Tag: depression

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.

1667: Depression’s a Bitch

I’m conscious of adding to the noise surrounding this topic at the moment, but given, well, the nature of the topic, I felt it important to speak about it.

On the off-chance you’ve missed the news, it seems that beloved comedy actor Robin Williams was found dead recently in what appeared to be a suicide. The star had been struggling with depression for some time, and the conclusion to his life story is an all too common tale for those who suffer under the weight of the Black Dog’s attention.

I have written about depression numerous times on this blog, but at times like this it pays to re-explain some things to those who have never encountered it or do not know what it is like to be plunged into that particular world of darkness. I have no shame in saying that I have suffered because of it, and it has helped define the person I am today, both for better and for worse.

Depression is something that is difficult to define, because it changes its own manifestation so frequently, and seemingly at random. On some days, it can make you want to not get up, not get dressed, not leave the house. On others, it can make you want to go and look at things that make you sad, pondering what might have been. On others still, it can make you have strongly emotional reactions to the slightest stimulus. It beats and pounds on your brain; it makes you think you’re stupid, worthless, ugly, fat, disgusting, useless, incapable of doing anything worthwhile, doomed to failure; it makes you think nobody loves you, nobody cares about you, nobody would even notice if you were just to die here and now; it makes you wonder if life is even worth persevering with if all each new day brings is more pain.

It doesn’t strike every day, either. A depressed person is not perpetually down or sad. On some days, they can go about their business perfectly normally, as if nothing is wrong. Sometimes, a poorly timed comment or a badly phrased joke can bring the Black Dog back at a second’s notice; others, it is banished to a cage in a far-off corner of the mind. But it always breaks out again eventually.

There is no “cure”. There is no magic bullet. You can learn to cope with it, but it never truly goes away. And on days when just everything seems to be getting worse and worse, the temptation can be to want to escape from it through the only means seemingly available: to escape this world altogether, in the hope that the next, whatever that might be, is more hospitable. I’ve only come close to contemplating this during one period in my life — the time when my marriage fell apart is when I felt lower than I’ve ever felt in my life, and on more than one occasion I wondered if it would really matter, if anyone would really care if I were to just end it all and leave the world behind me. Obviously I didn’t do that, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this now, and I’m glad I didn’t; while I wouldn’t say my life is perfect just yet, it’s certainly been making slow but steady progress back into a territory I would describe as “on track”.

And yet here’s the thing: I still get depressed. I live in a house that I own along with a wonderful partner whom I love very much. I’m soon to start a new job that should be a good fit for my skills and experience. I’ve bought a new car that I like a lot. I’m in a position where I don’t have to panic too much about money. I have most of the things I want in life, and the means to acquire those that I don’t. And I still have my health, all my limbs and my mental faculties. I count these blessings — and plenty of others besides — every day, and yet still there are some days where the darkness is inescapable; some days that just lay you low, unable to do anything, unable to define exactly “what’s wrong”.

That’s what depression is. It can strike anyone, anywhere, any time. It doesn’t make any distinctions based on any of the labels we humans like to ascribe to one another. At best, it’s an inconvenience. At worst, it’s a killer.

Should any of the above seem familiar to you, I’d encourage you to talk about it when you can. Don’t be afraid of judgement or negativity; reach out to those you know and trust — or a professional trained in such things if there is no-one in your personal life that you trust enough with this — and speak up. Don’t suffer in silence. You matter, even if there may be days when it doesn’t feel like it. The world would be a worse place without you in it.

Most of all: good luck. The battle against depression is a tough, never-ending fight that can never truly be won, but, as we so regrettably saw with Williams, it sure can be lost. Hold your head high, stand up to that Black Dog and tell it to fuck off. You’ll be surprised how many other voices you’ll hear; you are not alone.

1659: Time Off

There’s still nearly a month before I start my new job. With the job search over, this means that I am now being left largely to my own devices on a daily basis, which sounds like a dream come true, doesn’t it?

It isn’t.

Much like working from home isn’t the wonderfully liberating experience you might think it would be, having a protracted amount of time to yourself with not a lot that you really “need” to do is not everything you might think it is, either. Days are long, boring and filled with vast tracts of nothingness, unless, of course, you find yourself something to occupy them with.

Most days, I’m pretty good at occupying myself. In the simplest cases, I’ll simply play some games, watch some TV or read some stuff. Others, I might go out — maybe into town, or down to the gym, or just for a wander around outside. Others still, I might do things that “need” doing, like mowing the lawn or cleaning or tidying.

But there are days — today was one of them — where nothing feels like it’s quite “right”; nothing feels like it will satisfy you. It’s days like today that often see me sitting on the sofa staring into space for surprisingly lengthy periods of time, caught between desires, wants and needs, and never quite being able to muster up the energy or motivation to pursue any of them. Doing something I know I’ll enjoy feels like a waste of time; doing something “productive” feels like it’s an insurmountable challenge.

