#oneaday Day 72: A life less ordinary

I can’t shake the feeling that life just used to be… more interesting. When I look back on the last time I did this #oneaday thing and consider all the things that happened back then, and I look at today, I can’t help but feel that while there were things that happened back then I’d rather not go through again, things were certainly more interesting and exciting.

Part of this is self-inflicted, of course. I’m not the same person I was ten years ago for a variety of reasons: physically, mentally and emotionally. I’m older, so of course the day-to-day nature of one’s life changes as you age. But in the middle of all that there was COVID, and that, for me, is where a lot of the dissatisfaction I’m feeling right now started from.

Sure, it was easy to joke about the COVID lockdowns as being government-sanctioned “not having to go out and interact with three-dimensional people”. And that was fun for a bit. Plus I certainly don’t want to go back to a full-time office job, because working from home is just way more convenient. Any bosses who are attempting to get their workforce back into the office full time are just trying to exert control over them: simple as that. And, frankly, fuck that.

But the COVID lockdowns also brought with them the inability to see friends and family, and that lack of socialisation has persisted long after the lockdowns ended. My “IRL” friends were already reaching a point where they rarely wanted to do anything together due to them starting families and whatnot, but things haven’t picked up at all ever since their children grew up a bit and the restrictions on us doing things together lifted. Even trying to get any of them to play something online occasionally is like pulling teeth from a particularly bloodless stone.

And daily life feels increasingly dominated by “online” and social media. I’ve doubtless spoken before about how odious I find TikTok and short-video culture, but every time I inadvertently come into contact with a vertical video of someone yelling at their phone camera, I’m reminded that the world moved on and kind of left me behind a bit.

To be perfectly honest, I’m pretty sure the world left me behind 20+ years ago. I’m pretty sure I was at my happiest and most content between 1997 and 2002 — the years from sixth form to the end of university. I had friends, I had hobbies, I had things I could go out and do, and I never felt the same sense of indefinable “pressure” on my mental health that I do today. Sure, there were things I wish I had done differently and regrets I have, but I was happy and satisfied with my lot in life.

Today? I feel like I’m being ungrateful when I say that I’m dissatisfied with existence, because I have a lot that I should be thankful for — a wonderful wife, two gorgeous cats, a nice house, a video game collection that would blow the mind of my teenage self — but life in general just feels so empty. And I don’t really know what to do about it other than wallow in nostalgia and think about how nice things used to be.

Oh well. I don’t have any solutions for that right now, so I think I’m just going to go upstairs and watch another episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 14: Sleep, Needed

In stark contrast to yesterday’s very good sleep (albeit with interruption by noisily vomiting cat), last night I slept terribly. I went to bed with a pain in my back and took some painkillers, which helped a bit, but it took me ages to get to sleep and I woke up multiple times throughout the night. There wasn’t even a good reason for it this time; Patti was, as usual, in her spot at the foot of our bed, but she wasn’t in the way or being sick. I was just waking up and then taking a long time to actually get back to sleep again.

Still, it’s the weekend now, so if I want to (I probably want to) I can have a nice lie-in tomorrow. I don’t think we have anything vastly important planned for the weekend, so we can just have a bit of nice relaxing time, I can make some videos and we can generally recharge and recuperate ahead of it all starting again on Monday.

I’m not going to the gym or swimming today as I still feel extremely stiff and achey, not helped by the poor night’s sleep. I have succeeded in my original goal, though, which was to get out of the house in the morning and do something active at least twice, and I think I will make some time over the weekend to go either swimming or to the gym, depending on their respective availability.

I’m feeling motivated to try and get things going back in the right direction, so it’s a bit frustrating that it feels like my body is just going “eh, no” right this second, but I’m sure that’s 1) a temporary thing and 2) something that I’ll have to power through in the long term. I’m willing to put in that work, but there’s also no rush to get it done. Past experience tells me that working up to things gradually is the way to go; try and do too much too soon and it’s easy to completely lose all that motivation you’d built up. And I don’t want that to happen.

