I had my generator running with internet every night without power, and six days into the outage, my power was fixed. So that'd be...Thursday, power, Friday, power, and today is Saturday, with me not having written a blog since then.

Mostly, that was me just being stupid and not doing the blog in spite of having it on my mind. Anyway, I suppose I should mention, I've basically caught up on life since the power outtage. I managed to finally grind out the league/tft quests, and thus my only reason to play more was if I wanted to attempt to raise my rank higher. But, I'm content to have it as-is, and leave it there.
(That said, I will have to put some time in to the preseason on Ashe, because while it certainly won't be optimal, I have in mind a hybrid poke/dps build. I already run comet with celerity and approach velocity for lane power that allows for building dps or poke, taking a tear to start. I know in past seasons Shieldbow + Manamune worked as a combo. But now I'm thinking that Shieldbow + ER + Navori would work as a combo, maybe Manamune as fourth or going full crit if not.)

I'll say that a lot of the lack-of-me-present is largely thanks to me being very unhealthy in mafia games. (Silver lining, there's like a 50-75% chance I get banned soon which, hey! Fixes the issue there. >_> <_<) I've been pouring 4-8 hours per day into mafia.

And then I tell myself. "Okay, never again."

And then I do it the next day, and say. "Okay, never again."

And then I do it the next day, and say "I can't keep doing this so this has to be the last day." And then it isn't.

And every work day, I go "okay you can use the phone but no looking at mafia".
And then every work day I look at mafia.
And then I say "okay you can browse offline, but you can't log in to post".
And then half the days I end up logging in to post.

And even though I have every reason to not pay attention to games I am not currently alive in the game as a player in, with my removal from the game as a good way to experience the sweet release of no longer caring and just moving on.

Turns out, as you might have been able to guess, I keep reading.

So mafia has been very very very bad for me.

I kept telling myself. "I'm going to be less active, I'm going to do less, I'm going to do things with more control."
And then I got more unhinged instead.

So like.

I basically have destroyed my life for the umpteenth time thanks to the game that I love but I hate how much it impacts my life. (I'd like to reiterate that I can't go too explicit because of ongoing game rules, but everything I've said here is generic not-game-specific enough to be fine especially since it's all public info and not game-reliant. Just generic things piling up tbh.)

Still.
It may be tempting fate, but I believe that phase of unhealthy mafia activity has ended in my life. (See also, may get banned soon.)

​We'll have to see.

Anyway, with my life beginning to normalize, some to-do things.

I need to finish my art profile picture, but any time I can be lucid and not absentminded, I should be working on my novel instead.
I want to work on minecraft but I know I won't finish my novel goals if I do.

The majority of my time needs to be spent on novel-writing.

Tomorrow I need to, ideally, stream, but if not, at least build my youtube video buffer back up again. (Ideally ideally, do both!)

I need to actually make the thread about youtube videos released that I said I would do.

I need to take a shower tomorrow.
I need to get back into brushing my teeth.
I need to get better at applying the moisturizer to my body to keep it from having breakouts.
I need to shave.

Which is...well. Both a lot, and yet, not a lot.

I've got less work in the next couple of weeks.
But like--on that note, I need to keep up my workouts. I've been quite pathetic there.

I developed an entire routine--and then have done nothing with it at all.

​I need to get better.

I did something today that freed a lot of the burden from my shoulders. Genuinely, before I did it I was literally in a spot of darkness, misery, anger, and utter exhaustion. I couldn't remember being happy. I was just tired in every way possible, and angry at so many things. And I wanted it to just...stop.

So I did. I did something which made it not be an issue.

And once I did it, it genuinely was a weight off our shoulders.

Immediate relief. And I mean immediate relief. Within five minutes, a flood of positive emotions.

Feeling giddy, happy, upbeat.

For the first time we can remember in weeks.
Calm, relaxed. Just, serene.

We were happy. We were free. We were good. We suddenly had the time and mindset for working out, and to actually knock out life tasks.

All good, right?

Sounds like it should've been a good thing, right?

And, well.

It certainly would have been!

...Except for one small issue.

We ADHD'd our way back into doing the same thing. It has become an obsession. A very unhealthy one at that.
We let go. We were free.
And then we weren't. Because we are stupid. We are dumb.

