This post is going to get a bit personal feel free to skip… 🙂
As you may have noticed, the flow of posts has slowed down in the last few weeks. I’m dealing with a certain amount of stress-induced anxiety related to both my job and the blog (The family and my physical health are fine).
As is often the case for type A personalities, I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform and I tend to set unrealistic goals that I then struggle to meet. As Andy wisely predicted at the beginning of the year, I can’t be a good father/husband, go for quality daily post, do my day job adequately, run a forum and run a bi-weekly game (with prep) without hitting a wall.
I hit that wall squarely a few weeks ago and went into turtling mode, ignoring my own forum, lowering the number of posts I do and generally dealing with the White Page syndrome.
One of the reasons I get stressed by blogging is that I can’t seem to decide if I do this for fun or if I’d like to have my writing take a more official place in my life. The rapid success I met made me want to commit to new projects and bite more than I can chew.
Plus my day job is gearing up for some serious, important milestones that use up a lot of my creative energies (I spent most of my time building processes, writing procedures and running the systems I built).
Bottom line, I started suffering from Insomia, lack of motivation, lack of hunger and early morning (i.e 3 AM) anxiety attacks. All are familiar signs that I’m not heading in the right direction with my life.
What kills me the most, is that rationally, I know that I can deal with whatever my job throws at me and I also know that no one ever asked me to post daily about Roleplaying games…. but at 4 AM, everything seems too complicated and impossible to deal with.
The key thing here is that I have absolutely no wish to continue this downward spiral that has led me to severe depression in the past. So I took initiative to deal with that and that’s why I decided to write about it today, I know a lot of people live with anxiety issues and I want to share my solutions and maybe ask for your own solutions.
- I will no longer post every day, unless I feel like it and am inspired.
- I will continue to write, it is therapeutic and I still like doing it… when done for fun!
- Blogging = fun and not a business. I’m a gamer,not John Chow!
- I’ll tackle fewer, simpler projects… I’m sitting on a sponsorship with an online store that I will unveil soon and that will be my main online project for some time.
- I subscribed to a Gym that’s real close to home and I plan on going after work from Monday to Thursday (a psychiatrist told me that exercise is better than anti-depressants).
- I’ll get help from a therapist if exercise doesn’t help.
There you have it. I know I will get better (I’m already better than last week), I’m just trying to relieve some of the self imposed pressure. 🙂
All right. I’m sitting on a 1/2 written account of last week’s game… it will get out soon and you can finally read the story of the mooning Crusader… I’m still trying to recover from the shock.
Cheers and thanks for understanding.
Pas de Problème Phil on te veux en santé. 😉
Thanks for wishing me health, Yan! 🙂
I can understand your situation as I am in a similar one myself.
I love to game, enjoy writing for my blog but with my job (I develop and deliver technical training) I burn a lot of creative juices and when you couple that with three kids, scouting and a number of organizations outside of work it is sometimes difficult to cover all the bases.
I took a similar approach and have started posting in spurts – seems that the muse strikes on multiple days in a row and then goes quiet – some day I hope to harness that beast so I can post more consistently.
I wish you well during your recovery efforts.
I have been wrestling with this, concerning my blog as well. As much as I love to post on it, and would love to have the traffic of a popular blog, I know that now is not the time for me to do it. Between work (also with a new position), a new baby, a campaign, etc, blogging gets the short end of the stick.
You have reached a crossroads that I think many Gaming Bloggers reach…blog or game.
For me, I would rather remain an active GM and lesser known Blogger, than the other way around. I have come to the same decision, that you have, just a few days ago. I will keep plugging away at my Blog, when I can, because it is fun, but not put pressure on myself to produce it on a regular basis.
Good luck recovering, and I look forward to when you are back enjoying your posts, the way you did when you first started.
CDM, we’re with you all the way. Do what you need to do, we’ll be here.
All the best, my friend.
Hang in there Phil!
I am not going to try and give any advice, I’m not a psychologist (which my psychologist wife never fails to remind me). I’m not qualified and don’t want to steer you the wrong way. However, it looks like you have the situation well in hand. You identified the problem, and have a plan to deal with it.
Also, please continue to post about your progress. It might be thereputic for you, and maybe someone out here in electron-land will have some particular profound words of wisdom (just don’t look at me, that’s my dump stat).
Good Luck, and we’re rooting for you!
Schedules are stressing. Blog when you feel like it and be well.
I agree that when stuff that is supposed to be fun is stressing you out, you need to reevaluate the situation. I’m happy to hear that you have a plan and hope that it works out for you. I have had many times in my life when I have gone through similar situations, just replacing the specific facets with other ones, so I can definitely sympathize.
Regarding solutions, it sounds like your doing what has helped me in the past. Exercise does help a LOT, and it seems like the more frequently its done, the better it helps. Sleep is probably just as important. Lack of sleep and exhaustion are stress multipliers and can really take the fun out of all aspects of life.
Good Luck! And when the Power of the Blog compels you, we will be here to listen.
Now, on a side note, I wanted to share something with you that I hope your gym might have. Be on the lookout for it, for it is the BEST WORKOUT MACHINE EVAR.
What might this be? Some mad genius started with your typical stationary bike, not to exciting, but easy on the knees, etc. Then, and here is the truly amazing part, that genius integrated a Nintendo on it!!!!!11!!!! The d-pad was on the left handle bar, and the A and B buttons where on the right one.
It had a couple of games, but the one that really got me peddling was the Speed Racer game. The faster you peddled, the faster your car went, and of course you had access to some of the MACH 5’s cool gadgets.
I last saw this wonder gear was about 10 years ago and it only had an original 8-bit Nintendo attached. I have no idea if any of these items or things like them are still out there in the gyms of the world, but if they are, I hope you have access to one (and that they have an updated game console on them). I passed many workout sessions on one of these, concerned only about winning the next lap and pretty much completely able to tune out the burring in legs and everything else that was stressing me out.