Apropos of nothing, I thought I’d look back at what I was up to ten years ago today, since the long life of this blog means I can actually check such things. It appears that I was 1,615 posts deep into my original #oneaday effort, and I’d just watched a then-new show on the TV channel Dave known as Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled. I have no idea if this show is still running, but reading back over the post, I remember it being enjoyable, lightweight television that didn’t demand too much of the viewer.

Reading that makes me think how much our relationship with media has changed in just ten years. Today, I’m very unlikely to watch anything “on television” (i.e. live broadcasts), and a lot of the stuff I do watch on a day-to-day basis is via YouTube. Right now, I am watching through all of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on DVD as a bedtime activity, though, and that’s a nice reminder of how enjoyable classic TV could be… hell, how enjoyable a show of that format still is.

In fact, I’m probably due some sort of retrospective post on Deep Space Nine and my relationship with Star Trek in general. Well, I guess that’s a topic for tomorrow sorted! For now, though, my dinner is ready so I’m off to eat and then quite possibly to just collapse into bed aftwards.

The Age of Loneliness.

I’m having one of those evenings where I’m feeling a tad maudlin for a variety of reasons, but essentially it all boils down to one central issue: the fact that today, we live in a world that is more “connected” than it has ever been, and yet also where it is highly likely that any one given individual will be suffering from a crippling sense of loneliness and isolation.

This has affected me to various degrees over the years. As someone on the spectrum and with social anxiety issues, there are most definitely times where I very much want to be by myself. I’d go so far as to say that I prefer the vast majority of my time to be spent by myself — or at least, in the company of others who are happy to get on with their own thing while I also get on with mine. (My relationship with my wife very much falls into that category.)

However, I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started craving a certain level of… interaction. I don’t think I’m necessarily craving something more than what I used to enjoy — rather, I simply think that the opportunities I once had to just hang out with people that I liked are no longer present, both offline and online.

For me, probably my golden age of being “sociable” was between the ages of 16 and 22 or so — to put it another way, from sixth form onwards through university. There, I found I had a good balance between what one might call a relatively “normal” social life — in that I had both time to myself and time with friends.

Better times, probably. I’m the second one in from the left. I fancied the girl who is sitting on me.

In retrospect, this period was almost certainly the time of my life at which I was my happiest, even if it was also the time where I first started feeling somewhat conscious of my own mental health and that something wasn’t quite “right”. I felt I had people who liked me, who appreciated me for who I was, and who supported me when I needed it. I had people that I simply enjoyed spending time with, and that I wanted to know more about. I even fell in love once or twice, though I have to admit that none of those particular situations quite ended up the way I perhaps would have hoped.

But it didn’t matter, because everything else was just… pleasant. It was good to see people. It was good to talk to them, share private jokes and just enjoy their company. It was sometimes difficult for me to take that step forward into a friendship group rather than simply observing from the periphery — but on those occasions I summoned up the courage and mental fortitude to do so, I never regretted it. (Well, except perhaps once.)

These days, though? There are days where it feels like I have no-one. I know that’s not true — I’m fortunate enough to have a very supportive family and a wife who is inordinately patient with my numerous shortcomings as a human being, and there are friends I have where all it takes is a single message to get some sort of supportive acknowledgement back in response — but even so, there are days where it feels like that.

Days where I feel like people might just forget about my existence if I didn’t prod them on WhatsApp or Discord every now and then. Days where I miss the ability to speak to them via some means other than ad-infested social media, which has become increasingly terrible for simple conversation as the years have advanced. Days where I miss having the equivalent of bundling around a friend’s after lectures have finished, playing N64 games and drinking made-up cocktails until the small hours. And days where I miss people having conversations via means other that boring memes and GIFs. You know, with words and stuff.

I am exceedingly lonely, and what makes this feel all the more painful at times is that the numerous means I’ve tried to make myself “noticeable” in some way online all feel like they’ve failed in one way or another.

I’ve made a point of celebrating the things I love online in various ways — both written and through video — over the course of the last few years, in the hope that it might draw people with similar interests to me, or help the people I care about the most to understand me a bit better. But it often feels like hardly anyone gives a shit. In fact, it often feels like it’s the absolute hardest to get the people supposedly closest to me to give a shit.