Even now we're thinking of that thing and it is taking every rational part of us to go, "NO. No. Bed. Not that. BED."

Which gives an idea for how bad it is. It's genuinely an addiction--and yet.

In spite of knowing how unhealthy it is, in spite of knowing how it is making this hellish week all the much worse.

We keep going back.

For god only knows what reason.

See also, we are stupid. And we hate it.

I am sick physically.
I am sick mentally.
I am sick emotionally.

Genuinely.

Nothing is going well for me right now.

I'm exhausted on every level.
I'm tired.
I'm sick.
I just...I'm losing so much.

My health is going down. Physically, especially.
But also mentally and emotionally.

I am worn down.

I am tired.

I am genuinely not okay.

I'm not doing so much I should be.

I'm struggling.

I feel like I am breaking down. That I am broken, that I can't continue on.
I just feel like I'm so done with life right now.

But like. Can't exactly not live it. So in spite of feeling like I'm just done--obviously I'm not actually. Which arguably makes me feel even worse because I feel like quitting something that there is no quit option for.

(Well--technically. But. Y'know. I'm not going there. There's no quit option. Period.)

I'm struggling to remember how to be happy.
I'm struggling to remember how to function.
I'm just.

I feel like collapsing.

My whole life is just. Tension building, no release.

I genuinely don't know how to keep going.
I mean, I will.
I just don't know how.
And there's a very real--justifiable--fear that I simply...pass out. Behind the wheel.

I'm not healthy in any way.
That bad health adds up.

Something's gonna break bad.
Physically would be the least damaging, but most annoying. Sickness would be a way to force rest, but would cause so many small issues.
Emotionally would be the most destructive. When I break bad, I burn bridges.
And Mentally would be the most dangerous. If I fall asleep while guarding, it's dangerous to other patrons. If I fall asleep while off the stand it could cost me the job for sleeping through rotations. But mostly and obviously: if I fall asleep while driving...

...When I drive on some of the most dangerous highways in the state...

...Hoo boy I don't think I need to say how dangerous that is.

And I've come close to all three mentally before.

Very very dangerous.

And it's getting worse.

It's not the work schedule in of itself.
It's just a perfect storm of everything wearing me down.
So many events going on that I am juggling.
The extra work I felt I had to take.
The time-limited things I am struggling to try and get on time.
The picking up of things that I am invested in.

It's all adding up. It's all piling up.

I don't think it'll have the effects of the worst burnouts where I genuinely left areas of my life I loved permanently in the past. That shouldn't happen.

But.

I am just. So so dead inside.

I mean, physically, not so much. It did leave our foot blistered when normal workdays don't, but that's minor. In of itself, yesterday was fine otherwise. Altho the fatigue is definitely felt--today's drive home from work felt alarmingly dangerous, because tiredness built up from exhaustion.

Emotionally, well yes but we've recovered.

The main way it messed us up was scheduling-wise and all the fallout which follows.

We were meant to do a minimum of 7 things today.

Watching one video.
Watching two vods.
Brushing teeth.
Going to bed on time.
Taking a shower.
Keeping discord talks up to date.
And catching up on mafia games. (We usually take Saturdays off. Which is normally fine, because we have eight hours of free time on Sunday to devote to the game. Not yesterday! Yesterday we had a maximum possible of two. Two hours, IF we were doing NOTHING BUT mafia. Suffice to say, we did not get that done.)

We tried to do them all.

You know how many we got done?

Well if we brush our teeth, that'll be two.
Otherwise?

One.

One, of seven.

These are genuinely all things that I could've gotten done if I had my normal amount of free time.
If I didn't have a double shift yesterday, if we didn't work ten hours yesterday, if we worked a far more sane five, then we'd have had five hours to devote to knocking tasks out.

We wouldn't have needed to even watch the DRX vod, because we'd have caught it live. (Maybe the very beginning we'd miss, but the most of it we'd catch.) Instead, we came in on the ending of game 4, meaning we had 4 games to watch and then some. (In our credit, we did get to near the end of game 2, but we honestly should rewatch that game since we didn't even notice when DRX got the edge there. It started with an EDG advantage and we knew EDG won the first two, so we kinda figured "oh EDG just won this from that early play, match wrapped", except actually no, it was an EDG win but DRX had the lead and I didn't really notice when or how that happened, so like...we clearly weren't paying enough attention to game 2 meaning we need to rewatch it. But I digress. Point is, we didn't finish that.)
We would probably have had time to watch the Paranormal Detour second episode.

