2343: No Sleep

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I like sleeping. It is pleasant. Sometimes I like it a bit too much and do it for too long.

I also find sleeping one of the most frustrating things in the world, particularly as it’s something you have to do.

Why do I find something so pleasant and relaxing so frustrating, though? Well, it’s because I don’t really know how to do it.

I’m serious! To be honest, I doubt anyone really knows how they fall asleep; it’s a biological function so it just sort of happens. And yet, paradoxically, it’s the awareness that I don’t know how to make myself actually fall asleep that often keeps me awake at night.

The main trouble I have is anxiety-related. When I’m in a situation where there are no other sources of stimulation (sound, light, pictures, conversation) my brain doesn’t think “ooh, nice, a bit of quiet, let’s shut down for a bit rather than processing all this multi-sensory information”. No; instead, my brain — and indeed, I imagine, the brain of anyone who suffers with anxiety — decides that yes, now would be a really good time to think about each and every one of the things that have upset you, made you sad, made you angry, frustrated you or that are worrying you.

Sometimes these thoughts come one at a time, one leading into another through a twisted chain of logic that doesn’t make any sort of rational sense — but then anxiety is irrational for the most part, anyway.

Sometimes they come all at once and collapse in a big heap, worries and anxieties from disparate sources all intermingling into one horrible mess that quickens the breathing, sets the pulse to racing and makes the body feel for all intents and purposes that now might be a good time to run away.

From what, though? Sadly, you can’t outrun your own brain, so quite where the physiological reaction comes from I can’t be sure, but it’s certainly unpleasant. More to the point, this then feeds into the growing anxiety I have that I want to get to sleep and shut all these unwelcome thoughts out, but I can’t. And then the cycle begins anew until I either finally fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion or decide to get up and do something until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, as happened last night, when for reasons beyond my ken I was unable to get even close to sleep before 6am, which is not particularly conducive to a productive and/or healthy lifestyle.

I have certain thoughts that I always come back to when I’m feeling anxious, and I can’t avoid them. These tend to be experiences that I found traumatic or unpleasant. Objectively speaking, they weren’t necessarily actually traumatic in the sense of, say, injury or bereavement, but they’re experiences that I had to go through that I didn’t want to go through.

By far the most common is a twisted memory of the day I got forced out of my (admittedly horrible and shit, albeit quite well-paid) job at energy company SSE last February. I had endured a considerable period of workplace bullying from my immediate team leader and overall line manager, and they eventually managed to shove me out of the door after a complete mockery of a meeting in which I was invited to plead my case futilely while no-one paid any attention whatsoever. The meeting concluded with me shouting “Fuck you!” in the face of the line manager who had given me the most grief, followed by me storming out, more angry than I think I’ve ever been in my life.

The memory is twisted, though; when I flash back to it in the depths of anxiety-induced insomnia, that’s not what happens. I don’t stop with releasing the tension by shouting. Sometimes I throw the phone on the table at someone. Sometimes I fling my chair across the room. Sometimes I pick up the table and throw it at the people sitting across from me with stern yet smug expressions on their faces. Sometimes I slam the door so hard when I leave the cramped meeting room that it falls off its hinges. And sometimes I deliberately vandalise the rest of the offices on the way out in an attempt to somehow release the rage that has been boiling inside me; to give it physical form; to get it out of me.

I can’t quite tell if these thoughts are things I wish I’d done on that horrible day or things that I worry I might have done if I’d taken the safeties off a bit more. I suppose it doesn’t really matter either way; you can’t go back and do things differently, however much you might like to, so the brain takes solace in fantasy. In its own way, the traumatic images are cathartic, but at the same time they induce such a state of heightened tension and anxiety in my whole body that, if I allow my thought process to get into that meeting room at all, I know that I’m not going to be able to calm down for a good few hours unless I have something — anything — to quickly and immediately distract me from it. In other words, if I allow my anxious thoughts to run away with me and end up, as they inevitably do if I leave them unchecked, in that horrible situation, I know I’m not going to be getting any sleep.

Because even if I successfully banish the most unpleasant of the thoughts, my brain is still keenly aware that I don’t know how to shut it down properly. Oh for an “off” switch.

2334: Another Blog on Depression, and How Unemployment Fits In

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My good friend Dan wrote this excellent post on depression the other day, initially as an email-based TinyLetter, and subsequently as a blog post to be more widely shared.

It struck a chord with me. My experiences over the years haven’t been anything near as traumatic as what Dan has dealt with, but a lot of the things he describes in his piece are very familiar indeed.

