Quick but important question:
Is anyone reading this? Does anyone care?
I guess that's two questions.
The short version is that I feel like if I shut down Stealing Commas it wouldn't really inconvenience anyone. No one would care, and I'm not even sure that anyone would notice.
Given my lack of output writing-wise, I feel like that might be the reasonable thing to do.
But those are feelings. Facts might be more useful here. So, if you're reading this, please leave a comment saying so. If you care, please mention that as well.
The long version is after the break
I was walking home from seeing my psychiatrist and psychologist, though honestly it's possible they're neither. I got used to saying that when I very definitely did have one of each. My psychiatric meds prescriber and my psychiatric talking person.
It's mid Autumn, the sun sets earlier than I am ever prepared to think of the sun setting. So I was walking home in the dark, in the cold, and in the rain. Also, my depression is pretty bad right now. I mean, for months my posts have almost exclusively been of the form, "Depression is bad, I'm somewhat sick, and I need money." So you could probably guess that my depression is bad right now (also that I'm somewhat sick and I need money.)
All of this didn't necessarily leave me in the best head-space, but that doesn't automatically mean that what I was thinking is wrong.
I want to curl up into a ball and disappear. That is not now, and has never been, an option. I'd love to go to sleep and (calling on Maleficent or some such now) never wake up. Not die in my sleep, stay asleep forever. Also not an option.
So, those are not things I can act on. There are other things, though, that I can.
I can admit that I'm not a writer anymore. Writers write. I don't. This doesn't count as writing in this context because when I say "writer" there's a host of unspecified constraints on the topic. Usually I mean storyteller, and (more specifically) fiction writer. But it's also the case that I'm not exactly cranking out essays or articles or anything like that either, so the sense in which I'm not a writer is even broader than it would usually be if I said some thing like that.
When, in fits and starts and unpolished spurts, I do manage to write, or more accurately did manage to write, for the past . . . forever, it seems like, it's all been Equestria Girls or, rarely, more general My Little Pony. (The generation thereof that's ending.)
The impression that I have is that, even if someone is here sometimes reading things, and even if some such person does care about what I write in general, no one here is interested in that.
I've actually got some more stuff I could share. Scraps I wrote back when I could write that are arguably postable as readable stand-alone fragments. I'm not sure there's any point. Why bother posting things that no one's going to read and no one cares about?
Every time I think I might be able to do something to change things or turn them around, it falls apart before it even starts.
I was thinking of doing Let's Plays because playing video games was actually helpful to my mood, so why not work with that. I don't know if I'd do them well or anyone would be interested, but I could at least feel like I was being productive and that's an important feeling to have.
I broke my computer before I could even attempt to start. Computer failures happen to me all the time, it's like my family need only look at a computer to make it go wrong, but this wasn't a case of my computer failing. I. Fucking. Broke it.
I don't even know how. Zapped something? Scratched something? Flipped a setting? No idea. But I do know that it was entirely my own fault and, even though it should be simple to send it away to have some expert or other fix it, I haven't. I haven't made any god damned progress.
I haven't made any progress on anything.
Anyway, those are the questions:
Does anyone read what I write here? Does anyone care?
Because right now it feels like I should admit that I'm not capable of writing anymore, shut this place down, fade away, and be forgotten. (If I haven't been already.)
Is anyone reading this? Does anyone care?
I guess that's two questions.
The short version is that I feel like if I shut down Stealing Commas it wouldn't really inconvenience anyone. No one would care, and I'm not even sure that anyone would notice.
Given my lack of output writing-wise, I feel like that might be the reasonable thing to do.
But those are feelings. Facts might be more useful here. So, if you're reading this, please leave a comment saying so. If you care, please mention that as well.
The long version is after the break
~ ~ ~
I was walking home from seeing my psychiatrist and psychologist, though honestly it's possible they're neither. I got used to saying that when I very definitely did have one of each. My psychiatric meds prescriber and my psychiatric talking person.
It's mid Autumn, the sun sets earlier than I am ever prepared to think of the sun setting. So I was walking home in the dark, in the cold, and in the rain. Also, my depression is pretty bad right now. I mean, for months my posts have almost exclusively been of the form, "Depression is bad, I'm somewhat sick, and I need money." So you could probably guess that my depression is bad right now (also that I'm somewhat sick and I need money.)
All of this didn't necessarily leave me in the best head-space, but that doesn't automatically mean that what I was thinking is wrong.
I want to curl up into a ball and disappear. That is not now, and has never been, an option. I'd love to go to sleep and (calling on Maleficent or some such now) never wake up. Not die in my sleep, stay asleep forever. Also not an option.
So, those are not things I can act on. There are other things, though, that I can.