–Scottiucs
Dave: It so happens that the series are fun… It’s doing original trope posts when you wrote 24 of them that gets a bit harder… 🙂
Scott : Thanks man! It just so happens that my Gym has a Dance Dance Revolution machine (with the Deluxe, Aluminum-mounted dance pads)… Plus I discovered the pure Joy of watching TV shows on my iPod while doing Cardio machines.
Exercise may be better than antidepressants, but exercise AND antidepressants is a brilliant combo. Don’t rule out medication if you are still feeling bad in another month. Think of it as ‘Protection vs Evil’ in pill form. 🙂
Take care buddy.
Always free for a beer with a friend anytime, even at 4AM ;o)
Keeping up any kind of schedule for “fun things” can be incredibly stressing. When you take something that you find fun and make it a thing that needs to be worked at, the fun almost saps itself out. I like your solutions. They definitely seem like they will help keep the stress level down. You hit the nail on the head when you say “self imposed pressure”, so release the steam and keep it up as you need. Gaming will always be in the long tail of the economy, and I don’t think there is enough money there to make that your focus. Keeping it for fun will keep it at the good level that your blog has been at, and I’ll definitely keep reading. Best of luck :).
Mrs L. : Been there, done both. I’m not so bad that I’m considering pharmaco-therapy. I’m taking actions way before I get to the point I was 3 years ago when I had a similar episode. (and took those happy pills that give weird dreams).
Cruguer: Thanks buddy… it means a lot to me to have you guys around come rain or shine!
Good to see you have your priorities in the right place. Gaming takes a back seat to real life.
Man, you have no idea how hard it was to write that last sentence. 😉
How you start feeling better soon.
Trask
Phil,
I feel your pain — I went through the *exact same thing* in October (trying to have a family, karate, a 60-70 hour a week job, three posts a t-shirt and a comic a day) and I can’t honestly say I’m not still a bit burnt out. I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.
Fortunately, Stupid Ranger and Dante picked up the slack for me so the site didn’t suffer at all BUT the point is your continued sanity and well-being are a lot more important than having a successful website you do for fun. Do it for you, don’t do it for us. And take care of your chatty self. 🙂
Health is so important… don’t put too much pressure on you, Philster! We want to keep you with us 😉 I need my DM and my Overlord!!
Oh… and why did you had the need to talk about the mooning crusader… i was just beginning to have less bad dreams about it! NOOOoooooo!!
🙂
Well, feel free to leave forum administration in my hands, for now. I am an admin already, after all.
Exercise is indeed far, far better than antidepressants. I’m always hesitant to even mention the pharmacological treatments when there’s an alternative that is more effective with less side effects (except for improved fitness). Luckily, here in Canada, our doctors are fairly free from the pharmaceutical companies’ pushing, so we tend to be far less medicated than the USA.
In terms of number of Ant-Depression prescriptions in Canada, I believe they are catching up with Hearth Disease medication Graham.
Graham: Thanks man.
re anti-depressants: The thing is not so much that Doctors push the drugs, it’s just that people ask for them more and more… and doctors hand them out easily on both sides of the border…
Mike: Don’t read the next post then… lol.
Trask and Vanir: I will and I shall… thanks!
You guys and gals all rock!
You KNOW i couldn’t not read that post… Especially since i’m involved in that game now 😉
What you need is a healthy dose of obsessive compulsive disorder to get you back on track. Oops, that darn outside voice…
OK, seriously, I’ve seen this so many times and have suffered myself every few months as my project at work goes through major milestones I find I only have about 10-30 minutes at night to do anything with Geeknews before I hit the rack, and often during those times it’s a cheesy dinky little post that probably isn’t worth the little effort involved.
I often ask myself why I bother to continue during these times.
The only answer I can come up with is it’s similar to characters on the show Lost, “what would happen if I stopped pushing the buttons?”. I’m afraid of the outcome if I stopped. 🙂
Hey, look! My gravatar!
After all this time it finally came through your fine comment system. I’ll assume Graham fixed it up.
BTW, since you no longer use ‘d20’ as the Captcha, I have a new game to play: Incorporate the Captcha word into the comment.
Hi Andy. I assume that whatever the problem was got cleared up somewhere withing the process of Gravatar recoding everything, and me removing three semicolons from the code. 😛
Have fun with your game. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to tell if you’re playing or not, but have fun anyways! 😀
By the way, was it “fine”?
Andy: I updated the Captcha plugin but I forgot to reset the words to D&D dice… I’ll fix this tonight… Thanks for bringing this up.
Graham – yes, it was ‘fine’. You win the cigar, or pick a prize from what you see on the wall!
[just so this game doesn’t go on forever between us on this one thread, the word this time was ‘pick’]
Phil, your honesty and transparency is inspiring, truly.
I am a big GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) sufferer; Almost cost me my marriage at one point. I’m feeling much better, now 🙂
Anyways, I’m with you, boss. You ever need anything, say the word.
Thanks Bob,
I’m better today. I’m at my 3rd straight day of doing exercise after work, I sleep better (woke up at 5h30 instead of 3h30) and I spoke to my boss to re-arrange my deadlines a bit.
The next challenge will be Monday morning…
I know that a lot of people have this and I’m not ashamed of it anymore, it’s not a rational disorder so I don’t buy the ‘snap out of it dude!’ approach.
Acting on it is the hard part but it usually works! That’s what I want to share.
WOO HOO!
Good form. Glad things are looking up.
Still, let me know if you need anything.
Thanks man, I really appreciate your solicitude (that’s an English word right? Cuz it’s one in French).