Here is the major issue with depression… it’s a dirty fucking liar. When I’m laid out on my bed (not in it, that requires movement) the black dog learns to speak. It doesn’t even do so with a pleasant cartoon voice, it’s one laced with bile and venom; a deep booming voice that rattles my core. Living with that constant voice is miserable. The black dog tells me that I’m no good at anything; that I’m a terrible parent; that nobody loves or appreciates me. It’s no use arguing with him at these times because his droning is relentless.

What makes it worse is that in every positive message I see around me, I’m left with a residue of self hatred. A friend of mine lands a great freelance writing position, that’s great… the black dog chews my ankle and says “you could have done that, but you didn’t because you’re useless. To be honest, you probably wouldn’t have even got the chance. Waste of space.”

Hoo, do I ever know this feeling. Part of it is a sense of impostor syndrome: the feeling that you’ll never be quite as good at a thing you actually should be quite confident in as other people. The rest of it is simply a crippling sense of self-doubt and a lack of general self-confidence.

Unemployment really doesn’t help with this. The worst thing about unemployment isn’t the lack of money, though that certainly doesn’t help and leads to a lot of worries and stress that can be otherwise avoided. No, the worst thing about unemployment is how it gradually eats away at your confidence, convincing you more and more each day that you’re a worthless human being, that no-one will ever want you, that your skills are useless.

This is about where I am at the moment. I’ve been spamming out job applications for the past week or so, forgoing my usual approach of taking hours over a single application and then getting upset and depressed when it comes back as a rejection. While I know it’s pretty much a crapshoot and random chance plays as much of a role as your actual talent for a position, it’s still extremely demoralising the longer it goes on for. As I browse through lists of available jobs, I find myself wondering if I’m able to do them, even entry-level menial jobs. Even with jobs I know that I could do, like anything involving IT, I find myself hesitating over them because I don’t feel confident that I’d be able to get my skills and enthusiasm across. Not having any particularly relevant qualifications or experience for the fields I’m interested in is a problem, too: my qualifications all relate to teaching, which theoretically could transfer to some sort of training position, but for stuff like IT the only thing I have to offer is my innate knowledge. That knowledge is solid, secure and fairly comprehensive, but not having a piece of paper to prove I have any of that knowledge leads to a constant sense of anxiety and inadequacy.

I hate this feeling. And I know all I have to do is keep plugging away in the hope that something good happens, and I’ll almost certainly feel better once I have some regular money rolling in again. In the meantime, though, it’s hard not to feel like a worthless, useless waste of space — even though I know that I’m not. That ol’ Black Dog just keeps telling me that I am, and every day it gets harder and harder to reject his evaluation.

2269: Video Games (Might Have) Saved My Life

I thought about writing about this yesterday, but didn’t; I was feeling rather emotional about it and thus figured it probably wasn’t the best idea to spew out an ill-considered rant on such a sensitive subject. It’s still a delicate subject, of course, but I feel a bit more mentally prepared to tackle it and attempt to do it justice today.

This will doubtless be difficult to write, so bear with me while I inevitably ramble around the point. It will probably also be quite difficult to read, particularly if you know me quite well… but, again, bear with me — hopefully you’ll come away with a better understanding of some of the things I feel.

All right, preamble over: let’s begin.

Yesterday, when I first thought about writing this piece, I was angry. I got suddenly very angry about something I’ve been angry about before, and have been doing my best to not be as bothered by: the ongoing “culture war” that has all but destroyed rational, reasonable discussion of popular media — particularly gaming — through public social channels such as Twitter, as well as all but destroying any credibility, inclusiveness and, in many cases, entertainment value the mainstream video games press had.

It wasn’t really a specific event that made me feel angry; it was more a buildup of tension that just needed to be released. Recent controversies over the new Baldur’s Gate expansion, the press and “social justice” types outright lying about why people didn’t like it, needless outrage over Tracer’s butt in Blizzard’s Overwatch, the ever-present undercurrent of the morally superior looking down on people who are into video games and branding them misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, cis white heterosexual male scum… all of it was getting on top of me, even though a lot of it didn’t even directly concern me and the games I’m into. But the controversies still resonated with me, since I’ve also seen very similar nonsense aimed at the games I am into.

