Marsden is Here

It is the last few hours of 2022. There is no KAOS party this year, and as D has come down with something flu-like we are also not venturing out to either of the drinkies we have been invited to.

I am not feeling positive going into the New Year, even less so than going into this year. Hanging over me or settled in my gut is something like generalised anxiety, but not exactly. I suspect it may be some type of self loathing, born of having given more than I intended or wanted to over this year physically, emotionally, financially with nothing to show for it myself and precious little to show for anyone else.

Let's take a look back in bullet points
( snip )

I don't know if I have fallen through the void and out the bottom, or pulled back a little, but by the end of yesterday I was left feeling a great nothingness. It has receded a little this evening to leave just exhaustion and general grumpiness.

I know I have been struggling the past week. Pushing things and giving too much to others. There just doesn't seem to have been very much time/opportunity for me to take for myself.

My body clock has shifted two more hours in the wrong direction, now apparently on a 2am to midday sleep cycle. (My own fault for staying up to 2am playing FreeCiv one night last weekend). This has knock on effects to the hours I am working.

Work/life hours have /not/ fallen out as expected. Although I am mostly sticking to the plan of a couple of hours work, some downtime/chores, repeat, I am not finishing work by early evening to then relax / spend time with D. as the maths would suggest. One evening I finished work at midnight. Other activities I have been called on to continue into the evening even though I think I am pretty clearly, explicitly sometimes, operating past the limits of my exhaustion have finished later.

I have not managed any time on my own projects at all unless you count the gardening, where I have managed to keep pruning the hedge at one green-bin per week, and a little computer gaming.

Then last night (in addition to the nothingness) I got trapped listening to an audiobook and didn't get to any kind of sleep until after 5am, eventually emerging after 2pm. Heaven knows what effect that will have. Until a few minutes ago I was not sure if I would go to bed at a reasonable time tonight because I feel exhausted or if I will try and stay up all night and tomorrow, but now I think it will be bed. I am just not sure if I will get to sleep.

This article from Rands seems appropriate

The experience was the same on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Wake-up, get ready, sit down for the 9am meeting and BAM it’s 6pm, I haven’t really eaten, the sun is going down, and I have a slight headache. Part of this focus is certainly a coping mechanism. I seek normality because everything else appears broken. The absence of calm that comes with standing up, walking across the building, being out of the meeting mindset, letting my mind wander, and unwinding is startling.
Rands in Repose: The Housekeeping of the Intangible

Except it's not BAM, because time drags, my focus is not great and while I am making probably adequate process on my work projects it doesn't feel like I am making /enough/ given current urgency. But there are no breaks of the sort that I suppose having to pop out an move the car to a new parking space, or the 20 minute commute to/from work enforced. I switch from work mode to home (chores/relationship) mode and back again.

Even my hoped for downtime today has been mostly hijacked. I'm not complaining too much because the outcome of this will be a gaming group starting back up, but it was a serious effort for me to participate.

Toward the end of last week the EQC payout for the drain replacement arrived in my mailbox. Because it was a holiday weekend (Easter) banking it was less immediate than I would have liked, but after an uncomfortable couple of days sitting on a substantially large cheque I got it deposited. Now my internet banking shows two balances, one slightly unreal total and one much smaller "available".

Once the cheque clears I will be zipping most of that money off into a less "touchable" location while I work on plans for the next round of overdue household maintenance. Meanwhile my half-asleep brain suggested to me last night that this is actually quite an apt analogy for how I often find myself feeling about life. That is I am told that I have built up all this credit of various sorts (social), but I can't actually seem to access it in the ways I want it to have immediate value to me.

Objectively I realise this is because at some level I still have internalised the idea that if you do enough of the "right things" for people, you will get back the "right things" (you want) in return.

This segues into feelings about a post which has been shared through my Facebook feed a few times in the past week. The post itself is a screen capture of a tumblr post, I've tracked down the original but the author's Tumblr is very NSFW and comes with a blanket trigger warning so I'm going to quote the whole post here as well. (Not least to have a permacopy, but also because screen-caps are not non-sighted-user friendly.)

