1845: Bleak House

I've been "up and down" mental health-wise all week. This evening is one of those occasions where I'm feeling a little bit bleak. I shan't go into the reasons, as they're not really important and don't really concern me directly for the most part, but it strikes me that at the moment, things seem to be a bit shit for quite a few people, if the timelines of people I follow on social media are anything to go by.

February is regarded by some as one of the more depressing months. It's the very heart of winter — it's bitterly cold outside at the moment, even more so with the windchill, though of course it's nothing compared to something like a Canadian winter — and there's not a whole lot of anything going on. Christmas is over, New Year's is over and the only vaguely celebratory occasion people have to look forward to in the immediate future is Valentine's Day, and even that isn't universally loved: I don't mind admitting that in my single days, Valentine's Day was an occasion where I pretty much wanted to hide under the covers lamenting the fact that I'd probably never find anyone willing to put on the sort of saucy lingerie that tends to get advertised around this time of year and then [CENSORED]. (Thankfully, given that Andie and I got together around Valentine's Day, I now associate it with positive things in general, not just saucy lingerie and boffing. But I, as ever, digress.)

There was some sort of half-hearted "mental health awareness" thing at my place of work this week, but no-one really engaged with it, despite the fact that I suspect a few people might have benefited from the opportunity to be completely open and honest about a few things. The trouble with marking off a period like that specifically for Let's Talk About Feeling Suicidal!! (or similar topics) is that the people who genuinely do want to talk about this sort of thing but don't know quite how to go about it end up feeling somewhat pressured and consequently say nothing; meanwhile, the people who know nothing about depression, anxiety and all those other wonderful things the human mind does to fuck us up just sort of sit around uncomfortably saying things like "So…" and "Anyway…" until everyone just gives up on the whole thing.

There are quite a few contributing factors to how I'm feeling right now; as I say, I won't bore you with all of them, but one thing I will talk about a little is the feeling of isolation. Feeling like you're alone in the world is a horrible thing, and while I'm lucky enough to have Andie around all the time, there are still periods when I feel very cut off from people that I like, love and care about. And this feeds into a vicious cycle where it gets harder and harder to interact, and you start worrying about bothering people too much, even though you desperately want to see them, to talk to them, to just be with them. It kind of sucks. And that's kind of where I am right now.

Still, sitting around in self-loathing isn't going to help matters at all. It's Friday night, so I should be relaxing. So I'm off to do just that. Have a pleasant weekend, dear reader.

1841: Lock Me Away

I'm having something of a low ebb at the moment.

Anyone unfortunate enough to be intimately acquainted with the Black Dog as I am will be well aware of the fact that depression comes and goes; things can seem absolutely peachy for weeks, months, even years, and yet all it takes sometimes to bring that house of seemingly happy cards tumbling down is an unkind, harsh or simply insensitive word or two.

I shan't get into the specific triggers for my current episode right now, but I have a feeling it was coming anyway, regardless of whether or not I was given a shove back into the darkness or not. Either way, I'm there now, and I'm reminded of what a bleak place it is: a chilling, numbing, isolating sort of feeling that makes you feel cut off from the rest of the world, even if you're sitting right there in the middle of the world with all sorts of things going on around you.

My current episode is manifesting itself as a combination of bleak thoughts and (literally) stomach-churning anxiety. It took some time to get off to sleep last night, even after a pleasant evening of raiding with my Final Fantasy XIV buddies; once I was there in the dark, waiting for slumber to finally claim me, that was when the anxiousness began. It was — is — a lurking feeling of discomfort; not pain, per se, but rather the sensation that you can't get away from something unpleasant that might happen to you at any moment; the feeling that, against your will, you're going to have to do something you don't want to do, be it something as mundane as talking to someone you don't want to talk to, or something as outlandish and improbable as getting involved in some sort of violent incident.

The unifying factor between all those possibilities is the nagging sensation — fear, paranoia, call it what you will — that everyone and everything is somehow "out to get you". It makes it difficult to truly trust, and it's not exactly conducive to functioning in an entirely normal manner in polite society. Still, I muddle through just as I've always done; I keep my head down, I get on with the things I need to do, then I excuse myself and try to relax in a situation where I feel more comfortable.