When I get angry about something, after the fact I often like to take a moment to reflect on exactly why I got so angry — why is that thing in particular so important to me that it had such a powerful emotional effect on me? Video games are dumb timewasters, aren’t they? Why should I care so much what some people I’d never want to hang out with at parties (not that I want to hang out with anyone at parties save for people who want to join me in another room and play computer games all night) think of the things I enjoy? Why do I feel compelled to continually defend my hobby and this medium from people who desire nothing more than to tear it down and remake it in the way they think it should be — because make no mistake, the loudest critics like this aren’t after true “diversity” or “inclusion” since they, in many cases, simply cannot accept the existence of material they deem “problematic”, nor can they understand that some people enjoy said “problematic” material and don’t want to be called sex pests/paedophiles/misogynists/assholes simply for the things they happen to be into. Why?

Well, “video games are important to me” is the simple answer. And I could leave it at that. But I’m not going to: I’m going to explain exactly why video games are important to me.

Growing up, I was a bit of an outcast. I was shy, I lacked confidence, I didn’t know how to talk to people. I remember on my first day at secondary school I turned to Matthew, one of my few friends from primary school and, with genuine fear in my eyes, whispered to him that I “couldn’t remember how to make friends”, which was putting me at something of a conversational impasse with Murray, the boy I had been sat next to in our tutor room. (Murray turned out to be a massive bullying twat, whom I finally punched in the face just as the headmaster was walking around the corner one memorable lunchtime; I escaped truly serious punishment on the grounds that he most certainly had had it coming for a very long time indeed.)

Growing up, I wasn’t into sports. I was into stuff that other people weren’t into. I played the piano. I played computer games. I wrote stories. (All of these are things I still do.) These were things that I learned I enjoyed at a very young age, so I have clung onto them with all my might for my whole life — and I’ve always known when someone would turn out to be a true friend, because they’d be into at least one of those things, and preferably more than one of them. Indeed, when I did eventually successfully remember how to make friends at secondary school, the group of friends I surrounded myself with were all a little like me to varying degrees — I was by far the most awkward and nerdy of them, but we all had our shared interest in video games which we felt like other people didn’t really get the appeal of.

When the time came for me to go to university, I was terrified at the prospect of having to deal with new people and even live with them. Fortunately, I found myself living with a flat full of thoroughly decent people who tended to be remarkably understanding of my quirks. There were still occasions when what I now recognise as social anxiety would get the better of me, and I’d want nothing more than to lock myself away and escape into the wonderful worlds and stories gaming let me explore and be a part of.

I continued my love of video games throughout my adult life. They always served as something comforting to me: after a challenging day at university, games were there to help me relax. After a difficult day working in teaching, games were there to help me vent my stress. After a day of chaotic retail, games were there to help me chill out and forget about the previous eight hours. And after a day where everything felt like it had gone wrong, games were there to save me.

Those who have been reading this blog for a while will know that I’ve been through a few difficult periods over the last six years in particular. The most notable of these was in 2010, when my first wife and I parted ways and I was left unemployed, with no money and facing the prospect of having to move back home — something which I found mortifyingly embarrassing for a man of my age who had qualifications (and a failed/abandoned career based on those qualifications).

As time passed, I sank deeper and deeper into a very dark depression indeed. There were days when I was completely unable to function normally. I had a long period where I didn’t — couldn’t — get up until about 5 in the afternoon, which would always make me feel terrible when I’d stagger, unkempt, to the shop across the road from my flat and the guy with the smelly armpits behind the counter would ask “how my day had been”.

Everything felt like it had gone wrong; I felt like I had completely failed at life. I felt like I had made all the wrong choices, and that there was no way out of the situation in which I found myself. And so my thoughts turned, as do those of many people in a similar situation, I’m sure, to whether or not this world really needed me in it any more.

Once that initial floodgate bursts and you start wondering such things, all manner of unwelcome thoughts start coming to the fore. Would it hurt? What’s it like to die? If I did die, who would find me? Would anyone find me? Should I tell someone I’m feeling this way? Should I tell someone I’m going to kill myself? If I do, do I actually want them to stop me?

More often than not, these strings of thoughts would cause my brain to get into a bit of a feedback loop and I’d end up eventually just passing out from exhaustion, often after having had a spectacularly undignified cry and/or rage about the whole thing. But so long as the situation remained, the thoughts wouldn’t go away entirely. I’d picture different ways of how I might do it, and what would happen once the deed had been done and someone found me — or what would happen if no-one found me.

To cut a long story short, I pushed through all that — more on how in a moment — and, for a while, things started to look up, and I started to think that I might have finally gotten myself into a situation where I could be happy and content, looking forward to the future rather than dreading it.