All this, of course, is a side-effect of depressive tendencies; it’s not that I actually don’t want to do anything, it’s simply that, for whatever reason, my brain decides that it wants to be sad today, and the jumbled impulses the depressed brain fires out have a tendency to override everything else and prioritise that feeling of sadness. It’s not sadness about anything in particular, it just is; it’s just a frustratingly dark feeling from which it’s difficult to escape, particularly if you’re home alone, like I have been.

It’s for this reason that I’m genuinely looking forward to starting work again — and genuinely looking forward to the fact that, for the first time in four years, I’ll be working in a place where there are actual other living, breathing people with whom I might be able to interact on a daily basis. (Said interactions will, of course, be prone to my other big issue — that of social anxiety — but that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it.) I’m looking forward to having the change of scenery each day — the chance to drive my new car and spend some time listening to the radio, music or podcasts; the opportunity to spend several hours away from the house; the pleasant feeling of “coming home” after a hard day’s work — and of just, you know, doing something.

Tell that to my twentysomething self and he’d probably laugh in your face. But, frankly, life without work is not as fun as you might think it would be. (Well, it probably would be if you had more money than you’d ever know what to do with — though I imagine even that would get boring after a while.) Consequently, I find myself counting down the days until I become just another cog in the great machines of business — and genuinely looking forward to that day, rather than dreading it.

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?

1467: Broken

Lara’s death hit me pretty hard. Or, to be more accurate, it was the tipping point; the straw that broke the camel’s back and other such cliches: the bad thing happening that caused all the other bad things in my head to overflow, boil over and spill out like some sort of pitch-black overcooked soup of eternal despair.

To clarify: today has not been a good day. After spending yesterday rather upset at our dear little furry friend’s passing, I woke up this morning not feeling any better. In fact, feeling significantly worse. It was that kind of bleak feeling where it’s nearly impossible to move, speak or function at anything more than the most basic level. I cried for no apparent reason on two separate occasions; it helped a little.

Right now? I’m at least functioning somewhat better than I was earlier, but I still feel like my brain is broken (and I have a headache, too, which isn’t helping matters). I’ve had a good day at work — got an article shared by TotalBiscuit, yo — to distract me from the bad things rattling around in my head, but they’ve still been there lurking on the periphery, waiting to lay me low once again.

I haven’t felt this bad for quite some time, and it sucks. It’s not entirely due to Lara’s passing, either; while that did indeed make me very sad and it still makes me tear up a bit to see Lucy by herself in her cage, as I say that was little more than the stimulus; the additional pressure that caused everything to come gushing out.

It’s hard to know how to keep feelings like this under control. For the most part, I’d been feeling reasonably positive recently, but apparently I’d been repressing more emotions than I’d thought. The silly thing — and one that will be familiar to anyone with depressive tendencies — is that with all the confusion and chaos these emotions bring, it’s impossible to come to some sort of rational explanation as to what is making you feel so bad. This, of course, makes the answer “what’s wrong?” extremely difficult to answer with anything other than a non-committal “I don’t know”, but it’s true; more often than not, when I feel like this, I really don’t know what it is that’s making me feel so bad.

Today should be a positive day, though, for a couple of reasons: Andie and I went to find out how much the bank would lend us for a mortgage earlier today and it turned out to be more than we were expecting; and I wrote an article that’s been pretty widely shared and attracted a ton of potentially new eyes to USgamer, which is great. So I should focus on those positive things and less on the negative, and use the rest of the evening to do things that cheer me up and make me happy. Then hopefully, eventually, the dark edges will fade and I can get back to some semblance of normality again.

1325: Focal Point

I’m sure any writer pals reading this can probably relate, judging from some things I’ve read recently: it is infinitely easier to focus on negative things than it is about positive ones. And those negative things absolutely dominate your thoughts, almost completely obliterating any good work the positive things might have done.

Let’s take an example. Recently, I wrote a lengthy article about “otaku games” — that particularly misunderstood aspect of Japanese gaming where people who don’t play them constantly judge them as being nothing more than pervy fanservice. To be fair to their opinion, there often is a fair amount of pervy fanservice in them, but it’s pretty rare that is the sole or even the most important part of them. Check out the piece here.

On the whole, response to the post has been very positive. I’ve been very happy to hear from a lot of fans of Japanese gaming who thanked me for giving a reasoned, rational take on the subject — with input from people who are actually involved in bringing these titles to the West — and for treating both the games and their fans with respect. I’ve had people tell me it’s a wonderful article, compliment me on covering something that other sites don’t bother with (or take the more common “This is Bad and Wrong, LOL JAPAN” stance on) and generally express a very genuine-feeling sense of appreciation for something I worked hard on.

So what do I find my brain focusing on? The guy who tweeted at me saying “TLDR” (seriously, that is pretty much one of the most disrespectful things you can say to a writer, especially when they’ve worked hard on something — try giving some constructive criticism or, even better, actually engaging with the points made in the piece), and the commenter who complained about me “not talking about the game” in my Tales of Xillia review and lambasting me for promoting an “incest simulator” in an article about visual novels. (Said “incest simulator” was Kana Little Sister, an incredibly moving work which I’ve written about at length in a number of places on the Internet; to refer to it as an “incest simulator” in a distinctly Daily Mail/Jack Thompson-esque way shows an astonishing lack of understanding, my keen awareness of which was what inspired me to write the “otaku games” piece in the first place.)