We'd have had more time to catch up on discord.

And we'd have had more time to play mafia, meaning a lot of the work we did today could have instead been done yesterday, when we actually promised it. (We still haven't done things we promised on Saturday we'd do. Can't elaborate, ongoing game rules, but since the info is public in said games I think I can safely say that much without violating site rules by keeping it vague and not explaining.)

Granted, still wouldn't have gotten everything we wanted to do, done.

We'd still be late for bed and still not have finished everything.

But we'd have finished more.

Because today we still didn't finish. We're nowhere close.

We took a shower, miraculous as that in of itself is. But that's genuinely it. Everything else we planned to do, we didn't do to the amount we had planned to do. Or even remotely close.

All off the back of a single double shift we really didn't want to work, but worked anyway because we felt we had no choice but to.

The sad part is, we knew this would happen; that's why we didn't want the shift in the first place. We KNEW it would mess us up in this exact way. It's just that, well. We got stuck with the shift anyway, and now the consequences: we are suffering, because everything is out of whack.

There's so many things piling onto the to-do list.

We're neglecting League and TFT, in spite of time-sensitive missions there.
We were planning to stream today (oh that makes a minimum of eight, not seven), we didn't do that--and to knock out the to-do list for today we'll have to give up streaming tomorrow, too.
We haven't worked on our art since Saturday (our day off).
We haven't written since our last stream.
We have barely scheduled youtube videos, staying afloat at uploading one per day and releasing one per day in spite of the idea being to schedule several in a day that release every day. (I need a buffer. I have none.)

And our health is not great.
Every workout is a struggle. We barely did the 59 knuckle pushups today (broken up into two sets because we're too weak and pathetic to do them all in one). We only did the 59 jackknives on a technicality, doing like six sets of 10 or so. (Actually, 5 sets, since two sets were 15.) Again, those are meant to be one continuous set. And they had half-hour gaps between them.

Realistically speaking, time constraints mean I can't do an entire workout in half an hour, so doing one set of 59 jackknives is unrealistic, but I introduced a concept of a "soft-reset" where I keep some progress but roll it partially back if I have a half-hour break. So, 20 becomes like 16, 16 becomes like 10, something generically in the area but which accommodates for how you're not supposed to get that much rest between sets.

Today each set of jackknives--10 to 15--was separated by a half-hour...and I couldn't use a soft-reset for any of them. We did pretty much on the dot 59, both officially AND unofficially. No soft resets involved. Which means the ab workout was sub-optimal.

We didn't do proper arm stretches.
We didn't do extra ab work to target the side-abs.
We didn't do extra arm workout to build the muscles up not activated by knuckle pushups.

​And we are so tired. So exhausted. And it's only going to get worse. We're late for bed three days in a row now. We work 31.5 hours officially (33 with lunch accounted for), over five days this week. We're dangerously tired as-is and our workouts are increasingly hard to do, likely thanks to lack of rest to properly build the strength back up.

It has all snowballed from what amounts to one thing we felt like we had no choice but to do. One extra shift, and our whole week is dangerous, miserable, tiring, and getting worse and worse and worse and worse.

Granted, it's not like everything is bad.

It's just that: genuinely?

We don't have time to appreciate the good. We don't have time to celebrate the good. We don't have time to enjoy the good.
​There is good happening, it's not literally all bad--but we just...well, we see it, but it's hard to, I guess, perceive it? Observe it? Feel it? We objectively recognize the good when we think about it and in the exact moment of the good...

...But we are so overwhelmed right now that genuinely any time outside of the good, we can't actually think of the good.

So while the week isn't all bad and has good within...

...The good kinda gets buried under the pile of exhaustion, fatigue, and business, from work and a continuously piling up list of things we are meant to do that we aren't doing.

As a reminder, weebly is my primary blog, for any who would view this blog entry on wix.
And I am creating a mirror/backup blog on wix, for those who view my blog on weebly.