I don’t blame anyone for this. Today’s world makes ridiculous demands on our time and attention span, and when push comes to shove, most folks will end up choosing some form of professionally created “content” over something that some dude they know decided to make.

But it is getting to a point where I’m feeling both exhausted and out of ideas. And, to make matters worse, as my mind and general enthusiasm for existence has declined, so too has my body. The COVID years in particular knocked me about a lot, leaving me today a disgusting fat lump of a man who is in near-constant mild but nonetheless annoying and frustrating pain, finds it difficult to do pretty much anything relatively normal and is increasingly hesitant about going outside because he’s so disgusted with the way he looks and feels all the time.

Change starts from within and all that. But when you’re feeling crippling loneliness, that desire to change and improve things for yourself — because without a doubt, improving things just for myself would be a benefit — is constantly held back by that big, hanging question: “what’s the point?”

So anyway! That’s what I’m feeling this Sunday evening! Hope you’re having a good one!

EDIT: Apparently I wrote a post with this exact same title in 2014. Good to know that things have improved.

The Ravages of Age

Andie and I are suffering from what appears to be colloquially known as “long COVID”. That is to say, having had COVID earlier in the year, neither of our bodies have quite recovered from the experience, leaving us feeling way shittier than we really should be when we’re otherwise “healthy”. I use the term loosely because neither of us are exactly “healthy”, but we’re not actively afflicted with any illnesses, so far as I’m concerned.

According to the NHS, the symptoms of long COVID include being achey, tired all the time and generally feeling crap. I can confirm that all of those things are present and correct in my own body; the whole experience has left me feeling about thirty years older than I actually am, and I’m rather keen to leave this feeling behind now. I don’t feel I should be feeling intense pain when sitting down for too long, or standing up for too long, or just generally existing at my age, but, well, I’m sure this is at least partly my own fault.

We’re not doing nothing about it, mind; both of us are following WeightWatchers in an attempt to shed some excess baggage, because that will probably help the symptoms we’re suffering. And while it’s slow going — at least partly because with both OG COVID and long COVID we’ve found ourselves struggling with motivation, because the last thing you want to do when you feel like crap is diet — things are going relatively well. We just need to try and stick with it over the long term. Which is easier said than done, of course, particularly when you’re feeling pretty exhausted and all you want to do is eat in the vain attempt that you might regain some energy and vigour.

After the last couple of years — and after the whole news over the “cost of living crisis” we’re presently enduring here in the UK — it sort of feels like we need to resign ourselves to life being shitty in general, so what, really, is a bit of physical suffering to go along with feelings of existential crisis, a sense that you don’t really belong in the modern world and a quite genuine feeling that the world is actually in the process of ending right now?

There’s a cheery thought for your Thursday afternoon, now, isn’t it? So I think I’m off to go and live my life in denial with either some Final Fantasy XIV, Tower of Fantasy or both. At least in those worlds I can do something about the things that are Wrong, both with myself and with the world at large!

2468: Empathy

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While I’ve worked a number of crap jobs over the years, one positive thing that I do feel I have taken from each and every crap job is a sense of empathy: a feeling that yes, I understand how people who do this every day have it.

Consequently, I find it pretty hard to get mad at people who are just doing their job, sometimes with all manner of obstacles not of their own making in the way.

I try and extend this attitude to everything about life, even those jobs that I haven’t directly done myself; I know what it’s like to have to pay your dues (and indeed am continuing to pay my own dues in the hope that something actually good will happen one day) and, as such, don’t get mad when my order in a restaurant is late, or if a package doesn’t arrive on time, or if someone in customer service isn’t able to help me on this particular occasion.

This doesn’t mean I blindly forgive, obviously; if someone has clearly fucked up somewhere then I’d expect them to be suitably apologetic about it. But the reason for them fucking up in the first place? I might be able to understand that, whether it’s working long hours, working for pay well under what you deserve for challenging, demanding work or having to meet increasingly unreasonable targets from the higher-ups in the company who are completely out of touch with the man on the figurative street.

I like to think this is a generally positive quality in myself, and it’s also one thing that keeps me hanging on when times are tough such as they are at the moment. If nothing else, I am developing “life experience”, coming to understand how all manner of different people experience the world and what they have to put up with from Joe Public.

