2409: Changing Perspective

I don't feel quite so bad today.

This isn't to say I don't still feel fairly bad about everything in general, but I don't feel quite so bad today. I even found myself applying for some other jobs in a slightly different field to that which I've not been having much luck in so far, and the simple act of doing that — of finding a job listing that, while not offering particularly good wages, certainly seemed to say "hey, you could do that" — helped me feel marginally more positive.

Dealing with negativity is all a matter of perspective. The easiest thing to do when you're feeling negative is to look straight up and see everything falling down on your head as you're buried by it. And once you're buried by it, it's very difficult to get yourself out again; the cycle becomes self-perpetuating.

Once in a while, though, you have a moment where you have the opportunity to step back and look at things from somewhere other than directly underneath them as you bear down on them. I'm speaking purely metaphorically here, of course, but looking at something from the outside — perhaps floating high above it, or from the perspective of a being that is much bigger than you are — can make things seem not quite so daunting. That huge inky blackness that was closing in threatening to bury me can become just a pile of papers on a desk — papers that can be shuffled, dealt with one at a time, even thrown away.

I wouldn't say I'm through the worst of this particular bout of depression — these feelings of general uselessness and worthlessness aren't going to go away until I find some way I can meaningfully contribute to the world (and by that, I mean do a job I get paid a reasonable amount for on a regular basis) — but today… didn't feel quite so bad.

I can only hope these feelings improve. I'm going to try and get some sleep now. May tomorrow be a brighter day still.

2406: Getting it Across

The worst thing — well, one of the worst things, anyway — about being depressed and anxiety-wracked is the perpetual feeling that you are not getting your feelings across properly, and the companion fear that people around you are just thinking that you're "a bit down" or, at worst, being irrational and unreasonable rather than suffering from crippling bleakness and an impossible desire to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

I, at least, have this blog as a means of expression as well as words I say face-to-face to people, words I write in email messages or words I say down a phone. (The latter is particularly rare, since, as those of you who know me well will already know, I do not like speaking on the phone at all.)

So, feeling particularly bleak and hopeless as I am at nearly 4am on this stuffy, sweaty August evening, it behooves me to try and be as frank as possible within the confines of the medium.

I am not doing so great.

I've not been doing so great for quite a while now, partly as a result of my own meandering, directionless life and partly due to external factors I have no direct control of. But at the moment, I feel like I'm doing especially not great.

It's true, I wrote a while back that the new meds I've been taking have had a positive effect, and I stand by that, but I'm having one of those times where I feel like everything is getting on top of me, and that's causing a domino effect of everything else in my mind to collapse, leaving me a mostly useless mess for a considerable proportion of the time.

I quit a job I had a while back that had the possibility to be if not particularly well-paid, then certainly reasonably secure and possibly even enjoyable. I did so because I was extremely worried about my wife, who was suffering especially ill health at the time. I was a little hesitant to do so, because I was afraid that I would end up in the exact situation I am now — seemingly unable to get another job — but ultimately I knew that it was the right thing to do, and I stand by my decision.

However, my wife, while not fully recovered as yet — still waiting on the NHS to do various bits and pieces, which will hopefully get into motion in earnest next month — is now back at work, seemingly getting on just fine with her new job, while I am reliant on erratic freelance income and sending out swathes of job applications every week that are probably never even looked at by cynical HR departments. While I know I'm not being completely useless, as I am getting work and getting it done to a good standard, there's always this feeling at the back of my mind: why?

The question that comes after "why" varies from moment to moment. Sometimes it's asking why I didn't stick with teaching. (Because the stress of teaching in two particularly "challenging" schools was a strong contributory factor to the depression and anxiety I've been suffering since 2010.) Sometimes it's asking why I didn't fight for my USgamer job when I was unceremoniously told one morning that I didn't have it any more, sorry. Sometimes it's asking why that job had to end at all — and this one is usually accompanied by furious anger and resentment towards several people involved in the situation, whom I believe were responsible for me being shown the door. Sometimes it's asking why I couldn't just have knuckled down at SSE and been a good little corporate drone, nodding and smiling at their primary school-level Health and Safety "exercises" that they foisted on even the office staff at every opportunity. And sometimes it's asking why I made choices back at the beginning of the Millennium that now feel like massive mistakes altogether: studying English and Music, pursuing the PGCE, going into teaching.

There aren't answers to many of those questions, and they tend to lead on to bleaker thoughts. The question about my time at SSE in particular is almost always accompanied by an exaggerated combination of flashback and imagination where I recall my traumatic last day at the company, dragged over the hot coals by an unsupportive management who just wanted to get me out of the door and wouldn't listen to anything I had to say. In reality, I yelled "fuck you" at them, stormed out and slammed the door, wishing to God I had the courage to say or do something more coherent to make my frustration known. In my imagination, I do everything from throw the phone on the table of the meeting room at my "opponents" to flipping the table, ripping the door off its hinges or smashing every computer I walk past on the way to collect my things. Each time I have this flashback-dream, it gets more intense and unpleasant, and it leaves me short of breath, panicking, begging for sleep to claim me, because it's always when I'm trying to get to sleep that my mind sees fit to dredge it up once again.