Today, weebly had me logged in. I attempted to log in with a square account and that wasn't working, so I went back to the log-in-with-google option which seems to consistently be the only one which works--which is a concern, because if it stops working...well, bye bye weebly blog.

With my repeated links to the wix blog, it'd be fairly easy for blog viewers here paying attention to what would inevitably be my last entries on weebly to figure out what happened: that I had lost access to weebly and swapped over to wix. But still, I'd prefer not to lose my weebly blog if I can avoid it, especially since I've not ported over the eight years worth of blog entries yet.

I need to tho, just in case the weebly blog does become inaccessible to me at any point for any reason. After all, losing access to making entries isn't the only concern; losing the content of the entries is also a biggie.

So yeah, I definitely need to do that.

The problem is, there's so much extra I need to do, too.

I should be checking Disney Dreamlight Valley daily to see what outfits are there that I want to buy. Furniture, meh, don't care about it. But clothing, quite a bit, I do. Not everything, but enough.

And there are both quests for League of Legends, and for Teamfight Tactics. I need to keep going on those areas as well.

In addition to that, I've got a doctor appointment tomorrow, and a training on Saturday.

All in all, an incredibly busy week, so finding the time to continue porting over is...quite difficult. Especially since I do have mafia duties to attend to as well as other games that I want to keep playing. It's just...it's a lot. And I don't have time for it all.

​Still gotta try my best tho.

Well, not completely, but everything was done only half way at best.

I did only half of my workout.
I took only half of a shower.
I did my job only half as well as I should have.
I didn't do mafia at all.
I didn't do TFT at all.
I didn't play League at all.
I didn't stream today. (Afternoon was understandable, but I could​ have done evening--and didn't.)
I didn't brush my teeth today.
I accidentally had food/drinks worse for my health (more sugary/fatty than ideal).

I have, once more, gone an entire day without an apology for something I am over a week overdue for in a different game. When it was a time-sensitive manner, no less. I need to get that done. I really really do. Basically, it was one of the things that I thought was a good thing that turned out to be a bad thing. Where good intentions ended up infuriating a lot of people who were hurt.

And I did hurt them. That, in of itself, warrants an apology.
I know that apologies are time-sensitive. An apology given a month later is a lot less sincere than an apology given within a couple of days.

I know that they probably won't suddenly accept me as a good person, which I don't really deserve to be. I'm not good enough to be a good person. I try, but I am so bad at being a good person.
I still should try tho--I hurt people. The people I hurt were, mostly, innocent. Hating me is justified for that and every day that I don't apologize makes that hatred more justified. ('Cause, again: time-sensitive thing and what does my stupid dumb ass do??? Procrastinate! Put it off! Something that is very important to those people that I hurt! Something meaning a lot to them! Something that they have reason to be injured by--and I'm putting off apologizing for the damage I did. I am an idiot. And I really hate myself for how incompetent I am.)

​I'm not so self-centered as to believe that intentions justify having hurt people. It was unintended harm, it was accidental harm. In fact, it was actually done out of a naive belief that I would be helping people and preventing future harm. I thought it would help others. When I vented I thought it was something which could help prevent people from going through what I went through.

But I made so many wrong assumptions and the vent being public--my attempt to help--ended up making it one of the most harmful things possible.

I don't even know how to say sorry for that but it's not something I can just let fade. I need to say sorry for what I did wrong. I need to make sure they know I understand the harm I did. I need to make sure they know I am aware of how hurtful it was. Because I do know it now.

But I also need to make sure they know I didn't do what I did out of malice. I need to make sure they know my apology is genuine and sincere, not something done to just get them off my back. I need to make sure they know that my intentions were good, but that I recognize my intentions being good doesn't mean I didn't do harm. I need to make sure they know that my causing harm was not deliberate, that it was an accident, but that I know it being an accident does not mean the harm wasn't still harmful. That after the fact, it caused damage and being unintended does not excuse the damage done.

Obviously, I wouldn't have done it if I thought it would be harmful. Obviously, I wouldn't have done it if I thought it would hurt others. I did it specifically because I thought it'd do the opposite, in preventing harm and preventing hurt to others. But after I did it, I learned I was wrong, that what I did was not helping others, that what I did was not the good thing that I thought it was, that what I did was exactly the opposite of what I intended. And that it did notable damage.

