, stop playing FF14 every night with time enough to still do other things before bed, which I didn’t used to do. And tonight I’m not actually doing the activity I unlocked because I was at work until my personal cut-off time (8:30pm, a time I will not work past except in the case of emergencies) and had to do my grocery shopping after that because my car is going to be trapped in my apartment’s underground garage for a few days while the parking lot is filled up by the roofing company that will be spending the next few days replacing the rooves of my apartment building and the one next door that shares a parking lot. So I got home super late, ate dinner late, showered late, and was too miserable and tired to want to hop online for thirty minutes or whatever. So I’m writing this instead.
Continue readingAll Of This To Say…
Growing up, in the simplified lessons of conservative Catholicism and childhood emotional grow, I was taught that love and hate are opposites. That they’re so opposed they cannot exist together such that, should you feel love for something, you are incapable of actually hating it, or if you burn with hatred for something, you are incapable of loving it. This was taught to me again and again as I dealt with my abusive elder brother and neglectful parents, alongside the lesson that of course I loved my family since anything less would be some kind of sin or moral failing on my part (these are equivalent in the version of Catholicism I was taught as a child), and since I had little access to people outside of my family thanks to being homeschooled, I didn’t learn any different until high school when I finally got out from under my parents’ teaching and learned from people who had different ideas and understandings of the world around us. There, as I began to develop emotionally and learn things about myself and others, I learned that the opposite of love wasn’t hate but a lack of care or concern. In fact, love and hate were two sides of the same coin, emotions so intense that they couldn’t help but overlap in ways big and small that could not only lead to some incredible opportunities for change and grace (since this was still a Catholic high school and everything was taught as close to a religious framing as possible) but also to some of the most toxic and horrible relationships that humanity had to offer (I was, after all, finally learning enough to know that my life at home was not normal or good). This mixture of emotions contributes to codependent relationships, manipulation, many different forms of abuse, and an inability to escape these things because, culturally, US society places a huge degree of importance on the power of love to overcome and redeem those who ahve hurt us.
Continue reading