This post is turning out rather more candid than I perhaps intended when I sat down to write this evening, but frankly, given that this is one of the more difficult depressive episodes that I've dealt with in recent memory, I felt the need to express myself somewhat and to try and articulate these feelings. By doing so, I feel I can confront them a little more effectively and hopefully drag myself out of the abyss I've been slipping into for a few days.

Thankfully, as with any time this happens, I at least know that I'm not alone; it pains me that so many people I know, trust, like and love have been afflicted similarly, but at the same time it gives me strength to know that I'm not the only one who has faced such mental trials. Some have it far worse than me, even, and I'm not for a second attempting to compare the validity of different people's experiences with depression; it simply helps me a little to know that no, I am not the only person who has ever felt like this, and no, it's not the be-all and end-all of existence.

These things pass. Eventually. In the meantime you just have to ride out the storm.

Now I'm going to go spend some time in Akihabara pulling the trousers off vampires. Here's to a hopefully more positive day tomorrow.

1710: Perfectionism

"I'm a perfectionist" may be the lamest, most clichéd answer possible to that equally lame and clichéd job interview question "what is your biggest weakness?" but, well, it really is a weakness.

Why? Because perfectionism often makes you feel responsible for things that aren't your fault. Perfectionism often makes you feel bad for making mistakes based on information you weren't given. Perfectionism often ruins an otherwise pleasant day when that one thing that didn't go quite as well as all the other things weighs on your mind more than the considerably greater number of positive thoughts you could be having.

I came to the conclusion today that I suffer from perfectionism. I hate doing a bad job. I hate feeling like I've made a mistake. I hate feeling like I could have done more.

I made a mistake today. It wasn't a big mistake. It didn't get me into trouble. It didn't hurt anyone or spoil anyone else's day, and thinking about it rationally, from a distance, it wasn't really a "mistake" at all since, as noted above, I didn't have all the information available to hand. It does, however, have the potential to make more work for me — thankfully there is plenty of time to complete said work if it is necessary — and it's probably something I could have avoided. I didn't, however, and now this has happened. And I feel bad.

I'm assured that I shouldn't feel bad, that I wasn't to know, that it might not even be a problem at all — I won't know that latter part until tomorrow — but it's too late; the knowledge that I Did Something Wrong has already sunk in and already made me a bit mopey on the way home. Thankfully I managed to distract myself in time, so with any luck I won't be spending the evening in a depressed haze staring at a wall as often happens on such occasions, but the fact remains: perfectionism stinks.

I'm not sure where this stems from. My most plausible explanation is that it likely hails from my childhood, where I was typically — not to blow my own trumpet here, it's a statement of fact — one of the top-performing students in the class, both in primary and secondary school. On the few occasions where I failed to live up to the standards I had apparently set for both myself and others to expect of me, I felt really bad. I still have a vivid memory of a two-page spread in my Class 2 (year 3 or 4 in new money, I think) Maths book where the left page — on which I had completed a single sum — was adorned with the teacher comment "Lazy work" in red pen, and the right page — on which I had completed three sums, two of which were incorrect — was forever blemished with the words "Very poor", also in red pen.

I was mortified at the time; the rest of my school books were so consistently good and I was so regularly praised and rewarded — "go and colour in a square on your rocket" — that doing something badly brought me crashing down to earth and upset me a great deal. I didn't want anyone to see those pages in my books; they were a stain on my otherwise good record. To my credit, though, I always made sure I was both more industrious and careful in Maths lessons from that point on, even though I absolutely loathed that subject right through until the end of secondary school.

To date, though, every time something doesn't quite go right, I end up feeling like I did that day I got that book back with those two awful pages. Whether it's a negative comment on something I've written, an offhand remark by someone I know or simply the knowledge that I messed up somewhere — even if no-one else knows — it hits me right in the Black Dog and, more often than not, ruins an otherwise good day.

Thankfully, the very act of writing this post is helping banish such thoughts from my mind, and I fully intend to go and have a thoroughly pleasant evening now. So suck that, perfectionism.