Joe Public can be an asshole.

Joe Public can, however, also be appreciative of someone who goes out of their way to help them, or someone who does their miserable job with a smile on their face, or someone who simply has a kind and friendly word to share.

I try and fall into the latter category whenever possible, even when it’s tough to do so. To date, my attempts have usually been successful, and even, in a couple of instances, have defused situations of high tension that have arisen for usually stupid reasons.

I derive a small degree of comfort from the fact that every time I do this, I am helping to develop myself as a decent human being. I derive somewhat less comfort from the fact that having empathy for other people is, unfortunately, not a particularly marketable or profitable skill — at least not without expensive training to forge that raw material into something a bit more tangible.

My faith in myself may be at an all-time low thanks to being kicked around repeatedly by all and sundry over the years, but at least I still have this to hold on to, I guess. It’s something. Not much, but it’s something.

2447: Left Behind

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I think one of the biggest sources of my anxiety these days is the growing feeling that I’m being “left behind” by the rest of the world thanks to the fact that everything changes so damn quickly these days… and moreover, if you don’t keep up with it, you may well end up having difficulties.

As I type this, I’m occasionally stealing glances over to my dining room table, upon which sits an Atari 800XL and a CRT TV-monitor for which I’m currently awaiting a cable to allow the two to talk to one another. I’m excited to get the 800XL up and running not just because “woo, wow, retro”, but because it formed such an integral part of my early life that it feels like a small piece of “stablity” in the turbulent waters of the modern age; a rock I can cling on to in order to avoid getting swept away.

This might sound like an odd thing to say with regard to a 30+ year old computer that I’m not entirely sure still works (I’m pretty sure it does), but since tracking it down I’ve become quite interested — excited, even — in the idea of using it for various purposes other than just games. Specifically, I’m perhaps most excited to use it as a “distraction-free” means of word processing; once I get it up and running, I fully intend to fire up the old copy of AtariWriter and actually do some ol’ fashioned plain text composition. (My one nod to it actually being 2016 is the addition of an “SIO2PC” cable, which will allow me to transfer files from the Atari to a PC or Mac for safekeeping rather than relying on 30+ year old floppy disks.)

This probably sounds like a lot of effort to go to, but I’m excited because it allows me to focus on one thing rather than constantly being bombarded by the distractions that life in 2016 — and computing in 2016 — offers. Multitasking is all very well and good, but when you’re trying to get anything done and Google Chrome is right there willing you to go and, I don’t know, hunt for rare Pepes or something, it’s sometimes hard to resist. Boot up a word processor that you have to load from disk and can’t do anything else while it’s running, on the other hand, and you have a situation much more conducive to Getting Shit Done, because once you’ve spent a couple of minutes listening to the soothing (and occasionally terrifying) sound of that disk drive snarking and zurbiting its way to your chosen program, it feels like something of a waste to then just shut it all down without actually doing anything.

I’ve drifted off on a tangent a bit, but my point is fairly simple: I long for the simplicity and the single-mindedness of days gone by, and am feeling increasingly stressed out and anxious by the constant demands for attention we get from all angles these days in 2016. I’ve attempted to minimise my exposure to these distractions as much as possible — primarily through minimising my contact with social media, which is probably the biggest distraction of all for most people these days — but with each passing day, I feel more and more inclined to just want to shut myself in a dark room and have a bit of peace and quiet to myself.

2281: Trying Times

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I’d like to be fairly open about this, within reason, as I don’t want to sound like I’m constantly moaning about stuff — particularly with my desire to be more positive that I expressed the other day — but I feel it’s important to share with those of you who read regularly and whom I consider to be friends.

It’s a difficult period of life right now, as you might have surmised from some recent posts. I’d like to talk a little about what’s going on and why, and how you might be able to help.

Basically the main trouble we’re having stems from a chronic pain condition my wife has which is called, if I remember correctly, interstitial cystitis, also known as the rather literal “painful bladder syndrome”. The issue has been bothering her for well over a year now, and for the last few months she’s been off work due to how bad the pain has been. With me having also been out of work since my seasonal position at Game came to an end in January, as you can probably imagine, this has made financial security something of an issue. Technically I do have a new job now, but as I’ll explain in a moment, the situation isn’t exactly ideal.

