#oneaday Day 833: Things I miss

It is, I suspect, a natural part of growing older that you start to miss things that are no longer a regular part of your life. So I thought I might reflect on that a bit today. In what turned out to be rough chronological order:

I miss my school days. While there are aspects of those days I'd rather not repeat, there were, on the whole, far more fond memories than sad or otherwise upsetting ones. I enjoyed having a sense of structure to my day; I enjoyed learning new things; I enjoyed having a group of friends around me.

I miss being part of musical groups. I miss the satisfaction of being part of something bigger than myself. I miss the inimitable atmosphere and sense of romance that formal performances brought. I miss surprising people with my capabilities, and earning the respect of people who might never have known who I was otherwise.

I miss my sixth form days. They were like school days, but better. I'd just learn the things I was truly interested in, and the rest of the time, I felt like I was spending good times in good company.

I miss sleepovers at friends' houses, keeping one another awake with relentless farting and impressions of The Emperor from Star Wars. I miss parties where the host thought making a Devil's Food Cake would be a good idea with a house full of drunken teenagers.

I miss that one endless-feeling summer when my parents went away and I had the house to myself. I miss having friends over every day to drink heavily and play Final Fantasy VII on the living room TV. I miss arguing with my friend Woody over whether or not my Japanese PlayStation fucked up the timing on Bust-a-Move (turns out it did, sorry Woody). I miss leaving a metronome outside my friend Edd's door because he'd flaked out early and gone to bed while we were playing Frogger on MAME until 3am.

I miss that first year of university, where it felt like there were endless possibilities ahead of us. I miss being part of a group of people who had been thrown together by chance, but who became fast friends. I miss showing up to morning lectures and only once having to leave because I needed to be sick after a heavy night. I miss having things to learn and do, but the freedom to approach them how I saw fit.

I miss the subsequent years of university, which was the first taste most of us had of living somewhere that was imperfect but charming in its own way. I miss piling around a friend's house to play Mario Kart and Perfect Dark multiplayer on his N64. I miss couch-surfing on a nightly basis.

I miss the university Theatre Group, where I initially felt out of place, but after inadvertently displaying my vulnerability one night in Edinburgh, feeling embraced and comforted by people who did, in fact, like and respect me. I miss growing to feel like I was an important part of that group as a whole. I miss exploring a fascinating form of self-expression. I miss truly finding my voice and my sense of humour. I miss learning to be assertive and confident.

I miss the early days of the Internet, which felt like a brave new frontier and an opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals in a way I had never really experienced. I miss those first real attempts to express myself freely, and learning to understand how to express why the things that were important to me resonated so deeply. I miss an age when going online was a time when you could truly be yourself, and didn't have to have your guard up at all times.

I miss playing board games with friends, on evenings where none of us had any real commitments save those we had made to our collective friendship. I miss communal takeaways. I miss that one drunk guy outside the Indian restaurant that one time who warned us that we'd "get our legs lifted" if we went in there. Still no idea what that means.

I miss having friends, whether we were going out and having a raucous, drunken night out or a quiet night in with board or video games. I miss the feeling of sharing my life with others, like we mattered to one another.

I miss a time where not feeling lonely was a normal state of being.

I miss lots of things. But I think I miss that last one the most.

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#oneaday Day 787: Friendfreeslop

I read an interesting piece earlier on the phenomenon of "friendslop". This is a term I'm not overly fond of, but it serves a purpose as there appears to be a somewhat amorphous if commonly agreed sort-of definition. The piece explores how despite appearances, "friendslop" is something that continues to drive a bit of a wedge between us interacting with one another in the real world by turning socialisation into content.

I'm not sure I agree with (or entirely understand) the piece's core thesis, but I am particularly conscious of the subject today, as there have been a number of glowing reviews dropping for Big Walk, the new game from House House, the company previously known for Untitled Goose Game. I have reached a point where I am immediately suspicious when all the particularly online critics on Bluesky are all over a new indie game, because the last time that happened was Blue Prince, and I fucking hate Blue Prince. But I'm also aware that Big Walk, as good as it might actually be, is fundamentally inaccessible to me.

You see, I don't really have anyone that I might have been able to enjoy that game with right now. Oh sure, I have people that I know and like online, but I don't know any of them that might be interested in playing a game that, for one reason or another, appears to be getting nudged slowly but surely towards the bin marked "Friendslop (complimentary)".

And folks that I would have previously regarded as my "IRL" friends, with whom I have enjoyed online multiplayer shenanigans of various descriptions? I haven't heard from any of them in over a year, after they severely upset me around my birthday last year.