1596: Efforts

Trying to stay positive. Got up early today, went for a swim before doing anything else (only 25 lengths, alternating crawl and my laughable excuse for a breast stroke, but you have to start somewhere) and then took the bus (the bus!) back. (I managed to find all the Obsidian Mushrooms in Demon Gaze during the bus journey back, which treated me to some enjoyable scenes with catgirl maid Pinay, so it was very much worth it.)

Got back. Applied for two jobs, nearly applied for a third before I realised I'd already applied for it last week, took delivery of our new table (it's humongous, and it has metallic animal feet, because it clearly belonged to an old lady before ending up in the British Heart Foundation shop), attempted to assemble new table, was mostly successful, did some work, played some Game and Wario (the freebie game I got with Mario Kart 8, which I will almost certainly write more about tomorrow evening after a night of multiplayer fun) and… that's about it, really.

I feel like I've got quite a bit done today, and, as usual, it can be attributed at least partly to getting up reasonably early and getting started on things before I have to do stuff. I think this every time I get up early, then I go and get all depressed and find it hard to get out of bed until immediately before I have to start work. (Also our new bed is really comfy.)

As I say, trying very hard to stay positive right now, but it's a challenge. Too much is unknown. Several of the jobs I've applied for won't be letting me know one way or another for two or three weeks, and by then that's the time I will really need to have a new job sorted and ready for me. But I guess there's not a lot I can do about that. As time ticks on, it becomes more and more likely there'll be a gap between my current job ending and my new one starting. I just hope it isn't too long.

In the meantime, I just have to keep doing what I can in order to stay as positive as it is possible to stay under the circumstances. I have to be grateful for the things I do have, rather than upset about the things that I don't have — even if the things that I don't have could cause potential difficulties. I can't think about that, though. I have to assume that things are going to work out all right. I have to assume that things are going to be fine, and that by this time next month, I'll be wondering what on Earth I was panicking about.

Hmm. Well, it's going to be a challenge, but I guess I have no option but to try right now, huh?

1595: Other Side Up

A sense of low self-worth tends to coincide, oddly enough, with those times in your life when things aren't going all that well. The time when your actual worth is lower than it could be, in other words.

I'm going through one of those phases right now, and it sucks. There's only so much I can do about it in the short-term, though. But there are probably at least a few things I can do, starting with outlining all the things that are causing me stress, anxiety and depression right now. This isn't for the benefit of any of you kind enough to read my self-indulgent ramblings: I'm simply hoping it will prove to be something of a cathartic exercise, or something.

Okay. Number one on the list of Things That Are Getting Me Down is the lack of job. I still technically have a job until the end of June, of course, but after that I'm on my own. Far from making me feel relaxed, though, I just feel incredibly awkward about the whole situation. I've pretty much been cut off from the rest of the staff — partially voluntarily, since I didn't really trust myself to contribute meaningfully to staff meetings when at risk of bursting into tears at any moment — and am being largely left to my own devices. With the site's shift in editorial direction, I don't have to worry about news stories, either, so that takes a bit of pressure off, but it's still a bit of a weird situation.

The main thing causing anxiety in this instance is the fact that I don't yet know what I'm going to be doing after the deadline of the end of June is up. I have a few applications in, but I've only heard from one so far, and that was a rejection. I have some more positions I need to apply for, but I also have to contemplate the possibility that I might not get any of those, which might leave me in a position where there doesn't appear to be anything worth applying for. What do I do then? Aim lower? That doesn't sound right, but it might be the only option.

My issue, as I've pondered on these pages once or twice in the past, is convincing employers that the work I've done for the past few years is directly relevant to something that is… well, not directly related. I am good at writing about video games. I am good at writing in general. However, I worry that there's still a certain amount of "stigma" around professional games journalism, like it's not a "real job" and that, when attempting to apply for a position at a "real" company, I'll be judged negatively for the hard work I've put in over the last few years.

This is an irrational and probably completely incorrect assumption, of course, but as I said, I'm simply spouting off the things that are causing me anxiety right now.

Unrelated to the work issue is the fact that I'm just generally feeling pretty shitty about myself at the moment, particularly with regard to my body image. I'm painfully aware that I've put on loads of weight over the last few years, and I can't shift it. When I get depressed, I often turn to comfort eating, and it's a difficult habit to break. Right now, I'm making a conscious effort to try and eat more healthy things wherever possible, but sometimes you just want a chocolate bar or a cookie.