Of greater concern than the financial issues — though they are related — is the matter of mental health, both for my wife and for me. Andie’s inability to work has led to her being practically housebound, which as anyone who has been housebound will know, can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation that can sometimes escalate into more severe negative feelings. Without going into details — this isn’t the time or place for that — suffice it to say that Andie has had a very difficult time of it with both her mental and physical health over the last few months, and it’s by turns heartbreaking, upsetting, frustrating and infuriating to cope with for me, since there’s literally nothing I can do about it.

The reason I say the situation with my new job isn’t particularly ideal is that, as anyone who has been left alone and isolated with mental health issues will know, being by yourself when you’re feeling particularly low isn’t a good or safe situation to be in. I know, I’ve been there — though thankfully the negative feelings I had never escalated to such a degree that I did myself serious harm. (The most I did to myself was bruise my hand a bit from thumping the floor in frustration.) My new job is in Basingstoke, which is at least half an hour’s drive away and thus puts me out of range of being able to easily rush back if necessary. It puts Andie in the position where she feels like she has no-one to call on for help in the day if she needs it, and it puts me in the position where I don’t know what state I might find her in when I get home, which is, naturally, rather worrying.

So with that in mind, for the next week or two I’m going to be taking some time to make sure she’s all right — and that I’m all right, for that matter. We’re getting some help and support from various sources — both family and medical — but anything those of you out there in friend-land can offer would be most welcome, even if it’s just a kind word and a chat now and again. (If you do feel inclined to help us out financially, may I direct you to my Patreon page, where you can help me make my writing into a proper income stream.)

I hope things are going to be all right. It’s easy to fall into a pit of negativity when this sort of thing happens and there doesn’t seem to be any sort of easy solution. But with the right help and support, we’ll hopefully make it out of this particular pit, be able to get back on track and start living our life the way we want it to again. That would be very nice right now.

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.)

2104: Adult Content

From a Plinky prompt:

“When did you realise you were an adult?”

I’ll be frank with you, dear reader; despite being 34 years of age, despite being married, despite being a homeowner, despite having a new(ish) car… I don’t feel like I’m an adult.

I mean, obviously I know I am an adult, because I have to worry about things like council tax, credit cards and putting the rubbish out. But I don’t feel like an adult. I’m not particularly houseproud (except when I know people are coming to visit), I’m not the sort of person who enjoys DIY “projects” — I doubt the day when I really want to “do the bathroom” or similar will ever come, whereas for some friends of mine it came practically the moment they left university — and I don’t really know how insurance works.

These are things that people never teach you, you see — or at least, they didn’t when I was in education. During my few years as a teacher, I did deliver a few “Key Skills” classes that, among other things, involved a whole lesson on how to work a washing machine — yes, really — but I must confess to feeling a little hypocritical educating the youths of the day on things that, in some cases, I wasn’t hugely familiar with myself.

Regular readers will, of course, know that my brain is riddled with hangups and anxieties over all sorts of things, ranging from simple communication with other people to how, exactly, you go about calculating your tax code. These anxieties, at times, build into what feels like outright fear, and I find myself worrying that I’ll get everything “wrong” and mess it up; this feeling, when it grows big enough, is enough to completely paralyse me from doing something I need to do, putting it off and putting it off until it becomes a considerably bigger problem than it would have been if I’d just done it when I first became aware of it.

I probably shouldn’t do that. One of these days I’ll end up putting off something really important and getting myself into a disastrous situation. Fortunately, I’m not alone; I have people who look out for me, and while I don’t want to become dependent on them or anything, knowing that sets me a little more at ease with my life than I would be if I was trying to struggle through all by myself.

So, in answer to the original question… when did I realise I was an adult? I don’t think I ever have realised that I was an adult; I don’t feel like I am an adult, I feel like I still have a hell of a lot to learn about the world, and I don’t have the first clue how to go about doing it. And, more to the point, I’m not sure I particularly want to.

That’s probably not a very grown-up attitude to take. But, well… you know.

2028: Obstacle Course

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Obstacle Course.”