Thus, I am mostly alone, so far as gaming is concerned. And this is frustrating, because although I have always found social interactions to be a tad challenging in various ways — which I learned late into my adult life is at least partly because of my existence on the autistic spectrum, and is the main reason I don't play with strangers — for many years, gaming was something that, while I often enjoyed as a solitary pursuit, I absolutely loved sharing with others just as much. Many of my absolute fondest gaming memories are about times spent playing together — and not necessarily in a "multiplayer" context, either! Let me try and think of a few.

Those days in school, where you had made a new friend and you plucked up the courage to ask your parents to let you go to their house. Fond memories of visiting my friend Edd and playing on his Amiga, and of him coming to my house and playing on my ST, SNES and, later, the PC. That time we played Flashback and had trouble with the big gooey boss thing on one of the last levels and ended up singing "The membrane, the membrane, the membrane is dead!" over and over after we finally beat it.

Those days in sixth form that felt like they'd never end — but sadly did — where we'd wander into town, grab some lunch from the local bakery, visit the local computer shop and buy a new game for PlayStation or N64, then all pile around someone's house to play it for hours. The time we played Mario Kart 64 and wrote down all the obscenities we hurled at one another for a feature in the sixth form magazine we produced. The time when none of us were really all that into football, but we played the World Cup 98 N64 game anyway, because it was fun. The many recording sessions we had to produce "voice acting" for our Klik and Play games, and the out-takes that made us laugh until we thought we'd piss ourselves. The time we introduced our head of sixth form to the one and only Klik and Play game we finished, where he was the main villain.

Those days in university, where after lectures were done, we'd pile around someone's house and play split-screen GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart 64 for hours. The advent of the PlayStation 2, and how an experience as new and fresh as Grand Theft Auto III was something we could enjoy together, even though it was a single-player game. The time my friends brought a copy of Silent Hill 2 with them and I finished it in a single evening while they passed out, hammered and full of curry, in my living room, only to wake up and see the credits rolling.

Those days when I lived in an amazing flat in Winchester, and I had a bunch of friends over, we all got absolutely munted and took off our shirts to play LAN party Halo for some reason. When my housemate came back to find a living room full of half-naked men, she decided it was to be called "Gaylo" from then onwards.

And what I once thought were the incredibly enjoyable "Davison Cup" tournaments I hosted for my birthday celebrations for several years, which provided not only a rare opportunity to play games together with friends in the same room for once, but also a chance to introduce them to things they might not have experienced before — things that were important to me, personally. These memories in particular are somewhat bittersweet now.

I miss being able to share these experiences. It's not one single thing that has left me feeling so lonely and friendless; it is a veritable mountain of causes — some external, some internal, some self-inflicted, some caused by others, some caused by the general direction society (and the way in which we interact with one another) has moved in the last 30 years. All I really know is that I don't like it — and part of the reason I continue to write about the things I love and the things that are important to me, both here and on MoeGamer, is in the vain hope that it might provide even a hint of those personal connections I used to enjoy and appreciate on a daily basis.

It all feels a long time ago now, and I'm very tired, and I'm hurt. I don't even really want to play Big Walk all that much. It'd just be nice to feel like I had the option.

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#oneaday Day 680: Real problems

Let me say a simple phrase to you, and I invite you to, quietly, to yourself, ponder what that phrase means and says to you.

Male loneliness epidemic.

I mention this because it is something I see being increasingly mocked by supposedly progressive types online, and it always rubs me up the wrong way any time I see it happening. Don't get me wrong, I understand why those people mock this phrase — it's because it's significantly more likely to be used by odious twats who think the be-all and end-all of existence is "getting" a girl to sleep with them, and any time these people talk about the male loneliness epidemic, what they actually mean is "God, I can't trick women into fucking me, woe is me."

To be clear: that kind of behaviour is shitbag fuckboi material, and anyone engaging with it needs to take a long, hard look at themselves. Ask not "how can I get a girl?", as if she is something to be possessed, but rather "how can I make myself into someone that other people might be interested to know?"

However, here's a significant issue. I firmly believe that there is a problem with modern men and loneliness. And the combination of the I'm A Nice Guy, Why Won't Anyone Fuck Me people and the hahaha, male loneliness epidemic losers people makes it very difficult to have a frank and honest conversation about what is actually a very real problem.