I can feel the additional weight translating into unfitness, too. I get breathless, my legs ache and creak, and I feel crappy most of the time. I need to get up, about and being active again, but I know that for a good while after I start doing it, it's going to hurt. It's going to be difficult, I'm going to be gasping for breath and I'm going to feel like I'm not making any progress. And the prospect of that is putting me off doing it in the first place — which, of course, is making me feel worse about myself.

I think I need to try and ease myself back in with something reasonably "easy" like swimming, and later graduate back to the gym and running and the like when I've built a bit of strength back up. I feel like a useless lump at the moment, so I don't know how long that is going to take, but I feel like I probably should start on this sooner rather than later. This week, perhaps; I already joined the gym in town shortly before we moved, so I just need to try and get into some good habits, getting up early and going in the morning.

If I can stick to that, that solves part of my semi-conscious objections to indulging in regular exercise and the like. My main issues are that I get too ambitious too quickly — deciding I'll go to the gym every day every week, for example — and then lose motivation quickly, and also that I feel like taking time to do exercise is time that I'd rather spend doing literally anything else. I don't really enjoy exercising while I'm in the state I'm in at the moment; it's demoralising, embarrassing and painful. I need to work through that pain, somehow.

All of the above, then, is conspiring to make me feel monumentally crap. I wish I could say that I knew things were going to be okay, and I have plenty I should be grateful right now — not least of which is the fact that Andie and I now own our own house, and with a little more work on it, it will be very much how we want it. But there are more immediate concerns weighing on my mind before I really feel like I can relax and enjoy that, and I need to figure out how to address those sooner rather than later.

1565: Pressure Valve

If you'll pardon me, I need to vent some pressure in my head. I don't know whether or not it will make me feel better, but I feel like I need to do it anyway.

I feel like shit today with regard to the situation in which I find myself. I can't, in good conscience, say that I know everything is going to be okay because I don't know that everything is going to be okay, and that's frankly kind of scary. Andie and I have bought a house; that is not something you can just abandon if things get a bit difficult. If you mess things up with regard to money, that's a shitload of cash down the drain with nothing to show for it. While I doubt it will get to that stage — I at least have a little cash saved, though I had hoped I'd be able to hold on to it for a bit longer — it is still a concern.

I don't feel like shit in the sense that I want to just break down and cry, though. I mean, I sort of do, but it's not coming right now. Instead, I'm in that sort of bleak, nothingness phase of depression; that phase where all you really want to do is stare into space, but the things going on around you are irritating. It took a considerable amount of mental strength to haul myself up off the bed and come to write this post, and I'm not entirely sure that doing so is helping matters any. But we'll see. I've started, so I'll finish and all that.

I hate being laid off. I mean, I seriously doubt there's anyone out there who loves it, but it's shit, and I've been through it several times in my life. I at least have a little under two months to find myself something new to do this time around rather than waking up one morning to discover the site I write for is immediately closing (alas, poor GamePro), but the immediate reaction is one of being upset and disappointed. It is, in effect, being told that you're not needed or useful any more, so kindly off you go, on your way, off you pop. This is a fact of life and business, of course, but it doesn't make it any more pleasant to deal with. Being told that you're suddenly surplus to requirements doesn't do a great deal for the self-esteem, after all; it makes you question whether you've been useful for the time you were employed.

This isn't fishing for compliments, by the way; I know that the exaggerated emotions in my mind are just that — exaggerated — and that I was useful throughout my time at USgamer; I also hope I will continue to be so for my remaining weeks there. It just feels extremely weird to still be part of a team and yet not; I don't feel like I belong any more, and that, too, is a horrible feeling.

Still, I haven't been resting on my laurels. I have been gradually putting together a side project to tinker with while I look for new work. I'm not quite sure it's ready to reveal to the world just yet — perhaps over the weekend or early next week, depending on how much time I have to work on it, or perhaps I'll just say "fuck it" and flip the switch later tonight. We'll see.

