Patreon Letter - 24th March, 2018 (Patreon)

It's Jackson here with this week's Patreon Letter! I have spent the last couple weeks either working on school work, having anxiety attacks, or preparing for podcasts, so I basically have nothing. That's why it's taken so long. I've been sitting here for about four hours, I've written one paragraph. Folks, welcome to the dark night of the soul.

One of the reasons I'm struggling so much this week is that I don't know how to relax. This, on the face of it, is a simple statement with a simple explanation; I have medical anxiety, I am anxious a lot. But it goes a little deeper. 

A few times I'd got done with the work I had on my plate for the day and sat down to say, watch an episode of The Original Series, or, play a video game, and found myself just completely unable to do so. I would sit there and watch and essentially give myself a headache trying to focus, until I turned it off fifteen minutes in. I'm finding myself physically incapable of enjoying something that exists in the window of wanting to do it, but not having to do it. What if I do it wrong? What if I watch it in the wrong order? What if schoolwork interrupts this, I can't focus right now. And so my life becomes a series of churning through my to do lists, playing and watching what I need to for the podcasts, getting work done, and in the off time browsing youtube or scrolling through twitter, wasting time until the next Need arises. 

This is a long running thing for me, certainly it's got worse recently as the stress of school work piles up, certainly it's reflective of my mental illness, but it's also a more permanent problem that arises from the way in which I engage with media, from the way in which I have to engage with media, because after all, it is my (part time) job. We lament often at Abnormal Mapping what happens when your hobbies, your art, your life, become content. When you consume more than engage, when you do to have done. I can directly feel those pressures actively making my life worse, and I don't really know what I can do about them other than do my best to ignore and push through?

Em wrote last week about the "death of games," and talked about the ways in which the space is inherently unsustainable. And I've been thinking about it, as I've been thinking about how shitty a week I've been having, and I've decided I need something concrete in terms of making things better. Not for the space, because yeah the tides of capitalism and corporate interest are way too fucking strong, but for myself. I want to be able to sit down and play a game, or watch a movie, and not worry about whether this is the best and most efficient use of my time, instead just because that's how I want to spend my evening. 

People often talk about the importance of logging off, of building time for yourself, of unplugging from the constant rapid fire nightmare of the discourse. And they're right, of course, but it doesn't help me much, nor does it help anyone who came to this community because of their lack of one offline. I was a shy, poor autistic kid at an upper middle class boys school as a teen, I was bullied horrifically, and as such I've never really had many friends, which has held true through university. The ability to connect with people across the world, to find people I can talk to who won't abuse or hurt or belittle me, has literally saved my life. It feels so cruel to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In this metaphor, as in many things, I am the baby.

Abnormal Mapping is the one thing I have made that I am the most proud of, in my life. I don't think I can overstate how important it is to me. I've tried to write novels, make short films, do a bunch of stuff but I've never been able to stick with something like I have for Abnormal Mapping. It is something I work extremely hard on with my best friends in the whole world, and every time someone tells me any of our shows have gotten them through bad times I start crying. I want to find a way to make this sustainable, and to not have this become a job that turns the things I enjoy, the reasons I started doing this against me.

Anyway, I am sure that when I finish school, and later in the year when I move into my new home, I will find some semblance of balance. I know this is a particularly turbulent time. But right now, I'm not doing well, friends. And I don't have a conclusion or moral, we're all navigating the same tensions, it just kinda sucks.  

Sorry about how down this letter is, but it's one of those weeks. My final school deadline is the 30th of April, so at least that is gonna end then one way or another. Here's to better and brighter times in the future. 

-Jackson