What I mean when I say “toxic monogamy culture”
- the normalization of jealousy as an indicator of love
- the idea that a sufficiently intense love is enough to overcome any practical incompatibilities
- the idea that you should meet your partner’s every need, and if you don’t, you’re either inadequate or they’re too needy
- the idea that a sufficiently intense love should cause you to cease to be attracted to anyone else
- the idea that commitment is synonymous with exclusivity
- the idea that marriage and children are the only valid teleological justifications for being committed to a relationship
- the idea that your insecurities are always your partner’s responsibility to tip-toe around and never your responsibility to work on
- the idea that your value to a partner is directly proportional to the amount of time and energy they spend on you, and it is in zero-sum competition with everything else they value in life
- the idea that being of value to a partner should always make up a large chunk of how you value yourself

Now we know that I emotionally even when not philosophically bought into some of these quite strongly during my younger years. It's probable that some of them still lurk below the surface waiting to strike when (if) the opportunity arises, as I have come to a better rational understanding secondhand through observation and "book learning" rather than through actual personal experience.

Actually reading through the list properly for the first time though it was the last one that struck me hard. Being of value to others does make up an overwhelmingly large part of how I value and define myself. I mean once you get past survival, once you get past living comfortably, what else is there?

[tangent]
For lack of a specific partner I have channeled my energy and devotion into an array of causes and people / non-romantic interactions/relationships over the years, but all the time craving that singular connection in return.

Not I should probably say as a singular recipient of all my attention, I care for others far too easily for that, but more as an anchor or a touchstone or a companion to share the journey with such that when it feels I am lost and storm-tossed on the seas of life, throwing cargo overboard for nowt but the space filling up with water I can reach to one side and be certain that someone is close there to me, and the world will well again.

That might seem like a terrible load to ask, it might seem as if I am expecting someone to "meet [my] every need", but in truth it's a fairly narrow subset of my needs, just potentially intense. I am lucky, oh I know how lucky I am, to have many committed friends now whom provide support in various ways, some who have gone out of their way to provide more than I ever asked and more importantly work on opening me up so I could accept and lean on that support for a while.

But even the most determined of my friends has not made a connection that feels like we are actually sharing each others lives to any great degree. It is more that our lives touch from time to time, like the courses of ships travelling the same way for a little while but not bound for the same port. That their course may change without notice or that they could pass beyond reach at any moment due to a swell or a storm.
[/tangent]

What else is there? Some people do fixate on a measure or measures representing material worth, striving to make the numbers ever greater. I don't know that they are actually valuing themselves. Some people spend their lives chasing the thrill of new experiences, I don't know how they value themselves. Some people seem to feel that just existing is value enough, they are welcome to that but at a fundamental level I don't understand how knowing that adding value is how the society they enjoy living in came to exist, they feel no responsibility to maintain it or drive to add more.

How does one have value to oneself? One is. Value only comes into existence when one interacts.

Perhaps I am off on the wrong track. Perhaps first I should be looking closer at another word I used without really thinking above. Perhaps value follows from how we define ourselves, but how even do we do that?

It's a post for another day now, but I do very strongly define the person I want to be because there is another person I know I am capable of being or even am by default, and that I have made the decision is not the person I value myself as.

[tangent]
Far too many people are perhaps still too busy just trying to survive to really think about valuing themselves. It take less energy to believe what others say about your value, to let others decide your value :( Another link I have already shared today: Addicts or not, workers don’t deserve public shaming.
[/tangent]

I was planning to spend this evening writing. I have a backlog 4 or 5 gaming-related posts in mental draft. This is none of those posts but is the one I have found the energy to write.

My journal has been quiet lately but life has been busy. I am now in 3 games a week (DMing a new story in my Broken Kingdoms setting as well as playing in the two campaigns I am journalling). Russian lessons have resumed. Work has started back busy and for the most part I have been putting in numbers of hours which I consider good. This week I started training a new hire straight out of study - this is somewhat of a new (and learning) experience.

I have literally been cleaning house - freed up much space in the hallway wardrobe by by taking the accumulation of obsolete appliances (VCRs, CRTs etc) away for recycling and last weekend I finally hired a truck and cleared the 20+ years of accumulated junk out of the garage and back shed. They feel ... kind of empty, but in a good way I guess.

This included the washing machine which blew its circuit board (again) at the end of January. It was only 10 months since the last time and I had the money "spare" so I bit the bullet and purchased a new one (ex-display, commercial model, good power and water efficiency ratings (for a washing machine)). Spent more than I intended to but expect it to have a long life under domestic conditions. I also replaced the lounge suite which while in as-new condition when it came with the house 20 years ago had seen hard use by gamers over the years, with several broken springs and other metal poky bits where the covering had worn through at the corners. I have replaced that with a cheap trade-in 2x2 + 1 suite as a bit of an experiment in space usage that I can flick on with no remorse if it doesn't work out.