Said project is not something that's going to make me any money in the short term, but it might be a useful means of gauging interest for something I might be able to do in the future, whether on the side or even — stranger things have happened — full-time. While I'm not expecting overnight (or even overmonth) success with it, it's something that I personally am pleased with so far, and am enthusiastic about developing further. As I say, we shall see if it actually goes anywhere. (In the meantime, if any of you reading this have any success or horror stories about Patreon as a funding platform, I'd be interested to hear them.)

For now, though, we have reached the weekend, and here in the UK it is, thankfully, another three-day weekend. Tomorrow morning I'm heading off to Kent to get away from things for a few days; some friends and I are going to hang out, play a ton of board games, play some Street Fighter, play some TrackMania, drink, eat and fart. I will be blogging over the weekend, Internet signal permitting, and will be back on Monday.

Here's hoping things look up a little next week; I made the mistake a short while ago of feeling like things were going along quite nicely. Now I'm back to sleepless nights filled with anxiety again. Fuck that shit.

1536: Looking for the Calm Lands

I'm having one of those occasional periods where I don't feel my mental health is in a great place. I'm feeling a bit stressed out (for no specific reason), I've been feeling wracked by anxiety before I go to sleep for the last few nights and I find myself occasionally lapsing into depressed feelings during the day, particularly if I stay in working for the whole day.

I think part of the cause is the working from home aspect. It may sound like a dream situation to be able to sit in your pants all day every day tapping away at a computer without fear of interruption from man or beast (well, occasionally from beast if I hear the rats causing mischief in the other room) but in actuality, it's a ticket to Stir Crazy-Town, and thus every so often I just feel the need to get out of the flat and go work at the coffee shop or something. Somewhere. Anywhere but here.

It's an underacknowledged aspect of working from home, this stir crazy business. And I think it's particularly apparent if you live in a fairly small environment such as a flat. In our flat, my study is just one wall away from the bedroom, which in turn is just one wall away from the living room. The temptation is always there to just wander into the living room, flop down on the sofa and stare at the TV for a few hours — or, on particularly bad days, to just go back and lie in bed for a bit. But, as I've established pretty firmly for myself, that's a terrible idea, because if I don't get up as soon as I wake up, I'll fall asleep, wake up five minutes before I need to work and make the whole anxiety-depression-stress thing a whole lot worse.

Going out to work at the coffee shop, like I did today, helps largely from the "change of scenery" aspect, and also helps remove a lot of distractions from the immediate vicinity. While distractions can sometimes be helpful motivators — "I'll do this, then reward myself with [distraction]" — they can also be… well, distractions. You know how it is. Today I felt like I got a lot more done than usual for sitting down, focusing and concentrating on what I was doing, even if sitting on one of Costa's arse-numbing chairs for most of the day hunched over my laptop isn't quite as comfortable as working on the big screen of my Mac in my rapidly-disintegrating-but-still-quite-comfy office chair. But at least I can break to get a coffee or a cake or a sandwich when I want to. (I know I can do this at home, too. But I have to make them myself.)

It doesn't really help that I feel like I have a lot on my plate at the moment. There's a lot of games I need to cover, and my inbox is full to bursting every day with PR pitch after PR pitch that I just don't have time to contemplate in the depth they deserve. Pro-tip to anyone eyeing a career in the games journalism biz: reviewing games is the worst part of the job, despite the freebies. Review commitments make it very difficult to play the things you want to play, and in many cases they even make it difficult to explore the review titles in as much depth as you want. At the same time, I feel it is important to give consideration to a lot of the titles I end up reviewing, as many of them are often dismissed outright or treated somewhat unfairly by other critics, so it's a tough balancing act at times.

Oh, and the air quality around here is shit at the minute thanks to a combination of a Saudi Arabian dust storm (apparently) and a big fire just down the road from us earlier today. This isn't helping me recover from the plague that laid me low recently.

I don't know. I'm just having a complain. Things aren't too bad really, I guess. They've certainly been worse. Like I say, it's just one of those times when my mental health is getting the better of me. I should probably just go sit in bed and play Steins;Gate until I fall asleep or something. That sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?