What I mean by this is that I am a man, and I am lonely. I used to have a lot of friends when I was younger, but over the years that number has dwindled to such a degree — not through my own lack of trying to maintain them — that I now have some exceedingly strong self-esteem issues over my own value as a human being. And these are, of course, compounded by my own status as being On The Spectrum, which commonly manifests itself as paralysing social anxiety, particularly when in an unstructured socialisation sort of situation.

I used to be glad for the friendships I had. I was grateful that people seemingly wanted to have me around, enjoyed having me around. I felt that, even though I still struggled in situations where I was surrounded by unfamiliar people, I had places where I belonged, and people that I belonged with. And, by extension, I felt like I was the sort of person who had something to offer as a friend.

Various happenings have left me… not feeling like that any more. When combined with the absolute revulsion I feel at my physical appearance — a result of a lack of self-control that probably ties back in with anxiety and depression, and the thorough bizarreness of the COVID years — it is difficult to feel like I have any value any more. That's probably a terrible thing to say about oneself, but… well, it's how I feel. I am forever grateful to my family, my wife and my cats for being constants in my life that I can rely on; I am, at least, thankful that I am not in a situation where I have literally nothing.

I'll admit something to you now: I started going to therapy last week. And the above is one of the subjects that came up. It's going to be something that I need to work on. I don't yet know how that will happen, or what form that work will take, but those conversations have already started. So it's not as if I'm completely without hope.

It's just frustrating when you might want to talk about these things with someone other than a Qualified Professional, but you fear the reaction is just going to be hahaha, male loneliness epidemic loser. I thought the problem was that dudes don't talk about their feelings and emotions enough? Belittling them isn't going to help with that, now, is it?

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#oneaday Day 665: Restlessness

I'm having one of those days where I feel, I don't know, restless and sort of dissatisfied with existence. It's a long weekend, and times like that tend to be prone to such feelings, because when you're given a nice block of time off from the day job, the natural thing — for me, anyway — is to wonder how (or whether) you can spend that time in a vaguely "productive" manner, doing something that adds some sort of "value" to your life.

This is not necessarily a good way of thinking about things, of course. Obsessing over whether what you're doing is "worthwhile" can lead to grindset nonsense, and those people are soundly mocked by well-adjusted individuals with good reason. But all the same, I do, at times, feel myself wanting to… I don't know, it's hard to even express. Achieve something, I guess?

I've had this conversation with myself before. I do achieve things in my daily life and with my day job. My contributions to my workplace are a critical part of the entire process of bringing actual physical, tangible products that are worth money to market. Shouldn't that be enough? Isn't that enough of a "legacy" to leave behind?

Well, perhaps. But I'm sure many of us have had grander plans in the past. Plans to write a book, make a game, compose an album of music, all those sorts of things. And, as we get older, it becomes easier and easier to tell ourselves that we "don't have time" to do those things — when, in fact, many of us probably have pretty much the same amount of free time as we did when we were younger.

I think with me, a significant part of it is loneliness. When I was younger, I would fill many of my days spending time with friends and enjoying the things I loved together with them. I can still sort of do that via the Internet, but enthusing about something over a chat application is a very different feeling from having them in the same room with you, reacting in real time to the things that are happening, discussing things as they happen and, you know, laughing and having fun with one another.

I guess I'm a bit sore because it's coming up on my birthday, and for several years I hosted an event with friends around that time where we got together, ate food, enjoyed drinks and played games together as a fun little competition. Last year the response I got to such an event was rather rude, and it upset me a great deal, following a few other things that had frustrated me in past years (including one occasion where I bought a prize for the event and ended up with it returned to me), and I've not heard a peep out of the people involved for nearly a year at this point, so I guess that's that.

Still, at least I have a game of HeroQuest to look forward to tomorrow, and a trip to The Cave towards the end of the month (around my actual birthday date!) so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Now I think I'll go see if I can finish off Resident Evil 6, and stop worrying about whether or not I've spent the bank holiday "correctly".

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#oneaday Day 203: A distressing dichotomy

I am, as you'll know if you've been reading this here blog for a while, suffering from a fair old bit of loneliness. As the years have gone by, groups of friends have gradually drifted away, and it feels like one of the longest holdouts in that regard is heading in that direction of late. I haven't heard from anyone in this group for probably several months at this point, and to be honest, I'm burnt out.

