i miss doing stuff
2024 has been a good year for healing, but a bad year for projects. In the first four months, I kinda wanted to kill myself. I also really wanted to live.
So I made the choice to step back from my responsibilities and serious projects. I was burnt out, I was miserable, I was unhappy.
I've lived with depression, anxiety, whatever for many years of my life, but this was the first time that, for an extended period of time, I was miserable day after day.
It came after years of overdoing it. Pushing myself through the downs. Going too hard during the ups. Never really taking good care of myself.
So this year, I stopped coding, I stopped writing journal articles, and I put other projects mostly on-hold too. I stopped pushing myself, because I was pushing myself toward suicide.
It sucks though. I'm passionate about my programming projects. I'm passionate about my local journalism. I'm passionate about various activist projects I've been involved in, and one I'm sorta-kinda working on now. The current one ... well I haven't touched it in two weeks because I just can't.
I think this is what I've needed, to take it easy, to take care of myself. I go to the gym now. I applied for disability. I'm eating healthier, taking my daily vitamin D & Calcium. I developed Osteopenia (weak bones) after years of chronic D deficiency. I lost 1.5" height.
And I don't fucking sell blood plasma any more. That was bad for my physical health, but it took a possibly bigger toll on my mental - pushing myself to go four times per month was causing me to be burnt out literally half of the month. It exhausted me, and I couldn't take care of myself those weeks. And I think I was in another steady decline.
So I quit smoking weed, which has been tough. I think it's been 10 weeks now.
I watched an Acerola video today, talking about the (primarily) game-development projects he's done over the last year. And I just... I just miss being able to work on things that were meaningful to me.