Healing Diary: Just Write it Out

Today is the day after Anzac's Day. I feel the need to mention that, because I've noticed that for all of this year, I have only been writing blog posts for holidays. Hell, the only reason I didn't post this yesterday is because when I came home yesterday, my PSU was fried, and I needed to head out this morning to buy a new one. And yeah, sure, I posted the New Years one twelve days late, and the Valentine's Day one early, but it is a worrying trend. I don't even like ANZAC Day that much, but this ANZAC day, I felt the need to post.
I promised myself I would write at the very least one blog post per month. But at this rate, you should expect just eight more posts for Cinco de Mayo, Winter Solstice, NAIDOC Week, World Elephant Day, Australian Citizenship Day, Halloween, World Toilet Day & Christmas. But I am not going to do that (except maybe NAIDOC Week, if I remember), because it feels insincere. For that same reason, there's no Word of the Day today, I am just here to write, because I need to write. I don't know what I need to say, but I do need to write . . .

The reason I have been so scant on my posts is because I am having some issues with mental health. Ever since my girlfriend broke up with me, I haven't been well. I am not in the doldrums about being single, and I am certainly not bitter about it, it's actually a lot simpler than that. I used to talk to my ex every day, but now that I don't, the amount of socializing that I do with others has been drastically reduced. I am naturally anxious with introverted tendencies, and I do not actively seek out social interaction, so whilst I used to just talk to her all the time, now I don't, meaning that I am not getting a healthy amount of interpersonal interaction.

See, some people that are introverted, they say that they need some alone time to "recharge", they like alone time because it allows them to be themselves, whereas extroverted people feel more energized when they are around others. I am not sure if I buy that - or if I do, I just don't fit the stereotype - because personally I feel good when I am around other people, I need to be around other people to socialize and have fun, but if I spend too long around other people I feel restricted. I don't like to relax at the best of times, I've even made a note of that in this blog, with references to how it relates to my anxiety. But, when I do finally relax, I only like to do so on my own. If I were to try to relax around other people, I would feel anxious, and cramped.
It's not the best metaphor, but think of it like driving a car. You have things to do, even if it's the most natural thing in the world for you, and there's no risk that you will crash, and there aren't even any other cars on the road, you still need to focus on the road. So, if you were asked to relax in that situation, if someone held your hand while you were driving down the road and told you to close your eyes, you would rightly freak. Heck, even if you knew you could roll in that gear for a while, and you're thinking now "that doesn't sound too bad" you couldn't do it indefinitely, and you definitely couldn't relax entirely. Eventually, you would need to wrench your hand away and grab the gearshift, or slam on the brakes, because the car is still in motion.
That's what relaxing feels like around other people, to me anyway. Even if I trust someone else implicitly, many of the people I hang out with are great mates, I would trust them with my wallet, my secrets, my unconscious body and even my heart-lung bypass machine in many cases. But I don't . . . think in a way that makes it so that I can de-stress, relax, process, think and just be myself without worry. Not around them. Not even around family. That's a kind of intimacy that I have reservations about. I'm not even talking about something that sexual or romantic, I am just talking about being able to unwind, but I can't do that around others.

So, when I am stressed, I want to be alone so that I can relax. But the longer I am alone the more stressed I am, because I need to spend time with other people because being lonely makes me feel more stressed. It's a vicious cycle.

That is the reason why I am not blogging as much as I would like to.

However, I am not completely without any work done. I have been working on some other projects. I have a novel that I have been actually writing, so that it can be actually published and read by all the wonderful boys and girls. And, I have another project on my YouTube channel.
Some of you may be a little confused now, since I don't actually have a "first project" on my YouTube channel, so reference to "another" might seem out of left field. But, this is just the nature of creating video content. See, around last March, I said that I wanted to do a major shake-up of my online presence, to change to a three-pronged approach. Two YouTube channels, and this blog, reducing the workload of Duke Forever as well as my blogging frequency, so that I could work on the channel and create videos.

I have not delivered on that, but it is not at all out of laziness, I promise you. You see, I did indeed do a lot of work attempting to create content for a YouTube channel. I started working on different programs, doing research into animation, looking into different forms of editing and special effects. I created several preliminary videos and screen tests as well as checking my own repertoire of acting and voicework.
However, I hit a major stumbling block . . . I am not an animator or actor. At least, not in any way a viably productive, fast or even competent one. I can act, poorly, but I didn't really want my face on camera that often. And also, I can create really good animations, but only short, simple, silent ones that take weeks and weeks to create.
So, a lot of my potential ideas required a butt-tonne of animation that I couldn't manage, and after learning that I quickly shifted gears and looked for simplified means of animation, but even the simplest animations (akin to the Zero Punctuation review animations, or even the Bible Reloaded slideshows) still take time and effort to do, moreso than I can achieve whilst also working on my other projects.
So, rather than leave people waiting for one of those every two or three weeks, I figured I could try to create some kind of show that I should create much more quickly, without as much effort, that I would create and upload more frequently, so that when people are waiting in the meantime they wouldn't be bored. You need to understand that YouTube subscribers are not as reliable as you faithful readers, and since YouTube is an advertising platform there is much more rigamarole in regards to creating, posting and sustainably receiving an audience for your content.
But, I never managed to come up with a simple, easy-to-create video series that I was proud of, so I abandoned many of those ideas, trying to find something I would be happy with, since the easiest thing to do would be a vlog, but I am not a vlogger, I am a blogger.

In the end, I decided that I can't just create content for its own sake, I prefer to educate, make people think and put effort into my work. That's not to say that I have abandoned the idea entirely, rather that my dream of perhaps "expanding my audience" with a YouTube channel has been side-lined, and instead I will just focus on using it as an extension of this blog.
I prefer to write. I can't create an "easy-to-create" series, because I don't think like that, and I definitely don't write like that. So, the current project on the go is a series that I am going to try to create in its entirety, then post when it's done.
I also still have the three-pronged approach I was previously planning, but rather than two YouTube channels (since I can't even create one effectively) and this blog, I will instead just have my YouTube Channel, my Tumblr and my Blog.

Anyway, this was fun and it made me feel a lot better, so I am probably going to try to do this more often. I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time thanks for reading my words, just make sure that you take care of yourself as well and I'll see you in my next post.