starting again (Patreon)

As I've hinted on a little bit, I've spent the past week in recovery from a mental breakdown. Nothing acutely outwardly awful happened, I'm just weak and can't handle stress - at all. Not doing much of anything ended up being surprisingly good for me, though I've done some off camera work and sent out the first 6 reward packages - yay! I still have to remind myself to take it easy and avoid frying my brain again, after all, I'm gonna need it for a little while. At this point I see no hope of ever being on top of every (any?) aspect of my life but I'm trying to make changes for the better wherever I can. Today is my second day of feeling stable. It's a rare occasion that I feel like I can handle a minimum amount of tasks in a day so as you can imagine - I'm milking it. Because a certain two people failed to equip me with any life skills at all, I feel very overwhelmed by any more outstanding tasks than I feel I can accomplish in a day. But I'm trying and I'm getting somewhere. I don't know if you can relate to that, but it feels like I have to move a lot faster than I am able to process, just to keep up with daily life. It makes me feel like I'm constantly in a rush and that plays a big part in me feeling chronically stressed - because I feel pressure even when I'm not doing anything. Does anyone have any experience with that? I just find it hard to ever wind down.

At the same time, I feel like I'm not moving forward enough to keep myself happy and growing because there seems to be no room for new things - after all, I can't even seem to keep up with what's going on now. But not doing the things I want to do, not moving in the direction of my desire, makes me more stuck and drains the life energy out of me like a freshly slaughtered deer hanging to bleed dry. It makes life not fun anymore and gives me the feeling that there isn't in fact anything out there worth pursuing. You'd be surprised how exhausting suppressing those little impulses can be. Those little impulses are what leads to making new decisions, what leads you to growth and feeling content with life. Life is all about decisions and priorities. Playing the Sims for a week taught me that. It's really quite impressive. In the Sims 3, there's an open world for you to explore (or in my case a neighborhood and some rabbit holes that I've custom built) and each day you are presented with decisions: Do I want to A) work on my skills tonight B) go to Cass's god damn party for the third day in a row C) see what's up at Garnet's bar D) learn a new recipe E) hack myself some free money? The list goes on... And you make those decisions based on your priorities, your needs, the fucking weather, consider all the options... Well, less of those when you live in wholesome Christian Bavaria and everything shuts down by the time you get your vampiric heat rash ridden ass out of bed -  but you get the point. Playing this game has made me aware of options and priorities and it makes me feel a little calmer knowing that there aren't any wrong or bad ones - they're your priorities. It makes me feel a little less life or death and that's something I didn't realize I was feeling on a daily basis until an actual life simulator taught me how to approach things more like, well, a game. The thing is, you don't know where you're gonna end up with each decision you make (do not take a shot for everytime I say 'decision') - there are so many unknowns and variables playing into everything, which by the way aren't helping my dramatic world view, that you can't possibly predict where you're going. You can have an idea and it may turn out to be wrong. Needless to day, lots of my ideas have turned out to be dead wrong. I also feel the need to mention my tendency to take things way too seriously. I'm the type of person who will stand in the grocery store and pace back and forth trying to decide what to buy, afraid of making a "wrong" decision and regretting it later. My decision to "grab a quick snack" often turns into serious business with anxiety levels comparable to defusing a time bomb with 9 minutes left on the timer. I don't know yet why I do this, but it makes sense to think it's because of my upbringing which didn't allow for any "mistakes" - everything had to be perfect the first time. 

