Writing this post is not going to be easy for me….I have been avoiding to write here, thinking that I really don’t want to appear as always bad mooded, depressed and anxious, but that it seems to be my main concern in life, the thing that keeps coming back, my past haunting me, the present not really doing my much favors either.
I know it would be easy to just summarize the things that happened, that are easy to sympathize with. If I would simply tell about the struggles that everyone is seemingly able to relate to easily, like, the christmas time being somewhat stressful, new years eve, my 3 year olds birthday, though the truth is, most of the struggle regards those holidays is only the anxiety of having to interact with people I …struggle to interact with, if my family in germany is reading that: I’m sorry, it’s how it is….and I can’t even explain it to you in a way that you would fully understand, I think.
Then there were events, like my daughter getting pneumonia and being in hospital for a week, with lots of sleepless nights, not to mention worry and suffering. My plan was to actually somehow use the holidays weeks to not have to get my daughter to daycare (her daycare was closed over holidays) and SOMEHOW relaxing and trying to not think about work for 2 weeks…..but turned out, with that 1 week of hospital and practically 1 week of aftercare, that it was only what….1 or 2 days that I actually had somewhat of a bit of restful time? which was before the hospital…so it feels like nothing went how I wanted it to be and I’m practically still burned out, just, instead of being burned out by mostly game dev and my constant anxieties, now it’s also life stuff in general…..
and it DOES NOT help that I keep bashing myself for not doing enough, that despite friends telling me that I probably need some time off and I agree with that….it doesn’t take my fears and anxieties away…….that I have to build up a business, HAVE TO be a reasonable and responsible adult, that I have to take care of my child, somehow SHOULD take care of myself, that, if I ever want to fulfill my dream about making games for a living, like actually living from it, that I would need to do more, that I would be lazy and that I should have all the time I need to actually work on my game….BUT I barely get to open Blender or unity, while I really want to see the game to become what my vision for it is, I’m overwhelmed with all the anxieties, that I don’t know if I can make it, that I feel as if it will take forever, that my skills aren’t good enough to satisfy the people who would actually want to buy my game, that I can’t make my company selfsustaining with my income from selling games……there are so MANY freaking worries, all the time, which are making it even harder to actually work, giving me more food for my brain to dismantle myself, to question everything I do, because it feels as if I’m proving to myself that it’s right, that I’m not doing enough….that my company likely fails…that I’m likely not gonna be able to lead a whole team of people to make the game I’m dreaming of, that everything is likely gonna fail etc.
and whom am I to believe that it could be any other way? considering how my whole life is practically full of all those things I never had really control over, things just happening to me, pushing me down.
*takes a deep breath*
I hate it so much! that I feel helpless, that I feel anxious all the time, that I feel like everyone must judge me for not doing good enough, that I hate myself, that I have inherited so many bad things people told me throughout my life!
I hate that I can’t just shake it off and act as if everything is fine, because it comes through eventually, it always does and then I wonder, where I’m even taking the strength from….what keeps me going.
well…actually I do know….I kept some things close to my heart, always and I didn’t allow anyone to destroy those…..my imagination, my drive to create, my love for animals, dreaming, my passion for new things I’m discovering and can learn about.
It sounds a bit cheesy if I’m honest, but I think those are the things, that I want to live for….the “what could be” in a positive way…..
Games are a big part of my life, because they allowed me to experience and “live” so much of those traits that kept me going and alive.
It’s probably also why I want to make fantasy games, fantastic worlds to immerse into, that are not avoiding touch of reality, but at the same time allow you to see the world with different eyes.
hm.
fartoindie 
If I may relay some things I learned from playing Dark Souls, & am now applying to my own life: find victory in small steps, & it’s okay to go at your own pace (though I can see how getting a business going can clash with that pace
). Sometimes you just need to tweak your method or do something completely different. It’s through this that I’ve been able to get back into drawing. It can take a long time but continual steps will get you somewhere.
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that’s what I heard from many sides/friends ^^ it seems patience and consistently chipping away at the project is the way to go now, it’s just that I have to also deal with my anxiety/depression issues, which seem to be hard to convince of this being a good or even necessary thing…..to give a little insight, I had some experiences in my past with people practically telling me that I would be wasting my time/would be lazy/that the path I choose wouldn’t be the right one and things like talking how I would be constantly procrastinating, they were not understanding that what I was going through and just applied a big ton of labels on me and sadly those words were coming from people close to me…..so now, even if I have all the rights and power to decide over my own life and make decisions that I think are best, I’m faced with all those voices from a time when I was feeling utterly helpless and the feelings are treating me the same way.
And that’s hard to overcome >..<
I hope that you are right and I hope I can do what I set out for by just doing even the smallest things over some time.
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You should also remember, that you HAVE the right to feel helpless, lost or worried at times. You are allowed to take breaks of your work, even if it feels like you should be working on your game buissness. Remember that the days where you are not depressed, where work doesn’t feel like work but like living your dreams will come back… because you are a creator, an artist… and the reason you started your project was your love for creating and imagination. I doubt that will ever change. š Just take your time out, relax and try to forget all dark thoughts for a while.
To be honest, I had a rough december too, with social anxiety disorder kicking in when everything seemed to be fine -.- Panic attacks are no fun, and you just can’t do anything about how you feel even when you know why it’s like that and that there is absolutely no reason to feel like that. It’s just plain stupid.
I remember a chat we had a while ago where you told me to take small steps, one little thing at a time, just so that it doesn’t feel too overwhelming, even if it looks like too few… and you will still get forward. Time to do that yourself ;p
I hope your feeling better!
*leaves cookies behind because cookies always help*
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you are always surprising me when you suddenly come out of a corner from somewhere with a nice text like this XD *gets hit by positive text, it was very effective*
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