That didn’t happen. The unceremonious loss of my job at USgamer for vague (and, frankly, probably spurious) reasons, followed by the horrendous way in which subsequent employer energy company SSE (or, more specifically, my immediate managers) treated me while I worked for them — yes, I am naming and shaming here, because it fucked me right up, and I am still bitter about it to such a degree that I often have flashbacks to my particularly horrible last day — caused me to once more sink into an awful pit of depression, and it wasn’t any easier this time around, either.

Those thoughts of not being sure if I wanted to be part of this world any more started to come back. Familiar images of me holding a gun to my head came around; questions over what would happen if I followed through on these thoughts started to rise up once more.

And yet, even though I wouldn’t describe myself as being out of the worst of it even now, I never once harmed myself, let alone made an attempt on my own life. Even in my darkest moments, I was always pulled back from the edge of that particular precipice.

Why? Two reasons, the first of which is the one I imagine most people in a similar situation quote: awareness of the few people in the world who do care about you, and what it would do to them if you were to do something as drastic as killing yourself.

The second is video games.

I’m not joking. A big part of why I am still on this planet is because of video games. And it’s hard to explain exactly why, because there are a myriad of reasons I feel this way, but it is absolutely true, as ridiculous as it might sound.

Games have always been important to me. But over the last few years in particular — since about 2010 or so — I feel like I’ve really found the niche of games that interest and excite me, along with a group of publishers and developers who consistently and regularly put out things that keep me enthralled for hours on end. These games engage my emotions and draw me in with their stories and characterisation; these games make me feel like I can be someone that I’m not; these games put me in a situation where, while there might be problems and strife, there’s always a way to deal with it, however challenging.

As I became more and more conscious of how I felt about these games, I started “stockpiling” — picking up games that I had no real intention of playing immediately, but which I wanted to add to my collection while they were still reasonably readily available. I also started re-acquiring games that I had previously owned that had made me feel the same way. And, one by one, I’d work my way through them, constantly finding new and enjoyable experiences to discover — even where, in many cases, said experiences weren’t received particularly well by critics.

And here’s how games saved me: the knowledge that in every DVD case on my bookshelf there is a new experience to be had; a new world to explore; new characters to fall in love with — that’s the one thing that, every time, pulls me back from the brink of doing something drastic, however dark the situation in which I find myself might be, and however persistent those horrible thoughts in my head might be. I have literally had the thought “I can’t die until I’ve played all the Neptunia games”. I have literally had the thought “I’m not going anywhere until I’ve played all the Ateliers“. And so on and so on; so much do I value these experiences — and the ability to talk and enthuse about them with those people I know who do respect my interests, even if they don’t share them — that I can’t bring myself to even hurt myself, let alone make an attempt on my own life.

You may think this is a dumb reason to keep living. You may think that this is unhealthy. You may think that there are more deep-seated problems here (and you’d be right). But trust me when I say: when even a tiny part of your brain starts considering whether or not you’re really needed in this plane of existence any more, the part of you that is still concerned with self-preservation will cling on to any thing — however dumb it might be — that will help you survive.

For me, that thing is video games, and to my reckoning they’ve saved me from three particularly bad periods in my life: the nervous breakdown that convinced me once and for all that no, classroom teaching was not the career for me; my first wife and I parting ways; and my recent employment woes.

Hopefully it is now clear to you, dear reader, how important video games are to me. And, bearing in mind how important they are to me, can you perhaps understand how frustrating and upsetting it is to me when a needless, pointless cultural war comes stomping all over them — with the games that resonate with me the most inevitably being the ones that come under the heaviest fire from some of the most obnoxious people on the Internet?

Video games — as they are today, regardless of how “problematic” or whatever other bullshit adjectives you want to apply to them — saved my life. So you damn well better believe I will fight back with all my might against anyone who wants to change them and the culture surrounding them for the worse.

Video games saved my life. Thank you, video games — and everyone who makes them.

(Here’s the source for the awesome image the header pic is based on, if you were curious.)

2227: Filling the Days

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Anyone who has been out of work will know how frustrating it is to be in that “waiting” period while you have some applications out and no idea whether or not you’re going to hear back from any of them. It seems that most companies these days use the catch-all get-out clause of there being a “very high volume of applications”, thus absolving themselves of any responsibility for actually delivering an answer to unsuccessful applicants — or even acknowledging them at all, in some cases. (I know that rationally speaking there probably is a very high volume of applications and it would be very difficult to respond to all of them, but it’s still fucking rude.)