1113: Thin Skin

You know one of the people I admire the most on the whole Internet? Jim Sterling. While I may not always agree with his opinions and the way he argues them, that's not why I admire him. No, the reason I admire him is how he can say something which may end up being controversial in some way (either due to subject matter or by going against popular opinion) and then not let the subsequent barrage of vitriol flying his way bother him. Or, if he does, he manages to hide it exceedingly well and simply brush it off as part of the job. (I have a sneaking suspicion that if it really did bother him, he wouldn't still be in this business.)

I last wrote about this topic back on day 795 of this blog, and the things both I and Sterling said back then still ring true. I'm envious of Sterling because of the way in which he can rise above the abuse and not let negative comments get to him, because I am the exact opposite.

Let me explain to you what it's like to browse a comments section when you suffer from anxiety and depression in various forms. First of all, you find yourself hoping that there are comments there at all. It's nice to know that something you wrote has resonated enough with someone to compel them to respond. It's even nicer if said someone comes along and agrees with you. Everyone likes to be agreed with and made to feel like they're "right", even in topics where there is no clear "right" or "wrong" answer. It's particularly pleasing to know you've made a connection with someone who is often a complete stranger, and that you've been able to bond over the words that came out of your head and onto the page.

Now let's say there's a dissenting comment in there, too. It doesn't have to be a vitriolic or abusive one, just one which disagrees with you in some way. Immediately, all the good work done by the positive comment is undone. Immediately, you feel a knot in your stomach as you start to read the dissenting opinions, and immediately you start to feel like a failure as a human being because your thoughts didn't coincide with someone else's. Should you have written that article at all? Should you continue writing at all? Or should you just pack it in altogether, because every time a dissenting opinion comes along, you end up feeling sick to your stomach?

There is, of course, a specific example I'm thinking of in this case. As you may be aware, I write a regular column about visual novels every week for Games Are Evil. I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, just someone with a strong interest in the medium and an urge to tell others about the great experiences I've had with them. This week, I decided to write about the treatment of sex in visual novels, which often tend to be very explicit on the erotic content front. The first comment I got was from a regular commenter on the column, and fell into the first category I described above. A subsequent one fell into the second category, telling me that I'd chosen bad examples to back up my points and accusing me of not knowing my subject matter. The comment itself was relatively respectful in tone, now that I've had a few hours to stew on it, but I came away from initially reading it feeling pretty shitty about myself. I'd worked hard on that piece and had put myself out there by sharing my opinions, and to have them shot down in that manner and accused of not knowing my stuff was actually quite upsetting.

I am aware that I broke one of the cardinal rules of the Internet by looking at the comments section at all, I am also aware that it's highly possible that I will never see or hear from that commenter again, and I am also aware that everyone is entitled to their opinion and no-one is obliged to agree with me — but that simple failure to connect made me rather upset and has left me feeling quite glum all evening. It's a total overreaction, I know, and I should learn from Sterling's example and grow a thicker skin — or argue my corner better — but, well, that's the experience of living with anxiety and depression. It only takes a few poorly-chosen words to make someone like me feel like crap, and it's mostly our fault for being that way and not doing anything about it.

You should, of course, be able to freely express your opinions just as much as me, but just think about the way you're saying the things you want to say before you hit that "post" button, please?

1105: Braindead

It's coming up on 1am and I'm struggling of things to write here. But write I must.

Well, let's review how things are going. That's usually a good way to fill a day's post, as nothing especially interesting has happened today. Unless you count letting our pet rats out for a run around in the hallway and going to Yo! Sushi (not at the same time) as being somehow "interesting". I guess both of those are sort of interesting — I mean, I enjoyed them both — but really, you sort of had to be there in both instances.

It's coming up on the end of the first month of 2013, and we're still in that weird sort of limbo where it doesn't quite feel right to talk about the year being 2013. I mean, I'm not sure what I'm really expecting to "feel" different, after all, but a new year is always a symbolic sort of thing, after all.

This year has already started somewhat differently, though, because I'm in a nice flat in the city I wanted to (and indeed used to) live in. I'm close to my friends (geographically speaking, obviously) and have even had them over to visit more times in the last month than I did in the year and a half I lived in Chippenham, which is good and makes me happy. I feel like I'm in a relatively comfortable situation — I enjoy my job, particularly as I get to work from home; I have an awesome girlfriend who puts up with my idiosyncracies and shows an interest in the things I'm passionate about; I have two surprisingly entertaining pet rats to whom I probably attribute far too much in the way of perceived personality; I'm relatively comfortably off money-wise, having cleared a bunch of longstanding debts last year (though student loan is still outstanding and probably always will be, gah); and, to cut a long, tedious and fairly directionless list short, I'm feeling fairly positive about the future.