It was a pretty big effort coming off the back of a very full work-and-other-things week (very grateful that D. turned up to help out) and I've been paying for that this week I guess. Emotionally I'm feeling pretty shattered and weak right now. Other contributions to this include hall dramas and stepping up as emotional support for various friends.

This coming weekend I am in Wellington for a wedding - flights mean it looks like I'm going to have a lot of downtime (like maybe all of Sunday). I am taking my Russian notes with me and maybe I will find the inspiration to actually start those other posts.

A friend on FB summed up some of my feelingags about this time of year quite neatly.

Them: It's just the following weeks on deadness (when everyone is supposed to be going somewhere except you) is making it so hard and anxiety-inducing.

Me:
Oh Hai, this is what I dread about the Xmas/NY break as well. Nice as it is to have the time off work my time veers between
- the usual events with all-the-people (exhausting) and
- sitting at home doggedly working through a list of tasks I "want" to do as a distraction from the negative feelings from no-one else seems to be inviting me out do to stuff or interested in my suggestions of doing stuff

~~~
As today is the first "working" day of my holiday some of the things I have set to do today include:
Level up Markos
Two galleries of photos from the weekend
Have another bash at Smugmug's "new" (introduced a year ago) interface and see if I can make it work for me rather than against me; eventually they are bound to turn off the old one.
See if I can get the guest editor functionality for a gallery working for someone else to upload photos
Wash the dishes
Grocery shopping

Then I'll see what part of the day I am up to.

I can say yesterday was a good day. On about 6 hours sleep (I sleep wayyy to much anyway) I somehow was out of bed and stayed out of bed at a fairly early hour over my body & brain's protestations. I had planned to spend the morning writing but instead somehow pruned a chunk of hedge, mowed the lawns, and completed several smaller chores before a midday lunch and over to the hall for a half-hour vigorous grubbing of thistles and some pruning before first roleplayers and then a photographer and crew turned up.

Some explanation: I had (reluctantly) arranged to be at the Hall for the photographer, and the DM for our Wednesday game had a week off and was keen to run an extra session. Since the weather was theoretically going to be fine and I wasn't keen on twiddling my thumbs around the hall for 3 ½ hours I saw the opportunity to cross "game at the hall" off the bucket list.

The weather was not as warm as it could have been on the day before summer (pity the models) but we still managed to have a good time I think.

I got home a bit later than I would have liked, had a nice burger for dinner and still had just enough left in me to process the weekend party photos. Crashed into bed before 9pm looking forward to waking up early and having an equally productive day today.

Slept solidly, woke up around 7 ... with completely no ability to get out of bed. A long list of things which need doing (see below); several of which I want to get done; but absolutely no capacity to act on those desires on my own accord. Eventually my bladder forced me out of bed a little after 10am.

That's 3 hours in which I could have completed any of
- update my AU spellsheet to output Markos' new 3rd level spells and Zediz'r's new 4th level spells
- write up the next "On the Road" (as I continue to fall behind)
- persuade the flatmate to excavate ~ the last two weeks of dishes from his room so they could be washed, and washed them

Those 3 things all sort of needed to be done today (because Tuesdays are invariably completely taken by work and gaming and the backlog will just get worse come Wednesday evening's session). I will still have time and spoons to complete /one/, probably the least necessary, after I have eaten tonight.

Alternatively I could have caught up of the hall stuff I am failing to find the motivation to push (eg overdue working bee) or managed a "full" day at work and been home to complete one or more of these things in the evening. I haven;t even been very good at getting out of bed for work the past couple of months - I haven't lost *all* the progress I thought I had made but my performance has not been stellar.

It's not even that I don't want to go to work either because I do, it's just that
...
despite all the reasons I lie there listing to myself about why I should be getting out of bed
...
none of them "do it" for me.

And yet Sunday, when I could have stayed in bed for more hours and it wouldn't have mattered, My system was suddenly "Bam. lets get stuff done". And I /know/ that when I get up early I have good days and get stuff done. I have a lot of stuff I /want/ to get done even though I'm wondering about the point of some of it.

It's like I've forgotten how to can.

It's been about a fortnight since my last entry. Sometimes that means life is going really well and I just don't have time to update. This time it means life is a bit of a slog and I haven't even really had the energy to think about updating.

I clearly overdid things far more than I thought in the lead up to my trip - since then my ability to get out of bed in the morning has plummeted as have my work hours (although the quality of my work in those hours is I think better than in the longer hours I was pushing through previously), and the amount of energy coping with the Hall sucks has ballooned. There seem to be an unusually high number of people expecting that I can arrange something there for them at short notice right now; fortunately M has been available to be on site weekday afternoons.

Last night there was an o-ghod-oclock-am alarm which I barely managed to drag myself out of bed to attend (doors open, no-one found), and then failed to get any meaningful sleep for the rest of the night*, dragging myself out of bed with just enough time to throw clothes on and grab the makings of breakfast to take with me as I headed out the door to open up for a groups of film students at 10am. I eventually ate [brunch] about 11 sitting on the patio steps in the sun but my body was already telling me my physical reserves were at the point of exhaustion, and then I spent the next hour or so pulling weeds. By the time I made it home about 2pm I managed a drink and a banana before falling back into bed for a few hours; from which I awoke not particularly refreshed. (A shower and dinner have since helped to some extent.)

* I was asleep enough to dream - a very long dream about the hall (which had grown another 2 dormitory wings and various other rooms) being overrun without permission by hundreds of people doing some sort of Zombie Walk event at the same time as the Red Cross were attempting to do an exercise there. In some scenes it was hard to tell who were the exercise victims and who were the "zombies" especially as the latter while generally well-behaved kept ignoring the instructions not to go into the areas the Red Cross had set up for their exercise, and I had friends who were involved in both (which the dream gave me several hugs from; the only positive point). The alarm clock woke me up just as I had spotted "zombie" people actually making their way / breaking into the managers residence and my feelings of helpless anger were peaking.

And tomorrow still has an ever-increasing list of things which will need doing.

