Personal Update October 2020. Not a Let's Play.
6I'm... not doing all that great. In fact, my mental state can be summed up by the word "bad".
As I had expected, this Pandemic has not been kind to my ol' brainbox. I recover my energy by being social, and this Pandemic has kind of ruined any chance of that happening for the next Who Knows.
This time though, the issue isn't depression - it is stress.
I've never handled stress well - from vomiting over economic anxiety on a daily basis when I was eight to today, things tend to boil over and stress has a direct physical impact on me on top of the mental tolls. My memory is shot - I have problems remembering things even on a short term basis now. I can't focus on things for very long, sometimes fewer than a couple of hours of total focus or energy per day now. Physically, my blood pressure is sky high even with taking blood pressure medications (that I'm allergic to, because of course I am) and I'm having a lot of side effects from both the medication and the high blood pressure.
It isn't a great time for me.
That's why I'm taking a medical leave of absence from my work. I'll be out for four weeks (starting October 19th) with the hopes of being able to take the time to do anything possible to relax. While my work isn't the most stressful thing in my life (it barely hits the top five), it is the most stressful thing I theoretically have any control over. It isn't like I can ask the Pandemic to stop what it is doing so I can catch up with my mental state, after all, but I can afford to eat four weeks of unpaid leave if it means my health improves.
During that time, I'm going to be working on "completing" things. The idea is that the number of incomplete projects / tasks / et cetra that I have floating around in my brain is contributing in some (likely small) way to my stress, and this is an opportunity to try and get some of those knocked out. I'm not going to be too concerned if I don't get a chance to knock most out, or even if I can't get any of them done because I only have two usable hours per day. I'm probably going to just read for the first week anyway, but there are only so many novels I can read before I have to do something else.
Still, that might mean you'll see some more videos on this channel, as this is one of my ways of destressing - it is a social outlet, and I need those badly.
On a related note, anyone know of a way to get some type of video conferencing solution for roleplaying games online that don't immediately squish your friends down to 180p resolution as a supposed "HD" solution? As I'm really sick of Zoom doing that and I know that's contributing toward me not being able to relax for my virtual roleplaying games.