As I noted a while ago, I’ve been trying my best to fill my days while this waiting is going on. I’ve been looking for jobs in various fields — preferably those I can perform a bit more flexibly and/or from home — and applying to a few as well as continuing with the trickle of regular-ish freelance work I’ve been undertaking, but doing that all day every day is a sure-fire recipe for wanting to fall asleep and not wake up again.

So there have been a number of ways I’ve been keeping occupied. There’s video games, of course, but those aren’t especially “productive”, though they do provide useful fodder for writing about various topics, which is handy, as well as something I can talk about with people. That’s something that’s actually quite important, particularly when you’re stuck at home: it’s a tremendously awkward position to find yourself in when you’re at a social occasion and you realise you have literally nothing of note to contribute to any conversation. (As a socially anxious person, I feel like this most of the time, so it’s best not to give myself any actual ammunition to back this up.)

I’ve been continuing to work on my book. I figured out that my writing software Scrivener has a “target” option with exciting progress bars that fill up for both your complete project and your session target, so you can have that RPG-like experience of filling bars and feeling all happy and satisfied when they’re full. I’m not yet sure what a reasonable target for each session is — I can knock out 1,500 words in one sitting without too much difficulty, but that doesn’t feel like very much and I kind of want to try and keep my momentum going without burning myself out. I’m sure I’ll pin down a suitable target; perhaps I’ll increase it little by little from 1,500 with each session and see what feels comfortable. As for the book itself, recommendations online seem to suggest a length of 80-100k words is a suitable length, so I’m aiming at the lower end of that spectrum as a minimum target; since I’m a verbose sort of chap, that leaves me some leeway to go over, whereas if I aimed specifically for 100k as a minimum, I’d have to excise big chunks to get the word count down, which is something I don’t like doing; every word is sacred, or something.

Currently, the project is at 21,000 words or so, which is quite good going — or about a quarter of the way through, if you want to look at it another way. I’m enjoying getting back into the swing of things; while I write on this blog every day and have even indulged in some creative writing on here on several occasions, simply sitting down and writing a story for the sake of writing a story rather than “because oh shit I need a blog post for today” is an enjoyable experience that stimulates my already rather overactive imagination; I’ll probably write more about how I feel while I’m writing on another occasion, as I think it’s an interesting discussion.

Aside from this, I have some other things to be getting on with, too: there’s a second edition of the Digitally Downloaded magazine in the works, and I have Japanese studies to be getting on with. Or indeed restarting to refresh my memory, since it’s been a little while since I last engaged with them. I am pleasantly surprised how much hiragana have stayed with me since my last dedicated effort to learn, though; my next hurdle — and the one that tends to stall me each time — is katakana, but I’m sure with a bit of effort I’ll be able to conquer it. Then I can get depressed at knowing I’ll never, ever know all the kanji.

Anyway. That’s how I’m filling my days at the moment. While none of this is making me any money, sadly, a few of these things do at least have the potential to lead somewhere in the future. Perhaps my book will sell. Perhaps I’ll learn enough Japanese to be able to do something with it. Perhaps the magazine will take off and we’ll be able to start charging for it. Who knows? While I have this time, it’s worth exploring these things rather than getting depressed about the fact that jobs in the traditional sense seem to be extremely, frustratingly, infuriatingly difficult to come by these days, particularly when you yourself aren’t really sure what you’re qualified and/or skilled enough to do…

2217: When You Have No Occupation, You Should Stay Occupied

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One of the things that is most difficult about being out of work is keeping yourself occupied without falling into unproductive routines. It would be extremely easy to not bother doing anything useful at all each and every day, treating the time “off” as a kind of holiday, watching television, playing games, listening to the radio or falling into a deep, existential depression while staring at the ceiling of one’s bedroom. I say it is extremely easy to do these things because I have done all these things while out of work at various points. Sometimes you need that time to yourself, but unfortunately, said time to yourself doesn’t pay the bills.

Doing nothing but hunting for jobs isn’t necessarily the most productive course of action either, though. Job-hunting is an enormously demoralising experience, since by its very definition you’re going to be faced with more inexplicable rejection than acceptance in most cases. At other times, you’ll find yourself faced with an opportunity that just doesn’t seem quite right, but which you feel guilty turning down because you need work. (I say this having turned down two opportunities recently that didn’t feel right at all. Like, a big ol’ “bad feeling in the guy” not right at all.) That can be exhausting, and the toll it takes on your mental faculties can have an adverse effect on your subsequent attempts to find work as you lose patience with it and get tempted to apply to any old thing on the off-chance someone will find you in any way employable.