I can admit that I'm not a writer anymore. Writers write. I don't. This doesn't count as writing in this context because when I say "writer" there's a host of unspecified constraints on the topic. Usually I mean storyteller, and (more specifically) fiction writer. But it's also the case that I'm not exactly cranking out essays or articles or anything like that either, so the sense in which I'm not a writer is even broader than it would usually be if I said some thing like that.
When, in fits and starts and unpolished spurts, I do manage to write, or more accurately did manage to write, for the past . . . forever, it seems like, it's all been Equestria Girls or, rarely, more general My Little Pony. (The generation thereof that's ending.)
The impression that I have is that, even if someone is here sometimes reading things, and even if some such person does care about what I write in general, no one here is interested in that.
I've actually got some more stuff I could share. Scraps I wrote back when I could write that are arguably postable as readable stand-alone fragments. I'm not sure there's any point. Why bother posting things that no one's going to read and no one cares about?
~ ~ ~
Every time I think I might be able to do something to change things or turn them around, it falls apart before it even starts.
I was thinking of doing Let's Plays because playing video games was actually helpful to my mood, so why not work with that. I don't know if I'd do them well or anyone would be interested, but I could at least feel like I was being productive and that's an important feeling to have.
I broke my computer before I could even attempt to start. Computer failures happen to me all the time, it's like my family need only look at a computer to make it go wrong, but this wasn't a case of my computer failing. I. Fucking. Broke it.
I don't even know how. Zapped something? Scratched something? Flipped a setting? No idea. But I do know that it was entirely my own fault and, even though it should be simple to send it away to have some expert or other fix it, I haven't. I haven't made any god damned progress.
I haven't made any progress on anything.
~ ~ ~
Anyway, those are the questions:
Does anyone read what I write here? Does anyone care?
Because right now it feels like I should admit that I'm not capable of writing anymore, shut this place down, fade away, and be forgotten. (If I haven't been already.)
I'm reading this. I'd miss you. And you're allowed to have depression and still be a writer. You're allowed to take time off for your mental health and come back to it later when you're coping better. It's totally fine.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading. I care. I have basically zero interest in MLP or Kim Possible, but I love the crap out of your MLP/Equestria and KP work. And your various non-fandom-specific super people stuff is amazing (No lie: I was just remembering a power-rangers-ish thing you wrote a couple of years ago last night because it seemed tangentially informative to something I was working on). And I've enjoyed your musings on film and games. Depression is a big awful lying asshole and you should kick it in whichever set of gonads your particular implementation of it is packing.
ReplyDeleteAm here. Am reading. Just don't really feel like I have a lot to say about anything. Some of it is because I feel terrible because my nature is "you fix problems when they appear" and I can't do that, either financially or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading. And I'd miss you. Please write what you can when you can.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading, and I care. I've been reading your blogs for a few years now, and though I rarely comment, I still feel a connection - probably because of my own struggles with depression, having had stretches of poverty, chronic illness and pain, and failing to write though I daily want to.
ReplyDeleteI like reading your writing, and I wish I could be of more help to you. And your depression is lying to you when it says nobody cares about you or what you write.
I never stop reading a blog because of mere inactivity. I've seen blogs revive after multiple years of posting nothing at all.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're ready to write again, I'll be here.
I typed up a monster of a comment and accidentally clicked something and the page refreshed and wiped it all out, so this is me trying my best to replicate what I'd previously typed up.
ReplyDeleteI came across this blog while looking for stuff about .hack//sign, a series I decided to go back and watch after checking it out like a decade ago and dropping because I thought it was too "slow". I've since come around to the series in a huge way, and a big part of that is because of your blog. You're one of the few people I've come across online who's able to basically deep-dive into and analyze Tsukasa as a character with the care he(she?) deserves. You didn't write him off a paper cut-out emo kid or dismiss the series as being "all talking" (why's that bad again?). You actually
studied the character and series as a whole and got me invested into a show I hadn't thought about for a literal decade. That's pretty damn impressive and it has to count for something.
I spent like a week basically binge-reading all of your blog posts about .hack//sign (and most of the tangential stuff linked in those blogs) and I just want to say you're selling yourself way short. You have a real knack for talking about abstract/fuzzy concepts like emotions and just putting them into words a hundred times better than I could ever hope to. That's not easy do it well. You don't have to beat yourself up to be "a writer". Write as much or as little as you like. Take a year-long hiatus if you like. In the end it's your blog and it shouldn't become a ball and chain that stresses you out. I'll still be checking in regularly (this is literally the only blog I've followed/bookmarked...I think ever).
I've never really dealt with depression so I won't pretend to understand the toll it can take, but I hope you know that there are people who genuinely relate to and care about what you do here, even if you'll never meet us personally. It sounds sort of cliche, but what you're doing here does matter, as I hope this comment and all the ones above demonstrate that on some level. Keep your chin up, bud.