I wish I didn’t feel this way, but it made me feel somewhat better to read this piece over on Hookshot, Inc recently. Here’s what was, for me, the most pertinent part:

“Reader feedback is, in many ways, wonderful. It pulls writers down from pedestals and/or ivory towers, and it democratises a whole medium. Every voice is heard, and charlatans are uprooted. A culture of reader-fear has, arguably, been fostered – but ultimately people raise their game, and those much-suspected dirty deals are (by my reckoning) far less likely to occur today than they were five years ago.

“The problem is that all this is incredibly unhealthy for writers with… what you might call an ‘amiably complex psychological disposition’. I’m one of these people (it’s hugely common in my field – and indeed any creative arena) and I couldn’t even count how many of my working days have been ruined by an angry person venting steam beneath a piece I’ve written. The black dog starts barking, and your creative mojo runs away.

“Sure, the trolls are generally a minority – but when your mind has been built to concentrate on negativity rather than happy, happy, joy, joy (and you work at home, on your own) then comments threads are a mental plague pit.

“As a writer – what can you do about this? Well, you can start making your review scores more conservative for a start. Oh, and you can definitely avoid rocking boats that contain angry devotees of certain platforms, genres and franchises. Oh, and how about excising all humour for fear of miscomprehension from angry dullards you’ll never meet?

“OMG HANG ON GUYS OUR COLLECTIVE INSECURITY JUST BROKE GAMES WRITING.

“So basically: say what you want to say, and suck it up. There’s no wrong opinions, only a lot of people who think you should be fired for having a right one.”

I was simultaneously surprised, delighted and slightly depressed to read that. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, and I wish it was possible to train oneself to be more like, say, Jim Sterling — someone whom I greatly admire for his no-nonsense attitude and at least outward appearance of having thick skin. (For all I know, Sterling might finish his day job and cry himself to sleep over the torrents of abuse he receives on a daily basis, and I wouldn’t blame him if that were so — but I somehow doubt that’s the case anyway.)

Ah well, as Will Porter writes in that excellent Hookshot piece — seriously, go read it if you have a few minutes — the only real thing we, as writers, can do is say what we want to say and suck it up somehow. If we start sanitising our own opinions, thoughts and even writing styles to appease the lowest common denominator in the comments threads, then the world of writing would be a boring one indeed.

1274: Get Out

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m feeling a little low. Whether this is a symptom of some sort of summer-related Seasonal Affective Disorder or if it’s just a symptom of my ongoing depression I don’t know, but I am feeling a little low.

One of the reasons I’m feeling low is because I feel fat and gross. I always feel fat and gross, to be fair, because I am fat and gross, but there have been times when I didn’t feel quite as bad about myself as I do right now. Those times had one common factor: I was indulging in a regular exercise routine, either at the gym and pool, or out on the roads running.

I haven’t done any real exercise for quite some time for various reasons — mostly a lack of motivation related to depression, which just feeds the cycle and makes it worse, I know, but also just recently the blazing hot weather we’ve been having every day hasn’t been helping either. The last thing I feel like doing when it feels like a greenhouse outside is picking up my pace to anything more than my usual walk, let alone persisting at that pace for 30-45 minutes at a time.

Consequently, most of the good work I’ve done on running in the past has been largely undone, and I’m a mess with regard to fitness. I don’t really know what to do about it, either; I just feel completely unmotivated and have absolutely no desire whatsoever to go out and “better myself”, but at the same time know that if I don’t I’m going to continue along in this funk not really wanting to do anything.

This Oatmeal comic got me thinking somewhat, because I recognised a lot of the things he was talking about therein. It’s almost — almost — inspired me to get up and go out this evening, but I’m not really feeling it right now. I may make a start on some sort of regime tomorrow, however.

What I’m thinking I might do is rather than jump straight back into the demoralising experience of being a fat guy trying to run, I’ll just try and do a long walk each day. That’s something that feels “doable” and “achievable,” and from there I can always work my way up to doing something a bit more strenuous. I’m not talking about a casual amble, just to be clear; I’m talking about a brisk walk for a significant distance for somewhere in the region of 45 minutes to an hour. I live right near Southampton Common, which is the ideal venue for such perambulations, so I may just start taking advantage of that fact.

Here’s my plan, then, which it remains to be seen whether or not I’ll be able to stick to: I’m going to try and get up reasonably early-ish — i.e. considerably more than half an hour before I’m supposed to start doing work — and head out for a walk in the morning before it gets too unbearably hot. Then I will come home, have breakfast, relax, chill out and start work. Hopefully that small change will have some sort of impact, if not on my body then at least on my mental state.

I’m making no promises as to whether or not this is actually going to do anything, but having good intentions is a first step at least. Let’s see if they lead anywhere.