As anyone who has suffered with one of the various forms of depression and/or anxiety will attest, though, it's not always that easy to keep feeling positive, even though things are generally seemingly going sort of all right. It's easy to lapse into negative feelings or self-doubt, and wonder if the things you're doing are really the right things. It's easy to want to make big, grand gestures to define yourself and feel like your life is moving in the right direction, but at the same time it's difficult to either carry those things through — or even to know if they're the right thing to do in the first place.

I'm content for now, though, occasional lapses in mood aside. It's a pleasant feeling. I know I still have some way to go before feeling "better" — if it's ever truly possible to feel "better" from these sorts of issues — but I at least feel like I'm heading in the right direction. When I look back at some of the posts I made over a thousand days ago, I see someone who was desperately unhappy and struggling to make it through the day for much of his time. It's hard to let memories of bad times like that go, but I'd be lying if I said things weren't massively better than they were way back then.

Onwards and upwards, then. The end of January will see us take ownership of a new sofa that will hopefully fit up the stairs into our flat, have our Internet properly connected and subsequently feel like we're "properly" settled in.

Bring it on 2013, I'm a-ready for ya.

#oneaday Day 799: Um, Fluttershy

A discussion with my friend Lynette earlier today (who, it has to be said, squeed rather enthusiastically at the news that I have been watching My Little Pony) saw us pondering, as so often happens with strong, character-led pieces of work, which My Little Pony was the most "us" — or at least the one we felt most able to relate to.

My answer — Fluttershy — is apparently one of the more popular ones, for a variety of reasons that I haven't explored as yet and am mildly terrified to, given the deep, deep rabbithole that sites such as knowyourmeme and TVTropes can be.

I imagine, given her timid nature, that there's at least an element of crossover between Fluttershy fans and Hanako fans — a category which, if you recall, I count myself firmly in. Her endearing meekness, anxiety and loyalty are character traits I can well and truly understand, and I know I have more than a few similar traits myself.

Take the fact that she has a clear case of social anxiety, and is nervous about showing off her talents except when absolutely necessary or in a situation where no-one can judge her. When taken along on a perilous journey to use her talent for "parenting" (for want of a better word) to convince an unruly, belligerent dragon to go and sleep somewhere else, she's (understandably, I feel) too scared to go in there and do her thing, even in front of her friends. And only partly because she's dealing with a fucking dragon.

I know too well how all that feels — of the difficulty and anxiety which surrounds using your talents and abilities in "public", even in front of people you love and trust. (Not the "dragon" bit.) I know, for example, that I'm a decent writer and that people enjoy reading my stuff, but I hate hate hate anyone watching me write. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why this is — whether it's anxiety over people "backseat editing" or judging the things I've written before I've finished is anyone's guess. I just know that I hate it — but I like showing it off when it's finished, namely when I can hit "publish", light the blue touch paper and just walk away. (At this point, my fear of negative, destructive feedback comes into play, but that's a whole other matter.)

Same thing with music, really. Practicing is a necessary part of being able to play complex pieces of music, but I hate people listening to me practice. Performing? Fine. Playing the same bit over and over and over again until I get it right? Well, that's something to do with headphones or when no-one's in the house. Something of a combination of perfectionism ("if anyone's going to hear this, I want it to be right") and worrying about the judgement of others ("they won't want to hear those three bars repeated over and over and over! They'll tell me to shut up, or hurry up and get it right or something"), perhaps? I don't know.

Same with doing anything vaguely creative, in fact. I hate being watched doing something like that. Perhaps it's because doing something creative puts you in a vulnerable position where your "soul" (or whatever) is on display, and anyone could quite easily strike it for massive damage with an unkind word or an ill-timed snigger. It's something I could really do with Getting The Hell Over, but it's also one of those things that has indelibly stamped itself onto my personality over the years.

Whatever the reasons for it all… Um, Fluttershy? I feel your pain, girl.