~~~
There have been some positive experiences in the past couple of weeks - gaming is going well on both nights and last night I hung out with a friend for dinner and an introduction to Firefly which I have so far avoided except as a wash of pop-culture; only because I don't tend to watch things by myself.

I find myself in that most unusual of situations, an entire weekend where no-one else has any prior claim to my time. The intent is to get a whole lot of things done, but as a sedate pace rather than rushed and crammed in.

So far:
- stayed up until nearly 3am finishing a game of FreeCiv
- had a non-guilty lie in* (and still didn't get up that much later than I have been guiltily dragging myself out of bed this week)

Should actually be
- laundry
- vacumning
- moving TV etc back into the lounge
- cleaning bathroom
- washing, cleaning out & vacumning car
- sawing up branches into firewood and mowing the lawn behind where they are piled
- knocking the mortar off more of the bricks left from the chimney
- writing at least one substantial blog post
- burning a DVD or two of photos and moving them from "Recent" to the "Archive" directory [final count 10]
- similar backup of other data
- backing up phone contacts etc
- replying to Hall emails
- other (mostly digital) administrivia tasks
- tidying the office
- sorting out Arcana Unearthed spell list spreadsheet for Thursday game
- working on a Marvel Supers game

~~~
* included a dream where there was a working bee at #AHChch and all these people I didn't know showed up until we had a chapel full. some people knew what they wanted to do and were just going and doing it in a fairly chaotic fashion, most people were new to the Hall and didn't really seem to know what they should be doing. A & I (at cross purposes) were just starting to get everyone quieted down so we could start organising work-groups when the dream ended.
* it didn't help that this was one of those dreams where my eyes weren't working properly.
* some of the pews had been replaced with really old ornately carved dark wooded pews - which I couldn't resist running my handover as I walked past
* in the middle of the fabric room was a large indoor garden where some people may have been having a picnic

Because I had chosen to take today off work to facilitate use of the Hall I was trying to complete my work hours by the end of Thursday. This was not aided by various other events during the week, and some day it felt like coding through mud, but it happened. (If I'd had today on top of that I would actually have maxed out my hours).

In doing so I also managed to complete some non-trivial new functionality (has only taken about twice as long as estimated - so far) and tidy up some loose ends leaving me with a clear idea where to start on Monday (touch wood).

I tried to convince myself that this left me with no stress for the evening, but it didn't quite work. this mornings 8am frosty start hovered at the back of my mind through pre-SAGA socialising and enjoyable if not entirely successful games of Castles of Burgundy and Thurn und Taxis.

I took the precaution of making a lunch and packing my bag for today before going to bed. Today will be written about tomorrow (or later) because it will go better in a post with tomorrow. right now it is time for a very early night.