Here's my problem, see: I'm lonely, but I'm also absolutely exhausted feeling like the only one trying to make an effort to keep friendships going or to try and "fit in" places. I'm a member of several online communities (well, let's be real, Discord servers at this point, since self-contained online communities barely seem to be a thing any more) but the prospect of trying to raise my head, say hello and generally get "noticed" in some way is just… deflating. It almost doesn't feel worth the effort. It feels like fighting my way out of quicksand.

Take this group I'm referring to, for example. I have been feeling for quite some time that if I don't say something and attempt to start a conversation, no-one says anything. And indeed, I must confess, over the past few months I simply haven't said anything, just to see if that was actually the case. I had gotten tired, you see, of every time I attempted to start a conversation resulting in the things I said getting either shut down or ignored. In particular, I have tried to express enthusiasm for the things I've worked on professionally — which I'm very proud of — and my own creative projects — which likewise I want to share with people who are important to me — and have found myself rebuffed. And it seems no-one wants to talk about anything that is important to them, either, so silence it is.

This is not a healthy way to be, I know, but I feel frustrated and resentful any time I feel like I'm the only one who has been making an effort with a friendship. And so, day by day, I feel myself retreating further into my own private world, and feeling less inclined to want to come out and show myself.

Well, no. It's not that. It's that I find doing so to be immensely draining, particularly when it's in an environment or situation I find uncomfortable. Take our work Christmas outing recently for example; while we were out there were several people who clearly wanted to make an effort to get to know me a bit better, and I had those conversations where I could — but because we were in an inordinately noisy environment where it was very difficult (and uncomfortable) to have a conversation, I didn't feel like I could really carry things on. It was too tiring. I felt bad, because it was people showing an honest interest in me, but I just couldn't keep trying to have a conversation while I couldn't hear anything.

I ended up bowing out of the evening relatively early because my senses had just been completely overwhelmed by the noise. I had a good time overall; I just knew I couldn't take any more.

It sort of feels like a variation on that at other times. I don't want to be a lonely recluse who never talks to anyone, but when I never get anything back when I do attempt to initiate something — and when no-one else seemingly wants to initiate things with me without me prompting them — I get to a point where it just doesn't feel worth trying any more, which I fear will eventually build into actively pushing people away if and when they do ever reach out.

Perhaps the thing to do is just to accept that this is the way things are, and to try and structure my life accordingly. If people aren't going to make the effort themselves but they are still, for one reason or another, actually important to me, then I make some time to ensure that I get heard. It doesn't have to be much; perhaps just set aside a time each week to drop a quick message to the group in an attempt to start a conversation. That feels very formal, I know, and that's one of the reasons I haven't done something like this sooner — but right now it feels like doing something overtly "artificial-feeling" might be the only way I get my almost completely drained "Social" meter back up into the green.

I should probably mention at this point that I am inordinately grateful to my good pal Chris, who has stuck by me through exceedingly thick and enormously thin, and always has a kind word and receptive ear any time I drop him a message. The only trouble is he's on the other side of the world to me, so not someone I can just drop in on for some beers and video games.

My wife Andie is and always has been a rock, too, and any time I start feeling lonely I am grateful that I am not completely alone, thanks to her, our two cats (who both know to come and look after me when I'm feeling low — they're both sat with me on the sofa as I type this) and, of course, my family, who just accept me as I am, with all my myriad flaws.

Is that enough, though? It doesn't feel like enough. Something in my mind remains intensely dissatisfied in my socialisation, and I need to do something about it. So, as tempting as it is to just wallow in despair at things gradually getting worse on their own without my input… I guess it's time to acknowledge that I need to provide that input if I ever want things to get better again.

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#oneaday Day 107: Tackling Loneliness

I've seen quite a few news reports and political manifestos over the course of the last few years that claim "we" as a society are supposedly doing something to "tackle loneliness".

Okay. What? What are "we" doing to tackle loneliness? Because from where I'm sitting in this extremely lonely state of mind, I can see precisely fuck all going on. I am in a position where I feel like I need some sort of help in this regard, and I do not have a fucking clue where I might go to find it.

Oh, I can see lots of statistics and reports that confirm indeed, yes, people are feeling lonely. But no actual action taking place. Lots of big words like "we need to take a holistic life course approach" and other such shit, but no actual evidence of anything really being done.

Which, of course, begs the question: exactly what can be done? "Tackling loneliness" isn't just a case of dumping a bunch of people in a room and telling them to talk to one another — though one of our local bus companies seems to think that branding their buses the "ChattyBus" and encouraging people to make "bus friends" is an approach that will have any effect whatsoever, clearly not understanding that the sort of people who will talk to you on a bus are generally not people you want in your immediate circle of friends.

