Losing Myself in Distraction

 It is funny that it has been exactly three months since I stopped writing and blogging. Maybe this post should indicate that was more a break than an actual stop. If you go back and read through my August posts it is clear that I was struggling to maintain a positive, healthy mental state. Looking back I am certain that I made both good and bad moves to try and do something about it. I didn’t realize I was losing my connection to myself. 

The big lesson from quarter four of 2023 (and maybe the entire year) for me has been that treating the symptoms of a problem is not the same thing as getting healthy. To belabor that metaphor, you can keep a cough under control with enough Luden’s Wild Cherry and DayQuil, but if you don’t get antibiotics to cure the underlying infection you are going to stay sick. I have spent quite a lot of time and money treating the symptoms of my stress, depression, and unhappiness. The underlying infection was just festering and spreading. 

That is what really drove me to stop blogging. I needed to quieten my world for a while. I have hobbies by the dozen which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I love to write and share my thoughts on a blog. I love to read. I have spent just shy of a decade being an avid comic book reader. I like throwing sharp things at targets. I like target shooting. I enjoy various forms of Archery. I play Dungeons and Dragons. I play Magic the Gathering. I watch some TV (Doctor Who is carrying me currently.) I have been an avid video gamer nearly my entire life. I like to hike. I love riding motorcycles (particularly with my Dad.) I haven’t been in quite a while, but I enjoy kayaking. I enjoy creating content be in a blog, podcast, or videos for YouTube and TikTok. I enjoy just being in the mountains of East Tennessee. 

I quit writing first. Blogging is a wonderful outlet. I tend to write in my head all the time. Some of it is personal and ends up in a journal. Some of it fades back into the ether. A small portion finds its way here. It works like a purge valve on a pressure cooker or InstantPot. When things are spinning around in my constantly churning mind I can sit down and write a post. Writing is a discipline and that is apt. It works to focus my thoughts because of the mental scaffolding required to make a post intelligible. The distractions, fluff, and chaos in my brain have a hard time competing though they do their best which is why I love the parenthetical notations in every post. I needed to stop having release and allow the pressure to build in order to figure out how I was hurting and why. 

I quit scheduling my D&D games. I wrapped up a few series in comics and then canceled my subscriptions. I literally finished my last issue this morning for the foreseeable future. Diablo 4 carried my attention for a while, but a lackluster pair of first seasons finally got me bored with video games. I got the social media off of my phone. I didn’t delete my accounts. The point of this wasn’t isolation. The point was to remove my ability to distract myself. I knew I was not at peace with myself. My subconscious was manifesting a sense of paranoia, frustration, and discontentedness and I couldn’t put my finger on why. 

See I knew my health was suffering. I have been sick more times in 2023 than I have since I struggled with bad allergies and migraines when I was a kid. I seem to catch everything that comes along and struggle to shake it. I mean I missed work sick this year and I didn’t do that at the peak of Covid. Between bouts of sickness I have been perpetually tired and low energy. I normally have robust health. Some of the change I know I am to blame for. My exercise routine has been on far too long a hiatus. Then again, if you can’t breathe well it is hard to walk, lift, twist, or bend. The mental health stuff could have stemmed from a sense of helplessness to take control of some aspects of my physical health, but that didn’t feel like it. 

My hobbies can distract me from some awful stuff. The one I don’t talk about is probably the most toxic. I like having lots of interests because it gives me the ability to shop. I freaking love having an excuse to buy new stuff. A new gun needs bullets, a holster, a carrying case, new sights, and it gives an excuse to buy myself new targets. A new Magic card set gives me some adjustments to the decks I already have built, but it can also inspire me to build things I haven’t done before. I managed to ignore Dinosaurs until Lost Caverns of Ixalan and now I have a really nice Dinosaur deck. Well, I enjoyed building it. I haven’t tested it yet. 

Distraction is okay if you need to get over the hump. For example, I am super stressed about filing my taxes next year. The soonest I will be able to do that would be early February. There is no sense sitting around fretting about what I may have to pay in for months. I can reassure myself that my stress isn’t reasonable because those numbers are going to be what they are. Then, if I find myself brooding, I can occupy myself in a more healthy pursuit. Shooting down enemies in Sky Force or fighting my way out of Tartarus in Hades is a much better use of time. Most anything would be. Who wants to sit around sweating the IRS?

The truth is there is a lot going on in my life that I am not at peace with. I am not going into all of the things here. Let me modify that. I am not going into ANY of the things here. They are personal and not for public consumption. That stuff is more for my journal than the blog. It is hard to process those things though if you are avoiding all of it by keeping yourself busy and distracted with other things. I had to cut away the distractions and allow myself to get really not okay before I started the processing. 

Okay, maybe I didn’t have to, but distraction is a really hard habit for me to break. You can distract yourself in nearly infinite ways. I have often wrapped myself up in other people as a misdirect. That can be in a good way or a really awful one. I can spend time with people that are good for me doing totally normal healthy things as a way to avoid my feelings. In a much more unhealthy way, I can also decide that I want to get really invested in helping or listening to other people’s problems. That is always much easier and more fun than dealing with my own. I admit that knowing that I have that habit has encouraged me to distance myself from others quite a lot. The silence and solitude helps me so very much. I may be uncomfortable alone with my thoughts, but that is a good indication that I have growth I have been avoiding. Growth is never, ever painless. 

When I left myself almost no outlets other than a little TV, a book, and either an audiobook or music on my commute things happened quickly. I started looking at myself and my problems seriously. The things that had me overwhelmed are nothing compared to things I have already overcome in life. I will get through these things including the ones that I am only dreading as potential problems. I did mention that my mental state has included a whole lot of fear based theory crafting and paranoia, didn’t I? 

Years ago I found out that there is a huge difference between the appearance of being functional and the real thing. I am the Jedi Master of checking the boxes and going through the boxes while falling apart on the inside. That is the difference between getting through the day and enjoying and making the most of it. It is easy to forget that we only get so many sunrises and sunsets and to let them become mundane and mediocre. 

I don’t want to settle for anything half-assed. Sure, there are going to be unpleasantness that I am going to have to get through including the occasional self-inflicted malaise. That doesn’t have to be the standard. I can choose how I react to my circumstances. We all stumble and fall. I am just going to enjoy it and go down swinging with a smile on my face. That is a lot closer to who I am than the grim mindset I have been in for months. 

I am proud of the rebound. I probably should have moved toward getting help a little faster. I might should have forced myself to step away and ignored the potential problems of that a few months back. None of that really matter though. What matters is shaking off the storm clouds and getting back to feeling at peace with myself. I love life and plan to as long as I have the privilege to keep living it. 

Now, I am going to go play a video game, not as a distraction, but because I want to. I have to keep at level 6 on Sky Force Reloaded. I am so close to finishing the level without losing any health. Hmm. I also haven’t Starfield, LoZ Tears of the Kingdom, or Final Fantasy XVI. Seems like I need to do some questing this December.