And I need to find a way to convey this.

I don't really know how.

How do I explain how my heart sank when I had the situation explained to me in full?
How do I explain how much I felt pain when realizing that I had caused pain?
How do I explain that I thought I was doing the right thing, but now know it was the wrong thing, and having done the wrong thing was, well...wrong?

I need to figure that out.

Every day I tell myself, "today is the day I do this. I know I didn't do it yesterday when I wanted to, but yesterday had extenuating circumstances. Today has none of those, so I can do it."

And then every day I end up not doing it.

It's hard.

It needs to be done.
It's important to be done.

The sooner I do it, the less time the people hurt will feel hurt because I will have worked to make amends.

Yet in spite of knowing the above.

I kinda suck.

No, I really suck.

If I didn't, it'd have gotten done by now.

I know it wasn't a complete waste but I sure don't remember much, aside from spending way too much energy playing mafia. (Can't comment too much there tho obv, since rules prevent it and I know my blog IS being watched and I don't wanna get banned for ooc stuff. It should be fairly safe to say I spent a lot of energy playing mafia today and it was too much tho.)

I think that ate up like 70% of the day and could maybe have eaten up more had I not deliberately stepped away. (I may have issues.)

I also spent a little more time trying out Disney's Dreamlight Valley. Its windowed mode is a joke and highly buggy, but I managed to find a workaround for the majority of my issues there so I might spend some time there. I don't think I want to stream it because I want to listen to the music as it was intended, and also because when streaming I have other better things to do.

Speaking of which, probably won't stream tomorrow, there's an earlyish stream that I want to catch.

I promised my mom I'd take a shower tomorrow, too, but it might have to wait until Monday, since the early stream announcement came in after I gave that promise.

We'll have to see.

It's an hour past my bedtime tho so I gotta leave now.

I'm doing terribly on hygiene obviously so need to get that.
Most of my health also not great. I'm barely working out at all.
But I think I can pull things together.

​Slowly.

Half-productive is better than no productive!

I didn't sort some shopping stuff, but I did get it half-done.

I didn't stream for long, but I did stream.

I didn't complete the writing that I wanted to, but I did get a lot of much-needed work done.

I haven't kept my online games stuff done (I still need to deliver an apology to some very ticked off players and am a solid week late in doing so), but I did at least keep up with mafia games.

Overall, a day filled with partial productivity but never full.

I'll take what I could get tho!

Today I was meant to stream but my computer bluescreening kinda killed my mood there.

However, today was still a productive day. While I didn't write, I did write down some important character details for the story, meaning I was still indirectly progressing things.

More than that, I made leaps and bounds of progress while working on a mafia article for the site I play mafia on. I realize that it's not the most productive thing to work on, but it's something that as of Monday I'll have been officially working on for three months (May 29th), with unofficial work spanning longer than that where I had the idea but didn't gather it up until the official date.

It's long-overdue for being written, should've been written months ago, but I have incentive to finish it now thanks to a planned update that I wanna finish the article before goes live.

It's quite the arduous project, but I have chipped away at it for a while and today made a huge chunk of it, making finishing potentially within striking distance. I just need to grasp it.

But, it'll be a lot of work.

I realize it's only work on one specific site. It's not nearly as productive/applicable as things I could do elsewhere.

But that site, that mafia site, is very important to me, and I genuinely legitimately think that my article could do a lot of good. It wouldn't be something to take as gospel, but the discussion it would generate would be itself quite healthy, so I want to finish it, for the sake of the site.

I just need to keep putting the work in, bit by bit.

In my defense, I know what I was doing pretty much the entire time. Watching two streams, one of them 11 hours long, and after they finished, deciding to hop into ranked TFT a bit. Since the TFT matches took me almost 4 hours and the streams got me to 11 pm, well, that means nothing else got done today.

But, I do have plans for tomorrow.

A good, high-quality, long, shower.
Brushing my teeth.
Getting medication.
Weekly ranked League game.
And then a bunch of stuff on the mafia site, including asking if I can use a piece of art as an avatar, plurality stuff, and working on a couple of projects.

Will it all get done?

Well, probably not, especially given the streams tomorrow.

But, I gotta try.