In yesterday’s look at the sad archive that Plinky.com has become, I stumbled across the fact that WordPress.com now has a “Daily Post” writing prompt. I’m not hugely involved with the overall WordPress community, really, but thought this might be an interesting means of finding some new people — or at the very least, providing myself with some inspiration on what to write day in, day out.

This is today’s prompt, then:

Think about what you wanted to accomplish last week. Did you? What are the things that hold you back from doing everything you’d like to do?

Well, this is going to be a fairly bleak post as I’m in a fairly bleak mood today, but as regular readers will know, sometimes the act of getting those thoughts and feelings out onto the page can prove to be a form of “therapy” in their own right. So we’ll see. Expect honesty.

No, I did not accomplish what I wanted to accomplish last week, though this is partly due to the fact that I didn’t really have anything I wanted to accomplish last week. The trouble I have at the moment is that I’m just sort of “drifting” with occasional freelance work and nothing concrete to occupy my time and thoughts day after day.

In some ways, this is pleasant. Not having any “commitments” as such means that I can essentially do what I want to do, though it’s not long before anxieties over things like money start creeping in and making me feel that I should be doing “more”. More what, I’m not exactly sure, to be honest; the feeling that overtakes me at these times is always simply “you should be doing more” without any specifics attached.

Let’s ponder the things I did achieve, at least: since the Slimming World job I mentioned a few posts back isn’t going to happen for the moment (I need to be a bit closer to my target before I’ll be considered, which is fair enough) I applied to another job. Just a part-time job in retail, so nothing particularly exciting, special or indeed well-paid, but if I’m successful it will be something that provides at least a bit of reasonably predictable income each month that I can use to support the sporadic freelancing I’ve been doing. From there I can decide if I want to pursue that in more depth and attempt to make a career out of it — probably not, but we’ll see — or if I simply want to keep it as one of several things I have on the go at once. I’m inclined to think that the way I can be “happiest” (for want of a better term) is to have a number of different things to do rather than getting bored and frustrated with just one thing — or, worse, getting bored and frustrated with nothing.

One of the awkward things, though, is the fact that I’ve picked up some piano pupils and have been enjoying teaching them so far — and both they and their parents seem to like me, too. This in itself isn’t awkward, of course, but with the current timing of the lessons I have with them, it would make a “regular” job on “normal” hours a little tricky on the day of the week when I teach them. This is proving to be a bit of a mental block for me, to be honest; the prospect of either having to tell a prospective employer that I can’t work on a specific day after a specific time is anxiety-inducing, and at the other end of the spectrum, the prospect of having to juggle around commitments that I’ve already made is also anxiety-inducing. Still, it’s a bridge I will no doubt cross if I ever reach it.

Other achievements? Well, I lost another pound. Slow and steady wins the race, as they say; some people in our Slimming World group aren’t particularly satisfied if they “only” lose a pound in a week, but me? Having not been able to lose any weight for years and now consistently losing at least one pound every week, I’m happy with that. It’s one of the very few things I feel that is going right at the moment, so I cling onto these small victories for all they’re worth.

To answer the second part of the question, then, I think it’s probably pretty clear from what I’ve already written above that the thing holding me back the most from achieving things is anxiety. I had been taking anti-anxiety meds for a little while, though I don’t feel like they’d been having much effect. On reflection, though, now I’ve run out, it’s quite possible that the way I’m feeling today is proof that they had been doing at least something; if not alleviating the anxiety altogether, then at least keeping it at bay somewhat. I’m going to attempt to make a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning and refresh my supply to see if that helps. I would look into proper therapy, too, but while I don’t have a stable income the prospect of having to pay up for that, ironically, fills me with further anxiety.

So all in all, then, things are a bit fucked at the moment. My “obstacle course” doesn’t feel like it’s altogether fair; it feels like I’m surrounded on all sides by impassable objects, and the only way past them is to do something difficult, unpleasant or outright painful. It’s a rubbish feeling and I sincerely hope it passes soon.

For now, though, it’s an evening of stewing in my own bleakness, I guess; it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last. Thanks, as always, for giving ear to my problems, and I hope that one day — preferably soon — I have something a bit more positive to share with you all.