And the bleakness these endless questions leave me with make me more vulnerable to all sorts of other things. A simple request to play some online games with friends becomes an unimaginably frustrating and infuriating slight when I can't pin anyone down due to their (rationally speaking, perfectly reasonable) commitments to family or suchlike. I have difficulty focusing on anything, feeling like I "should" be doing something, anything other than what it is I am doing at the time, and this often leads me into a cycle of just doing nothing at all.

One of the most frustrating things is that I've fallen back into old habits with food. We stopped going to Slimming World when my wife was particularly unwell, as I was finding the weekly weigh-ins and Syn-counting an unnecessary stress on top of all the other things I was thinking about. Consequently, with little to no control over what I eat each day — plus a predisposition towards eating as a means of "self-medicating" anything from boredom to depression — I've put a bunch of weight back on again, so much so that I'm terrified of stepping on a set of scales, going back to the same Slimming World group I once attended or even trying on certain pairs of trousers.

All kinds of adjectives float around inside my head when I reflect on myself and how I might be able to get out of the situation I'm in. Hopeless. Worthless. Useless. Failure. I know none of them are true, but when you get this far into the darkness it's hard to see the light of hope. I vacillate between burning hatred for the people who have directly or indirectly contributed to the position in which I find myself, despair that makes me want to curl up and cry for the rest of time, and guilt at all the people I feel like I've let down with my inability to have made anything worthwhile of my life by this age.

I don't know what to do. I feel like I've exhausted all my options, tried all the things I'm supposed to try, and I don't know what's left. I'm sure in life it's pretty difficult to back yourself into a completely unwinnable situation, but I was designed in the '80s, after all; to continue the analogy, I feel like I'm in an early Sierra game and I'm finding each and every single place it's possible for King Graham to fall off something, trip over something, get crushed by something or get eaten by something. Eventually I might find the right path without tripping over Manaan's cat (yes, I know that was Gwydion, not Graham) or falling off a cliff, but right now I can't see it. And, sadly, life has no GameFAQs.

I should probably go to bed. Reflecting on this further isn't particularly helping me, but looking back over these 1,400 words I am a little glad I put pen to paper to express these things ticking over in my mind. Perhaps someone will read them and understand me just a little better. Perhaps I'll look back on them one day and wonder what I was worrying about. Or perhaps I really am a useless waste of space with no future whatsoever? Who knows.

Either way, bed beckons. If you read all this, thanks.

2393: The Drugs Sometimes Work

Early last year, shortly after I lost my job at raging shithole SSE for reasons at least partly linked to my depression and anxiety, I decided enough was enough and went to the doctor to seek some chemical help with my mental health issues. I was prescribed a drug called Sertraline, which I dutifully took for well over a year.

I can't quite tell whether or not Sertraline had any effect; I think on the whole, it did improve my mental health somewhat — although this may well be a placebo effect — though it didn't "cure" it. There is no such thing as a magic bullet that will "cure" depression and anxiety, unfortunately; if there were, whichever drug company was able to churn it out by the ton first would doubtless become the first "megacorporation" with all the proceeds, and we'd officially be living in even more of a futuristic dystopia than we do already.

One thing I found while on Sertraline though, and I don't know if this was the drug causing the problem or my own overactively anxious imagination, was that I had great difficulty sleeping. I'd lie awake until 3, 4 in the morning most nights, unable to get to sleep until my body was so exhausted it simply shut down. Prior to that, my brain would be rapidly darting back and forth between all manner of different thoughts — some worries, some desires, some recollections, some pure fantasies — and be far too "alert" to allow me to properly switch myself off and get some much-needed rest.

I persevered with this for probably far longer than I should have, but eventually, once again, I decided that enough was enough, and I wanted to try something new. I'd seen some positive effects on someone (who shall remain nameless for the moment) who had exhibited similar symptoms to me at times when switching from Sertraline to another drug called Mirtazapine, so I went to my doctor armed with this knowledge and asked to switch to see how I got on.

Like the other person, the difference was night and day. While Mirtazapine is also no "magic bullet" to completely alleviate depression and anxiety, one of the things that was bothering me the most — the inability to sleep, and the anxiety this caused — is "fixed". I can go to bed at a reasonable hour now and actually get to sleep when I choose to put my head down. Rather than constantly worrying that I don't know "how" to get to sleep — which is something that continually bothered me while I was on Sertraline, and possibly beforehand, too — I can just, you know, sleep without thinking about it, like a normal human being.