Yet I am making critical (no pun intended) changes to how I approach things. I've been taking self-care more seriously upon realizing that the reason why I didn't want to do anything or be productive at all was because part of me felt that I had become my shitty parents and only cared about functioning enough to deliver and didn't care about our wellbeing. You see, to my parents it didn't matter how I was doing, how I felt about something or how much I had grown on the inside - the only thing that mattered was that I had something to show for myself. What mattered was the grades and the condition of my room and the rest was fucking whatever. I never realized how badly that affected me, how much of my life at home was spent in fear and anxiety of the consequences of not delivering, how much I was constantly monitoring and changing my behavior in order to impress my parents and avoid being yelled at and guilt tripped and lectured about how everything I did in life was wrong and awful and how lovely I used to be as a child and now look what kind of a disgrace I've become... I internalized all of it and subconsciously continued to live my life to impress a certain two people. It's become ever so much worse since making videos has become my job. I consider myself very, very lucky to have you all here supporting what I do and actually being able to contribute to our family with one of the few things I can effectively do with all my psychological restrictions, but I've been subconsciously stressing myself out to the detrement of us all, trying to be productive and make a living, all while neglecting my own needs and driving part of me to flip shit on me and refusing to cooperate. I thought I was doing the right thing because that's what I was taught being an adult and making a living was supposed to be like because that's what's been modeled to me by a certain two people - all that matters is getting shit done, how you end up mentally and emotionally is fucking whatever. I'm only now starting to come around to turning this around, after trying and fucking failing to keep this lifestyle up. I've always kept in mind what all of you keep telling me - to do what I want and have fun with it. And I'm trying. I had a video idea that seemed pretty fun and tried to record it yesterday but I'm not sure if it's good enough to publish yet. Hardly anything I do is ever good enough in my eyes but we'll see. I know you can tell when a video feels like a chore, when I'm not being real, when I'm not having fun. When I'm pretending a chapter of a book is entertaining when it's fucking bullshit lol. The good news is, taking care of myself pays off and I'm in a much better mood lately, despite the sun being a piece of shit and me being tired of pouring sweat after every shower. So whatever I do end up putting out (that passes quality control) will likely be much more relaxed and fun. I wish it was enough to balance the general pressure you get as a content creator to pump out quality videos like my neighbor pumps out obnoxious screaming brats and I hope someday it will be enough to allow myself to go through my usual cycles of creation - even though I'm not sure my body knows what a cycle is at this point due to the IUD. But seriously guys, I've made 3 videos this month - only half of my self-imposed minimum quota - and I'd be so sad if I didn't manage to do at least one more...

On a last note, I realized how much I'm holding myself back by suppressing those little impulses mentioned above. It feels like halting progression, postponing growth, procrastinating life... And it's not good for my mental health, It's exhausting. I have good and sound reason to not want to spend a small fortune on video props I'm going to end up getting rid of very soon... But I guess I just realized I'm being too strict and as in the example of last night's video, I am tired of trying to save money to the point of holding myself back in making the videos I want to make. Like, yes, I'd rather have $100 available for furniture when we move, but I'm unnecessarily restricting myself by refusing to buy props and in the end it feels like less than, like the video is not as good as it could be because I internalized my parents' frugality and insist on making do with the limited resources I currently have when it's not that difficult to acquire additional resources in the first place. So this is why I bought $100 worth of mixology ingredients for tomorrow night's stream aswell as future videos. Someone once asked if I'm actually "wasting" products for a video or just swapping them out/pretending. I honestly don't consider it a waste if I can make a video that helps thousands of people relax. I think the payoff is much, much greater than a $0.79 face mask or a $2 bottle of cider. When I imagine thousands of people getting some sleep when the alternative would have been no sleep and added stress, the price of a coal disk and a sprinkling of incense, 10 candles, a handful of crystals and 8 hours of my time pales in comparison. That's just my take on it. And yes, even the price of a $2,200 camera plus however much on top for a lens or two, a $2,000 microphone and studio lighting will be worth it when I finally get there. Whenever you're ready, US embassy, whenever you're ready...

Thank you for reading my obscenely long rambles. I really appreciate it and I'm sorry I haven't been providing as much content as I'd like to. I have a couple concrete ideas I'm working on before anything else (it's cyberpunk), just a little slow at gathering all the stuff I'll need and getting a solid idea of the plot and required props. But now that I'm managing my brain better, I hope we'll see progress eventually.

//Ally