There are volunteer services that exist in an attempt to "tackle loneliness", but I feel like these would always feel very artificial. Someone is acting like your friend because it's their job to act like your friend. I'm sure real social connections can and do come about as a result of initiatives like this, but judging by a quick scoot around the websites for ones in the general area, they are all very oversubscribed. Which, in itself, probably says something that isn't all that good.

Mostly I just want my old friendships back. Friendships from before an age of social media, friendships from before the worldwide political stage became the perpetual firework show it seems to be these days, friendships from when we were all just happy to hang out and do something fun in one another's company.

And it's not as if I haven't tried to maintain those friendships that used to be like that. But I always seem to be faced with resistance: resistance that seems to grow by the year. I have reached a point where I feel very much unwanted by a lot of people with whom I used to be very close, and it upsets me. Like, really upsets me. Keeps-me-awake-at-night upsets me.

And this feeling of being unwanted of course feeds into other mental health issues — including self-esteem and social anxiety. If the people who are supposedly some of my oldest friends don't want me, how on Earth can I be expected to find the confidence to make new friends? How, even, do you make new friends in 2024? I just don't know any more.

In fact, I don't think I've ever known. I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again, because it's relevant.

On my first day at secondary school, I was pleased to discover I was in a class with several of the people I had known at primary school — including the person who was ostensibly my "best friend". We had been put in a seating arrangement for morning registration, presumably in an attempt to get us to mingle a bit and get to know one another. I was sat next to a lad called Murray. I had absolutely no idea how to talk to him. I vividly remember turning around to my former "best friend", who was sitting behind me, and urgently whispering to him "I don't remember how to make friends".

Because I didn't. And I still don't. Any friendships I found myself in tended to be ones of circumstance such as living together in the same flat at university, and I always felt like I existed on the periphery of larger friendship groups that these acquaintances had. I felt like I was "intruding", like I wouldn't be welcome if I tried to ingratiate myself with these people who "weren't my friends". Those people were their friends, not my friends, and what right did I have to attempt to call them my friends too?

It looks silly on paper, I'm sure, but that's the reality of social anxiety. Legitimately one of my proudest moments of personal growth in my whole life is a time I was caught in a lift with a stranger I was on a music course with and I plucked up the courage to actually introduce myself. I felt enormously awkward and like a complete idiot at the time, but that one occasion actually became a genuine friendship — and several other friendships came about as a result of that initial contact.

But good Lord, did it ever feel like scaling Everest to get those words out of my mouth in the first place. And these days, I don't exactly find myself stuck in a lift with people I might have something in common with all that often. So here I am, stuck typing this to myself at 11:15 on a Sunday night, wondering where it all went wrong and even if it's possible to fix things at this point. Because the longer this goes on, the more I worry about what the end result of it all might be for me.

I'm lonely. That's about it, really.

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#oneaday Day 44: What's Next?

Do you ever get the feeling that you're just sort of waiting for the next "major" thing to happen in your life, and that you're unsure exactly how you might go about triggering such a thing, if indeed it is trigger-able?

I feel this quite a lot. It's disconcerting. It's like a constant sense that I should be doing something, but I have no idea what. It's a feeling of unease that creeps up on me and whispers "Don't you think you should…" and then trails off before saying the important part of the sentence. It is, in short, just a general feeling of discontent.

Considering the situation rationally, I'm not sure I have any real reason to feel like this. I have a comfortable living situation, a good job, a loving wife and two wonderful cats. I have an enormous video game collection, likely more than enough to see me entertained until my dying day. I have creative outlets in the form of this blog, my website MoeGamer and my YouTube channel.

And yet something still doesn't feel quite right. I am dissatisfied. I am restless. And I think a significant part of my reason for feeling like this is plain ol' loneliness. While the aforementioned wife and cats are wonderful company on a daily basis, I do mourn past eras of my life when social activities feel like they came a bit more naturally and easily.

Going to a friend's house after school. Dropping by the coffee shop on the way to lectures with a university friend (and sometimes not quite getting around to leaving the coffee shop for said lecture). Evenings spent couch-surfing between numerous different friends' houses because my own house was a significant distance from where everyone else I knew. Habitually dropping by Hoffers Bakery for a roll and a cake, then settling in for an afternoon of multiplayer N64. Weekly board game sessions. Going out, like, anywhere.

