Whoa, It's An Update!

Whoa, it's an update!

Hi there! Just wanted to check in, I've been pretty busy lately!

I know I don't exactly update regularly, but the past few weeks have been especially distracting for me, and that's been reflecting in my post schedule. I'm hoping to change that and start updating more regularly. Maybe even daily!... Okay fine, I couldn't type that with a straight face. But I will try to post regularly enough to seem like I'm not dead half the time, even if it's just a single post on Twitter. This goes for the music blog too, which has been dormant for several months now; I'm hoping to have a new song up by the end of the day.

Secondly, I'd like to get back into my hobbies again. I haven't been so busy that I don't have time to enjoy them, but I've been falling out of my hobbies in favor of other kinds of time-wasting. I'd like to change that, but I can't seem to get myself back into it, so I'm going to try something new: I'm going to start doing Let's Plays and streams in the future. It's something I've been wanting to try for a while now, and hopefully it'll refocus my attention on games and level design, rather than refreshing the same eight websites over and over. I'm certainly not starting this today or anything, but hopefully I'll start sometime next month.

Finally, as an update on the paranoia/depression posts, I started seeing a counselor about my issues. We're working through finding the root of all the problems I outlined, and it's going quite well. If nothing else, it's good to rant about my problems and mental musings to someone every week.

Thanks for reading my blog! You're why I keep writing. ^_^

Paranoia pt. 5: The ongoing struggle

My first quarter of college went really well, but that was from being cooped up at home doing nothing all summer. I was ready to do some work and get some stuff done. Winter quarter didn't go so well, and spring quarter was even more of a struggle, as my complacent tendencies kept getting worse and worse.

I was certain that my pill was the cause. Between that and some new information that it can cause memory loss in some cases, I was tired of it. So, midway through winter quarter, I stopped taking it. There were no adverse side effects (probably because I halved the dose over a period of time), but I did notice myself get more tense and jumpy, and my thoughts raced faster. I haven't had a panic attack since.

But it was immediately apparent that the pill wasn't the problem. It didn't necessarily get worse because I stopped taking the pill, but it did keep getting worse at the same steady rate as before. By spring quarter, I was barely staying afloat grade-wise, and my attendance record was 50% overall.

At some point I even stopped making levels. When I noticed this, I really began to worry about myself. "Maybe I have depression or something? No, that's just my paranoia again. I just have a really bad work ethic. Haven't I always been this way, though? I was this bad in high school too."

With my record this past quarter, I am once again appalled that anyone took pity on my and let me keep my scholarship. And of course these feelings of worthlessness are bigger than just that, knowing that I don't have the drive to complete a simple assignment, or even fully enjoy my hobbies. I feel like I've just turned into a little ball of consumption with nothing to give back.

And thus we arrive at the present day, where somehow all of these feelings of shame, worthlessness, and nothingness have somehow, some way increased tenfold over the summer, even though I've had little to no real work to do. Every time, I think that maybe something's wrong with me, only to remember my paranoid tendencies and tell myself that it's actually my fault.

Just less than a week ago now, a close friend of mine who was worried about me showed me a game called Depression Quest. It's a short text-based browser game playing in the role of someone with depression. The player is given a set of possible ways to deal with a situation, but some of them are crossed out due to the player's condition.

It scared me how much I was able to relate to almost everything in the game. That was the real turning point for me, in thinking that maybe it's not just my paranoia, and maybe something is beyond my control here... Reading and hearing about other people's stories of depression only make me more and more convinced of this:

I think I have depression too.

I'd like to take the next few minutes to point out the absurdity of Ikea packaging.

My roommate and I just got a package from them in the mail. We weren't expecting the package for another week. Upon its untimely arrival we opened the package to find a white board wrapped in green bubble wrap.

First: the board. This is the table itself. There's no legs in the packaging. My roommate double-checked the order and indeed, we ordered a full table, but over the next few days we're expecting to receive the legs... in four different shipments.

Next: the bubble wrap. Actually, I can't call it that. It's some sacrilegious knockoff.

Please excuse the poor photography.

It's green. And square. That should've been my warning. But I gave it the benefit of the doubt and tried to pop it.

It squished, only to reform when I let go.

It literally just goes back to normal.

Even squishing large sections of it doesn't work; the air is shared between rows of the bubbles. Stomping it isn't as effective as it should be either; it's nigh-unpoppable. Poking holes in it is the only effective solution.

The result of poking holes in the "bubble wrap."

But since they share all the air, it deflates large swaths of bubbles.

Whatever this voodoo is, it's certainly not bubble wrap. Somehow they managed to take all the fun out of it. It's square, it doesn't pop, and it's connected in series. Who the heck does this?

...oh. The same people who send a table in five shipments.

A friend is carrying a large stack of objects, obviously struggling.

Me: Do you need help with that?

Friend: No, I've got it.

Me: ...Let me rephrase that - would you LIKE help with that?

Friend: That would be REALLY nice, thank you.

Do I have to clarify this every time...?

Paranoia pt. 6: My greatest fear

I have yet to see a specialist at the time of this writing, but I will as soon as I get the chance. There's just one big problem with this whole situation: my paranoia.

Remember what my fears were during the hurricane incident? Poisoned food, brainwashing, diseases, anything that attacks me from the inside and I can't do a thing about it? I've carried those fears with me this entire time. They haven't gone away. The worries that something random might hurt me are under control, but the fear is still there.

The biggest of those by far is the idea that something can affect me as a person. Hypnosis/brainwashing, mental diseases, truth serum, and the like - you know, those weird things you see in movies and sci-fi stuff? I'm so afraid of all of that, I couldn't even get past five minutes of The Avengers. The less realistically it's portrayed, the better I can handle it (so some video games are okay), but those eyes... those eyes freaked me out. I couldn't handle it.

But I probably have depression, so now my worst fears have been realized! Hoo-freaking-ray. I can't wait to see who I become if the problem gets worse and I turn into some anti-social, all-consuming blemish of society! Oh, but it gets worse, you say? You mean there's problems with trying to fix it too? Of course there are!

Those medications that are supposed to fix the problem can sometimes make it worse. Everyone is different and experiences the problem in different ways, so there's about forty thousand different ways to fix the problem - and not all of them work nicely with everyone. The side effects could range from overstimulation (essentially giving another panic attack), to causing suicidal thoughts and other personality changes. Oh look, more of my fears. I have to go through different versions of that just to find the proper way to fix the problem! I had a hard time just taking a harmless beta blocker.

Needless to say, I'm scared of this whole situation. More than anything else, I'm scared of the fact that (to quote a phrase I've used thrice now) I could fight it tooth, nail, and imaginary dragon claw and that wouldn't be enough by itself to fix me. Because it catches me when I least suspect it and makes me do nothing for days at a time until I "wake up" from it and realize that I haven't done anything worthwhile; and then my concentration slips and I do it all over again.

I'm sorry if this huge story/rant/whine/post is interrupting your dashboard with a large text-filled space devoid of cat gifs and sparkly amusements, but I needed to get this out there. If anything I'm happy that I could dedicate myself to something and get it done rather than skip doing this entirely.

I'm just glad I haven't had a panic attack about all this.

“All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, For they dream their dreams with open eyes, And make them come true.”

D.H. Lawrence (via vaatividya)