Therefore, it’s important to find other ways to occupy yourself, and to divide your days up into various things that, if they’re not necessarily directly productive, they at least provide you with the opportunity to feel like you’ve accomplished something. Indulging in a creative project, learning something new, practising your skills in something — all of these things are good ways to spend your time and if you’re out of work, it’s an ideal opportunity to spend some of those empty hours doing them.

You’ll notice that I’m writing this and using the word “you” a lot, as if I’m giving advice to someone else. Really, I’m giving advice to myself, to be perfectly honest, since as previously noted, I find it much too easy to sink into depression and just want to comfort myself with things that don’t require too much in the way of effort. But that way leads further into bad situations, so from tomorrow, I’m going to make a particular effort to spend a bit of time each day doing something that makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. I don’t think I’m going to go so far as to schedule what I should do when — not for the moment, anyway, though that has worked for me in the past — but I am going to ensure that I do at least one thing every day for a minimum of an hour that leaves me feeling satisfied that I’m not completely wasting my time.

Activities that spring immediately to mind to accomplish this include music practice, music composition, creative writing (both fiction and non-fiction — I have a number of ideas for both), Japanese language studies, developing my computer skills (particularly with regard to things like programming and/or web design), working on the next edition of the magazine I shared with you a while back and making more gaming videos. That should keep me busy on a fairly regular basis; some of those things may even lead to further actual paying opportunities of various descriptions in the future, if not immediately.

Mostly they’re attempts to keep myself occupied and feeling positive. I feel I’m at a particularly low ebb right now, if that wasn’t already abundantly clear from my recent entries, and I want to feel like I’m making the best of a bad situation rather than wallowing in sadness. It won’t be easy, but I feel it’s probably the best way to approach what I’m dealing with at the moment.

Wish me luck.

2205: No End in Sight

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Regular readers will know that I’m going through a bit of a Rough Patch at the minute, to say the least. Tonight it’s hitting me particularly hard, for various reasons that I shan’t go into in detail. I wanted to talk a little more generally, as I find this often helps me sort things out in my mind a bit.

The thing that’s making me feel particularly bleak right now is that it feels like there’s no end in sight for this Rough Patch. I don’t know how to resolve it; I don’t know how to “fix” it. I feel like I’ve messed up — not once, not twice, but repeatedly, and I’m now reaping the anti-rewards that are the consequence of all the things I’ve done wrong in my life, all the poor choices I’ve made.

For sure, I know that I have made plenty of poor choices along the way, but many of them didn’t seem like it at the time — and rationally speaking, I also know that I’m not the only one to blame for my current situation. The blame for that can be laid at the feet of a wide variety of people, including me, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with — particularly as many of the non-me people that I blame for this situation are essentially “untouchable” despite me wanting nothing more than to at the very least yell at them and, were I feeling particularly feisty that day, slug them one right in the face.

Mostly I’m just frustrated because I’m not sure I deserve this. I feel like I have plenty to offer the world, and no way of making it clear to everyone that I matter, that I have value. I have friends and family, sure — both local and far-away — and that knowledge, to an extent, takes care of part of my emotional well-being, but it doesn’t pay the bills, and it doesn’t give me a sense of satisfaction that I am, in any way, making the most of my existence. Were I to drop dead tomorrow, 1) would anyone notice? and 2) would I be remembered for anything particularly worthwhile? Again, rationally speaking, I know the answer to both of those questions is probably “yes” — and I’m not planning on dropping dead tomorrow — but it’s difficult to remember that sometimes when you find yourself struggling to stay afloat.

I really don’t know what to do any more. For every bit of progress I feel like I make, I suffer some sort of setback. I end up not going anywhere — and, in the worst case, going backwards. When I left university, I was a teacher earning over £25k a year. Later, I had my dream job of writing about games for slightly less than that. Now I’m looking at retail jobs with wages of a relative pittance in comparison, on the grounds that 1) I feel like I can do them and 2) that’s all I feel like I can convince prospective employers I’m good for. (Not that there’s anything wrong with retail, obviously; it just feels like all that education was a bit of a waste, is all.)

I’ll figure something out. Bad things have happened to me before and I made it through. And on those past occasions, it felt like I was drowning in black tar, with no means of escape visible in any direction — and yet I still did. I have no reason to believe this time will be any different; it’s just a matter of when I can see the shoreline at the edge of this inky sea. At the moment it’s somewhere beyond the horizon.

