Fair warning this is going to be a largely real world post. There might accidentally be some gaming content but I can’t guarantee it at the start of this post. I am still struggling to kick whatever junk I wound up with at Pax South, and the problem is it has been going on long enough that I am starting to fall into deep turtle mode. For those not familiar with my personal verbiage, turtle mode is largely when I pull my head into my shell and forget the world exists. The more stressed I am, the more likely I am to get stuck in my shell. What frustrates me the most is that I don’t exactly want to be in this mode. I had all of these plans to start streaming again, launch a second podcast… and when I stuck my head out I saw my shadow and went running back inside to hide. I realize the title of this post was likely to confuse some folks because well… the actual ground hogs day was in fact this month. So there you go I tied up the reference in the first paragraph. The prolonged illness part is a huge chunk of it, but so is the fact that work right now is sort of madness. I am dealing with four different fires that sprung up over the last week, all of which are critical and all of which require immediate attention and have firm deadlines associated with them. As a result when I get home I just sort of crash and crash hard. Yesterday I talked about going to bed by 8, and last night I was asleep in my chair by 7:30-8ish and had moved to the bed by 9ish. For some that might not seem strange but I am generally a barely able to fall asleep at midnight sort of person. My body doesn’t seem to function at all if I get more than six hours of sleep in a given night.
Needless to say when I go into this mode it also makes me a flake. Last night was for example the guild raid in WoW, and I simply could not do it. I went back and forth on this point for awhile last night before simply surrendering to the fact that I would not be able to function even a minimal level as a tank, let alone the sort of tank they need for progression night. I could not even be responsible for myself, let alone for an entire raid worth of people. Knowing that is frustrating, because the will is in there… but it is like the machine that is me cannot figure out how to sort its controls enough to actually function. I hate that it seems like I have good weeks, where I am normal and functional… followed by several weeks of complete disarray and malfunction. Part of it goes back to the whole “spoons” theory, in that right now I seem to have a super limited amount of spoons and my workplace is taking every last one of them to keep moving forward and existing. Maybe things will calm down to the point once again where deadlines and critical issues are not looming so oppressively, but I feel horrible that I cannot seem to juggle both this world and the actual world that earns me a paycheck. Of course I am going to spend my spoons on the side of the equation that keeps me in my home and my family safe and happy, but I swear I used to do a better job at keeping all of the plates spinning and in the air.
You my reader ultimately suffers in the balance as you have to deal with yet another “Malfunctioning Bel” post. I ultimately write about my experiences good or bad, and when I am not actually experiencing anything interesting to talk about, I struggle to find things to post. In theory I could simply skip a day, but part of me just wants to be brutally honest with my readers. Tonight I am going to try and do the Thursday night Destiny thing again, which is as close to pure fun without any huge feelings of responsibility. Jex and Squirrel have been carrying my worthless ass in that game for years now, and even when I fail they keep picking me right back up. I had a talk last night with my wife, and she mentioned it is really like we are living in an alternate dimension, where all of the normal rules have been flipped upside down. I guess in truth that is adding to the problems as well… it feels like everywhere I turn there is sheer and utter madness, and I need some stability in my life. I’ve always been pretty good at compartmentalizing… and so long as I have one area of my life that seems to be functioning normally I can shrug off a whole lot of chaos in the process. The problem is… I don’t really feel like I have that place right now. My home life has been chaotic due to the whole needing to give up Luna for the good of her and our two elder cats. My work is in a constant state of chaos, and has been for six months or so. The gaming world is a self made chaos as I feel like I am pulled in a whole lot of different directions with different pools of friends playing different games. Now the world as a whole is madness as each day I am treated to a new carnival of horrors thrust upon society by an administration that feels like is some cruel joke. There is no safe place to stand in the maelstrom right now, and because of that… I keep retreating inside hoping that someday when I poke my head out again the storm will have passed and we can feel some glimmer of happiness once more.
Malfunctioning Bel is only human. Don’t worry about it, your readers are also only human. (Unless the aliens invaded and nobody told me.)
Your spoons theory may not be that far-off, there’s been experiments regarding mental energy and focus as a limited resource, depleted by decision-making. So if work and the rest of life is taking a lot out of you, it’s only natural your body is going to insist it doesn’t have the capacity to deal with anything else and want to recharge any way it can.
I’ve heard meditation helps. It’s something I personally want to try, deliberating introducing periods of voluntary stillness, but I’m not really getting anywhere with turning it into a good habit right now. Only human and all that.