All of those are things that are well and truly in the past, and were already going that way before COVID hit — and once COVID did hit, nothing ever really recovered. I've seen the people who are supposedly my closest friends maybe three or four times in the last few years. There are people online with whom I used to be extremely close that I can't remember the last time I heard from. There are people that I once thought would be "lifelong friends" that I feel have probably forgotten about me.

At least some of the blame for this can be laid at my own feet, of course. But honestly, my own efforts in these regards tailing off stemmed from growing frustration that I would often want to do something fun with people I liked, and for one reason or another, it seemed like that was never possible. Scheduling conflicts. Family commitments. Illness. Simply not being arsed. I got to a point where I felt like I was putting in effort that wasn't being reciprocated proportionally, and it just didn't feel worth it any more. That, in turn, did a number of my self-confidence, meaning that more often than not my brain just doesn't want to let me try and reach out to people for fear of them just rejecting me — or worse — once again.

As such, the end result of all this is a 43 year old man sitting in front of his computer in the dark typing about how he feels lonely to the maybe 5-10 people who still actually bother to read this site. Admitting you were lonely amounted to social suicide in my teenage years — you were a "Larry" (for "Larry Loner") — but now, it feels like an increasingly inevitable part of life in 2024. And it sucks.

I think that, more than anything, is why I'm dissatisfied. I want that "next thing", that amorphous "major event" in my life, to be the end of this horrible loneliness. But at this point, I simply don't really know how to make that happen.

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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.

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.

1731: The Age of Loneliness

I read an interesting piece on The Guardian earlier regarding "the age of loneliness" killing us bit by bit. And while I feel the piece is, on the whole, doomsaying somewhat, there's also a lot of truth in there.

I've become a lot more conscious of all this since starting my "new life" a little while ago — working a "proper job" with three-dimensional people all around me, ditching most of social media for my own sanity and generally trying to "unplug" a little bit from my utter dependence on the digital realm.

The biggest change has been the opportunity to interact with real people on a daily basis. Sometimes those people are asking me to do things as part of my job, but at other times it's a simple social interaction where we share things with one another: the problems we had with a retailer; what we had for dinner last night; our pets having various illnesses; what we think of this weather we've been having, gosh, it's been really variable, hasn't it?

I hadn't realised how much I'd missed this, but being fully immersed in the digital realm for several years had proven an adequate substitute for human interaction at the time. It wasn't until towards the end of my time with USgamer that I was starting to feel a little dissatisfied with spending all day every day "on my own" (despite hundreds, possibly thousands of people being on the other end of an email or tweet) and, once I was made redundant, it truly dawned on me that I was indeed living through my own personal "age of loneliness".

It's often been said that social media ironically contributes to feelings of loneliness and isolation, and it's a difficult one to win. Without social media, it can be difficult to feel connected to other people — though there are alternative, more focused solutions for communication that rely less on shouting into the ether and more on more direct interactions. But with social media, despite all these connections to other people, it's equally easy to feel isolated, too; the constant races for oneupmanship on Facebook and Twitter — the race to be the first to post a pithy comment in response to a tragedy; the race to post the coolest photo of an event; the race to get the most Likes and comments on a passive-aggressive statement — all detract from meaningful social interaction, instead turning communication into a competition. That doesn't feel especially healthy to me.

Like I say, though, it's difficult to find that balance. At present, I feel like I'm having a reasonable time of it — I get along well with the people I work with during the day; I spend time with Andie in the evening and, on certain occasions such as tonight, get to spend time with friends — but I do often still find myself wondering if I'm "missing out" on anything by not checking in on Facebook or Twitter. (I actually closed the latter account altogether after the post the other day, which got shared more widely than I intended and consequently attracted ire I didn't really want to deal with at the time; I haven't felt the need to reopen it yet, and should I ever decide to return to Twitter I think it will be with a brand new "fresh start" account)

I am not, however, missing that urge to take a photograph of everything that happens in my day and then post it online as if anyone would give a shit about what the sunset looks like from where I'm standing right now (probably quite similar to the sunset from where you're standing right now) or what my lunch looks like (pretty much like lunch). I find myself longing for the days when things like photographs were more permanent and more meaningful; everything in the digital age feels so utterly disposable, and that's probably where a lot of the whole loneliness thing stems from: you can be the centre of attention one minute and utterly forgotten about the next. The modern world is fickle indeed.

Anyway. It's 1am and I'm doing that thing where I ramble only vaguely coherently as I try not to fall asleep in front of my screen. So I think it's probably time to go and get some sleep; I have a very long day ahead of me tomorrow, so plenty of rest beforehand would probably be a good idea!