2192: Things That Stopped Me From Sleeping Last Night

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I didn’t get to sleep until nearly 5am this morning due to a fairly bad anxiety attack. Here, in roughly chronological order, is a probably non-exhaustive list of things that this anxiety attack caused me to worry about.

Whether I’ll get a new job in time to make the next mortgage payment
Whether I’ll get a new job at all
Whether it’s possible to support myself financially through non-conventional means such as Patreon or its ilk
Whether I’m a good person
Whether our pet rat Clover is all right
Whether or not I should be upset over the fact I was blocked without warning or discussion on Twitter by someone I had previously got on very well with on the grounds that I had said “ignorant nonsense”
Whether or not I had really said “ignorant nonsense”, or whether this person was an idiot
Whether or not I had genuinely upset this person, regardless of whether or not they were an idiot
Whether it mattered if I had genuinely upset this person if they were going to just cut all ties with me without even attempting to talk about whatever the issue was
Whether I should have gone to sleep earlier
Whether it’s worth getting up in the morning
Whether I should apply for jobs in the same field I’ve just been looking into, or whether I should be looking elsewhere
Whether I should train in a new field
How I could possibly afford to train in a new field
What it would be like to work in a new field
Whether I’d gained weight this week after having a Chinese takeaway and fish and chips rather than sticking to Slimming World (got weighed this evening — I hadn’t, in fact I had lost a pound)
Whether I’ll get a new job at all (again)
Wouldn’t it be nice to win the lottery?
What am I going to do when I come to the end of the period I’m leasing my car? Is it in good enough condition for me to just give it back? Can I just give it back?
Whether I’ve made a lifetime’s worth of irreversible mistakes
Whether I can get my life back on track
What it would be like to put a gun to your head
Whether I would have the courage to pull the trigger
Whether I want to pull the trigger
Whether I was ever going to get to sleep
Whether I was ever going to get to sleep ever again
Why I can fall asleep in seconds in the morning, but not at night
Whether I should feel bad for liking Jeremy Clarkson
How much Lily Rank grinding I had left to do in Hyperdimension Neptunia U
Whether the meandering course that my friendships and relationships have taken over the years is the “right” path
Whether there is a right path for interpersonal relationships
Why my friend who had once been attacked by a dogpile of politically-correct nutcases on Twitter now appeared to be one of those politically-correct nutcases
Whether or not I should go back to Final Fantasy XIV
Whether I’d know if someone broke into the house
Whether someone who broke into the house would steal my massive TV, or just something small
Whether someone who broke into the house would come into our room and kill us

Anxiety sucks, because everything seems like a massive deal. Some of the things I was worrying about are important, but some of them are not. Last night, everything felt terrifying and disturbing. Last night, everything stopped me from sleeping. I would rather that did not happen again tonight.

2189: Reflections on the Last Five Years, Or: Life After Games Journalism

I’ve had a whole lot of thoughts swirling around in my head for some time now about various matters, and I feel as a therapeutic exercise — not to mention an opportunity for some of you to get to know me a bit better — it’s important that I express them somehow. I know all too well how frustrating, stressful and ultimately unhealthy it can be to have unresolved emotions and thoughts surrounding things that have happened to you — particularly bad things — and so this is my attempt to reboot my mind and try to move on a little.

Consequently, certain aspects of this post are more than likely to rub a few people up the wrong way. To those people whose jimmies are rustled I say simply: fuck you, I don’t give a shit, and if you really cared you wouldn’t have done the things you did in the first place.

In the interests of at least a facade of professionalism, I will not be naming individuals who have had a negative impact on my life in this post, though it will doubtless be extremely obvious to anyone who has been following me for a while who the people in question are. I will, however, be naming the companies involved, since that is less personal; everyone knows how unpleasant it is if you Google your own name and find something not terribly complimentary, whereas, unless you own a monolithic corporation, you probably care a little less about someone talking smack about your monolithic corporation. That’s how I’m going to attempt to justify myself about this, anyway.

Also, this post is crazy long, so for the benefit of those who only read on my front page, here’s a Read More tag.

Continue reading “2189: Reflections on the Last Five Years, Or: Life After Games Journalism” →

2136: Dark World

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I am having a rough time, I don’t mind admitting. I was pretty open and honest about one of the things that was bothering me a few days ago, but it’s just one of several things that have been mounting up and causing me a not-inconsiderable degree of grief and stress just recently.

