I’m having one of those occasional periods where I don’t feel my mental health is in a great place. I’m feeling a bit stressed out (for no specific reason), I’ve been feeling wracked by anxiety before I go to sleep for the last few nights and I find myself occasionally lapsing into depressed feelings during the day, particularly if I stay in working for the whole day.
I think part of the cause is the working from home aspect. It may sound like a dream situation to be able to sit in your pants all day every day tapping away at a computer without fear of interruption from man or beast (well, occasionally from beast if I hear the rats causing mischief in the other room) but in actuality, it’s a ticket to Stir Crazy-Town, and thus every so often I just feel the need to get out of the flat and go work at the coffee shop or something. Somewhere. Anywhere but here.
It’s an underacknowledged aspect of working from home, this stir crazy business. And I think it’s particularly apparent if you live in a fairly small environment such as a flat. In our flat, my study is just one wall away from the bedroom, which in turn is just one wall away from the living room. The temptation is always there to just wander into the living room, flop down on the sofa and stare at the TV for a few hours — or, on particularly bad days, to just go back and lie in bed for a bit. But, as I’ve established pretty firmly for myself, that’s a terrible idea, because if I don’t get up as soon as I wake up, I’ll fall asleep, wake up five minutes before I need to work and make the whole anxiety-depression-stress thing a whole lot worse.
Going out to work at the coffee shop, like I did today, helps largely from the “change of scenery” aspect, and also helps remove a lot of distractions from the immediate vicinity. While distractions can sometimes be helpful motivators — “I’ll do this, then reward myself with [distraction]” — they can also be… well, distractions. You know how it is. Today I felt like I got a lot more done than usual for sitting down, focusing and concentrating on what I was doing, even if sitting on one of Costa’s arse-numbing chairs for most of the day hunched over my laptop isn’t quite as comfortable as working on the big screen of my Mac in my rapidly-disintegrating-but-still-quite-comfy office chair. But at least I can break to get a coffee or a cake or a sandwich when I want to. (I know I can do this at home, too. But I have to make them myself.)
It doesn’t really help that I feel like I have a lot on my plate at the moment. There’s a lot of games I need to cover, and my inbox is full to bursting every day with PR pitch after PR pitch that I just don’t have time to contemplate in the depth they deserve. Pro-tip to anyone eyeing a career in the games journalism biz: reviewing games is the worst part of the job, despite the freebies. Review commitments make it very difficult to play the things you want to play, and in many cases they even make it difficult to explore the review titles in as much depth as you want. At the same time, I feel it is important to give consideration to a lot of the titles I end up reviewing, as many of them are often dismissed outright or treated somewhat unfairly by other critics, so it’s a tough balancing act at times.
Oh, and the air quality around here is shit at the minute thanks to a combination of a Saudi Arabian dust storm (apparently) and a big fire just down the road from us earlier today. This isn’t helping me recover from the plague that laid me low recently.
I don’t know. I’m just having a complain. Things aren’t too bad really, I guess. They’ve certainly been worse. Like I say, it’s just one of those times when my mental health is getting the better of me. I should probably just go sit in bed and play Steins;Gate until I fall asleep or something. That sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?
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Do you still swim or gym regularly? A break for some exercise would help stretch the muscles, boost the bloodflow to the brain and get some seratonin swirling in there too. And indoor exercise gets you out of the pollution. Also, everyone I know who works from home swears blind that having a schedule and sticking to it is the only way to cope – rules like no FB during working hours or carrot & stick rewards will help, but the Stir Crazy builds until you rebel.
Now, if only I could take my own advice…
Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, but the above advice is from sitting listening to a medical professional giving advice to someone in a similar situation to you. Do with it as you will.
I was set to swim and gym regularly, but the first day I started a new routine I was laid low with the worst flu I’ve had for years, and I’m still not 100% over it now. Once I feel better, I’ll get back into it.
I remember when I was younger and had the dream of “playing games for a living.” Then I realized you actually had to do a lot of work, and it took a lot of fun out of it, and… I dunno know anymore. Not that I don’t like writing still, little as I do it, but it’s not the career I’d choose to go with nowadays. Drawing, on the other hand…
Hope you get to rest (body and mind) soon. It sucks when anxiety takes hold, especially when it effects your work. But I know you can push through. 🙂
Don’t get me wrong, I still like writing. I just prefer the writing when I get to cut loose, rather than the writing I’m a bit more “obliged” to do. 🙂
Oh I knooooowwwwww! Sorry that’s Sybill from ‘Fawlty Towers’ popping in. But the other things you could do at home always seem to get in the way of what you really mean to do. It’s the same with painting – I can plan the painting in my mind totally, but until I actually pick up the brush and lay in the background it isn’t an artwork. And there’s so many things that I let get in the way.
And on the number of games to review issue – sheeesh – you should see my file full of pages of game notes – hundreds of them. And I only seem to manage reviewing 1 – 3 a week – so slack! 🙁
I know your pain quite well, sir. My workspace, unfortunately, is IN the bedroom. It used to be downstairs, but particularly brutal summer/winter required relocating it to the room with better climate control. But yeah, the stir-craziness really gets to me. And sadly, with my laptop screen currently busted, I don’t even have the luxury of going to do work at Panera or Starbucks or wherever. Meh.
Thankfully, I have a new desk chair actually weight-rated to handle my big self and a new desk incoming via Amazon tomorrow. So that’s fun.
(Actually, I really AM excited about the desk and chair. And I LOVE trips to Staples and Office Max. I think I might have an office supply fetish. Send help.)