Dusting Off and Moving On

There’s been plenty of times this year when I considered just deleting this blog and turning it into something else, like a linklist or a resource area for other things to do. I haven’t, opting instead to leave it up.

Often when this happens I go through two phases. Usually I go through a phase where I’m afraid to write on here; that I have to curate every single sentence into perfect wording and structure. This leads inevitably to not having anything up here, because I don’t have anything I’m happy with. It’s not perfectionism, it’s OCD and a weight I put on myself because it will be online forever. The second phase usually follows (but can replace) the first and boils down to me hating what I’ve written or designed as I’ve let that lack of current content in turn reflect more harshly on what already exists.

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2018 In The Can!

I’ll be honest with you, I’m writing this at the end of November. It seems like I always do it this time of year, and then tweak it a little bit each time I want to add something.

The word that could describe my online presence this year is a sobering one: inconsequential. It’s one of the reasons why I haven’t written anything published since April; I’ve not been myself, or someone that at the beginning of 2018 I would call myself. But perhaps that isn’t a bad thing.

I’m a different man at the end of this year than I was at the beginning of it. I got a promotion for starters; took me from three days a week to five with a raise to match (even after tax!). Still in retail, but in a peripheral role as opposed to a central one. I’m always cagey about talking about work here, so I’m sorry for the vagueries.

But more important than that, I found God.

The fact that I even hesitate to write that for fear of ridicule is a reminder of how I used to be in regards to religion, but there it is. I rediscovered Christianity over two decades after walking away from it. I’m not going to change what I write about here; I want to keep that conversation in it’s own area for my sanity as well the perceived freedom. I’m sure I will crosspost or fold the two together eventually, but one step at a time.

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Y U STOP WRITING?!

It’s been about three months since I last wrote anything on here publicly. While I do have some things written in Draft form, I either decided they weren’t worth investing any more time in, or they weren’t up to whatever I consider a standard. Whether that is a good or bad thing is up to the people that read(!)

My point is that there are reasons why I stop. I used to write entries twice a week when I was younger, and we’re not talking about LiveJournal or tumblr-esque diatribes that show very little insight on anything but the minutia of one’s day-to-day. It was about serious stuff, and I wrote for several sites as well, all of them gaming enthusiast press sites. I do miss those times, but at the same time I am glad they are behind me.

But more than that, this is me trying to explain my absences in as succinct a manner as I can. If a level of introspection doesn’t interest you, then by all means click elsewhere!

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And So Ends 2017…

…I’m usually fashionably late for these. My job usually doubles the workload during the festive time, so I always end up spending the last few days winding down, and spending time with a controller in my hand as opposed to a keyboard. This year’s end and the first few days of the new year have been particularly taxing, but that’s for another time and a different circumstance; I’m OK. I’m going to have to ask Dad to wear a mask when he’s ill and I’m around next time (joke!), but I’m OK. Just a rough throat, and difficulties speaking above a rasp.

In 2017 I had been trying to undo the damage that I caused the past couple of years since moving out of my parents place. I became insular, and suffered because of it. Put some weight on, let my demons begin to get the better of me (given that I haven’t been on anti-depressants for more than a year), and had neighbour issues that at one point had me feeling like moving out of my current flat and moving back into my old block since one had opened again.

But on the other side of the ledger I’d started rolling back some of those problem behaviours, and my neighbours are no longer there; though they did try to do a metaphorical comeback tour, so to speak. Right now the place is vacant, and from all accounts, heavily damaged.

Let’s take a moment to look at the resolutions I set in 2017, and compare to where I am now.
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“He [is] my friend.”

I’m a part of Cyrus Gaming, in case you didn’t know ([/sarcasm]). We’re a guild that has been around in one form or another since March 2009. I joined on the 4th of October 2009 when I was in Aion, and stayed for almost a year before I learned a hard lesson from Redh, Cyrus’ leader. Long story short, after a while of bouncing back and forth, I came back in 2015 to stay when I finally realised that it was my home when gaming in a group, and nothing I could say or do would change that.

So, when he comes at me a couple of days ago, saying that he’s ‘loving the new [me]’ and that ‘It reminds [him] of the old [me]’, I was taken aback. I didn’t think I’d done anything different than usual. But then I thought about it, and realised I had been doing more, and not thinking about it.

Most of my life in the past couple of years has been passive outside of work, and that might be down to the way I prioritised my life. My life was work because I took pride in it, and thus it was what I wanted to focus on as it was the only part of my life that I did take pride in. And therein lied the problem; I was proud of the work that I had put into something that achieved nothing for me, and everything for someone else. Don’t misunderstand me – I like my work, and I like the people I work with; they’re akin to family to me, and each time one of them moves on I’m happy for them but it’s bittersweet.

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