I would like it all to stop, please.

The person I care most about in the world is suffering with pain that won’t go away and that no-one seems to know how to fix. It’s at a point where it’s impacting both of our lives fairly significantly, but I don’t know what to do about it. Well, I sort of do: there isn’t really anything I can do about it myself, save for hanging in there and offering support when and how I can. I don’t resent having to do that, of course, but it is exhausting.

Alongside that, I find myself worrying about doing the right thing with regard to working. I’m enjoying my current seasonal temp position in retail, but at the back of my mind is always the knowledge that I’m underpaid, overworked and overqualified; a little voice in the back of my mind reminding me that I am 34 years old and should probably have done something a little more with my life by now.

The thing is, I’ve tried doing more with my life. I’ve tried being a teacher, and failed. I’ve tried having a “normal” office job, and failed. I’ve tried being a games journalist, and failed. In each and every instance, I’ve been pushed out by some combination of me being unable to stand up to people being assholes, my own declining mental health, my own lack of self-confidence and, on several occasions, events that were completely beyond my control.

It really, really blows to feel like you’ve wasted so many years of your life, and that you’re stuck on the “bottom rung” of the career ladder. It makes me feel guilty for enjoying the work I’m doing, because I “should” be doing more. But the thing is, I don’t really feel like I want to be doing more, nor do I feel like I’m entirely capable of doing more. My experiences since leaving university have proven to be such repeated and violent blows to my own sense of belief in my own abilities that I just want to be able to get on with things and let progress happen naturally if it’s warranted.

I really don’t know what to do any more. I guess I just have to ride this particular mental storm out, just as I’ve ridden out all the previous ones I’ve suffered over the years. This one feels like quite a bad one, but I can’t give up; I mustn’t give up. Giving up will simply make everything worse.

Forgive the self-pity, but as you can probably tell, I’m not in a great place right now. You will, dear reader, hopefully understand if I am somewhat out of sorts and in need of venting a bit of steam over the next few days, weeks, months…

2126: One of Those Times

I’ve been having a rough few days, depression- and anxiety-wise. Things have been “getting to me” more than they have for a long time, and today felt particularly bad; earlier in the day I just needed a cry more than anything. I wasn’t crying over anything in particular; it just happened. Everything was too much. I felt a little better afterwards, but there’s still some residual bleakness lurking around inside my head.

I was interested to see on Twitter that a friend of mine had also been having a rough time with his mental health, in his case noting that his anger at something that might seem relatively “trivial” to an outside observer had actually led him to self-harm for the first time in quite a while. Like me, he noted that the incident itself wasn’t a particular catalyst for his reaction; it was, presumably, just more a case of “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, and everything coming to a head leading to something mental snapping.

Times like this seem to come for a lot of people around the same sort of time. I don’t really know what causes it, but it’s interesting to ponder. In this particular instance, it’s entirely possible that the horrible things that have been going on in Paris have subconsciously infiltrated our minds and have been influencing our thoughts in negative directions, but to be perfectly frank, it doesn’t feel that way to me at all; I’d been feeling bleak and miserable before all that happened, so perhaps it’s something else.

Maybe it’s environmental? We’re coming into winter now, and the evenings are getting darker earlier, making the whole world seem just a little bit more closed-in and oppressive to some people. I’ve always quite liked the night, but it being dark outside is very much a signal to the body that “the day is over, it’s probably time to do relaxing things and/or sleep now” and as such isn’t particularly conducive to being productive.

Maybe there’s some sort of physical reason; a literal “something in the air”, as it were. Air pressure can sometimes have an effect on the way you feel physically, so perhaps there’s an effect on mental wellbeing too, or perhaps just the changing weather of the advancing seasons has an impact on how everyone’s feeling.

Or maybe it’s even some sort of metaphysical, spiritual thing; the balance between Light and Dark, Good and Evil being off or something. (It’s probably not this. But you never really know, do you?)

Whatever it is, it’s pretty crappy, and I know from today that I’m not the only one who is feeling a bit bleak and miserable about everything for no real reason at the moment. As such, I’d like to say to anyone out there who is feeling a bit low that I hope things look up for you soon, and remember that it’s often really helpful to try and express the things you’re feeling, even if you can’t quite explain them. Talk to a friend; write them down in a journal; blog them as I have; tweet them to your followers. Looking at things from another perspective can sometimes be helpful, and even if it isn’t, it can give you a much-needed sense of relief and release to just get all those stray, dark thoughts out of your head.

Be well, everyone!