This has made quite a difference to my overall outlook on life. Getting a decent night's sleep is important, and as soon as you start getting it again having endured a period where you haven't had it, you really appreciate it.

Plus Mirtazapine gave me about a week of feeling perpetually stoned and having some incredibly vivid, crazy dreams, too, so if nothing else it was worth it for that experience.

2365: If I Had a Million Quid

An awful lot of my anxieties come down to money issues. I've always found financial matters to be inordinately stressful, largely because there haven't been that many periods of my life where I've felt particularly "secure" in this regard.

There have been a few, admittedly. When I was teaching, the pay was great, whatever other teachers might say, but unfortunately it was not worth the life-crippling stress that the rest of the job gave me. So that was out.

One of the retail jobs I had actually paid very well, too, which is unusual for retail, but probably not surprising for the company in question, who I won't name for the moment (at least partly because I wouldn't mind them hiring me again, please) and also perhaps not surprising given that my role wasn't exactly traditional "sales assistant" stuff.

Then there was my work for GamePro and USgamer, which to date have been my favourite jobs, not to mention the ones I think I've been best at. Unfortunately, neither of those were to last; GamePro because it folded, and USgamer because of general behind the scenes assholery.

Then there was SSE, which I will name because it was a health and safety-obsessed shithole staffed with some of the most odious people I've ever had the misfortune to work with. Again, pay good, but the working environment — very much a culture of fearmongering and whistleblowing — was horrible.

The freelance work I'm doing at the moment also pays pretty well, but unfortunately it's very sporadic; at the time of writing I haven't had any for a while, so pennies are running a bit short. Andie is at least back to work now so our household will have some income again, but I am very much in need of a regular source of income.

Money anxieties naturally lead me to fantasising about what I'd do if I won the lottery, because that would take away a considerable number of the things that stress me the fuck out each and every day. It's almost certainly never going to happen, of course, but it's nice to dream.

If I won the lottery, I wouldn't do anything outrageously huge. I have a few things in mind that I'd definitely do immediately: I'd pay off the mortgage on our house, I'd pay off my car and I'd clear my credit card. Then I'd probably buy an HTC Vive VR headset. And from there? Well, I wouldn't really do anything else. I'd just live my life in the house I'm in, safe in the knowledge that I won't have to worry about money again. I'd do the things I want to do rather than feel like I have to do; I'd write, I'd make music, I'd make games, I'd play games. I wouldn't feel that crushing sense of guilt any time I do any of those things now because I wouldn't be under any sort of pressure to do something more "productive" and "useful" (i.e. something that pays money) with my time.

To be honest, the dream of just living normally, only without having to worry about money — that's far more appealing and exciting to me than any grand designs to buy a country manor or a sports car or a holiday home in exotic climes that other people often claim will be their lottery dream. Perhaps it says something about me that the only real "ambition" I have is to be comfortable and secure; opulence would be fun, I'm sure, but security is what's going to keep you happy in the long term.

2352: Fuzzy Head

I've had a horrible, fuzzy head today. I don't mean physically — although after getting my hair cut yesterday, my head is a bit fuzzy — but rather a not terribly pleasant feeling of "detachment"; of being slightly "out of phase" with the rest of the world. And a slight headache.

I've felt this before, and it's usually a symptom of depression and anxiety. In this instance, the fact I haven't been sleeping well for the past few nights and am feeling especially worried about my future have been contributing particularly to the way I'm feeling. It's not nice, so after writing this I'm going to go and sit in bed and relax with a bit of Ys: Memories of Celceta, then try and actually get off to sleep at a reasonable time if at all possible.

I actually have a job interview tomorrow. As usual when this happens, I'm being struck with anxiety over whether or not I'm actually suitable for the job and whether or not I'm going to make an idiot of myself in the interview. (Mind you, last time I thought I made an idiot of myself in the interview I ended up getting the job. Of course, that turned out to be the worst job I'd ever had, but that's perhaps beside the point.) The thing I've been telling myself — and Andie said the same earlier — is that if I looked completely unqualified and unsuitable for this job, the company wouldn't have got in touch and offered me an interview in the first place. This isn't any guarantee that I'll actually get the position, of course — given the geographical location, I'm not sure I'd want it, anyway, as it would mean a bit of a commute each day — but we'll see.

All in all, I haven't had a particularly good day. Not for any particular reason — nothing actually bad has happened, I just feel shitty.

Such is the way of things when your own mind likes to do its best to sabotage your life and happiness, though.

Oh well. All I can do, I guess, is take tomorrow as it comes and see how it goes. It's not as if the interview I have tomorrow is the only iron I have in the fire at the moment, so it doesn't really matter one way or the other as to whether I get it. But, you know, getting back into a routine and actually having an income would be nice.

One step at a time.

2343: No Sleep

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

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

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

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.