Holy crap, was it hard to get out of bed just now!
I kept falling back asleep. Must have happened at least five times. By that final time, I was getting desperate, so I more or less forced myself out of bed by sheer force of will.
It was effective, and I am grateful for that. But I wouldn’t recommend it.
So I don’t think I will be taking my sleeping pill again any time soon. Because that shit was scary and harsh, y’all. Like a freaking nightmare.
Which it may have been, come to think of it. Either way, do not want to repeat it.
Meanwhile, I am kind of stuck in two of the games I currently have on the go. In Darksiders : Genesis, they have hit me with this “escape the collapsing temple” sequence where I have to make all these precise jumps in a row or die.
And there’s no margin of error. You do it exactly right or you have to start all over. And I seriously loathe that kind of thing, as do most gamers, I would think.
I mean, it combines time pressure and precision platform jumping, two things high on gamers’ hit lists, right up there with unskippable cutscenes and escort missions.
And in Dishonored, I am stuck doing this insane part where I have to cross this narrow bridge teeming with guards and huge electric pylon waiting to zap me to cinders.
It’s really quite nuts, and quite the sudden jump in difficulty. I honestly don’t remember it from other times I have played the game.
I assume that has a lot more to do with my imperfect memory than it does with any changes to the game. It’s not impossible that this segment has been added since the last time I played, but the game is from 2012, so it’s not bleedin’ likely.
Meanwhile, I have $30 burning a hole in my Steam Wallet from returning stuff and so I am shopping around for yet another game.
Specifically, I am looking for some sort of open world game full of quests, like Fallout 4 or Skyrim or Witcher 3,
Something where I feel like I am truly getting my money’s worth because I get so many hours of quality gameplay out of it.
I ran some possibilities from my Wishlist past Maelkoth this morning and got some useful feedback from him. Helped me eliminate some possibilities from said rather bloated Wishlist and thus narrow down the range of options.
I might go for a game with the bizarrely named Greedfall. It seems to be the sort of thing I am looking for. But it’s quite recent and thus quite expensive. So I dunno.
Another possibility is Pathfinder : Kingmaker. Unlike Greedfall, it is done in the isometric POV rather than the first person POV of Greedfall et al. I prefer the FPS POV because it’s a lot more immersive, but I have enjoyed the fuck out of many ISO games too.
And it’s like, half the price of Greedfall.
So what I am saying is that I have options.
The problem, as always, is choosing among them.
Knocking at my door
Ya know, in a sense, I have been quarantining myself for a very long time.
That’s why this novel phase the world is going through hasn’t changed my life much. I was already “self-isolating” and doing my best to stay six feet away from people due to my crippling social anxiety slash agoraphobia.
At the root, it’s social anxiety. I feel like people are judging me and want to hurt me when I go out in public. My mental disease tells me they hate me and are super angry at me for even daring to show my face in public, let alone share the same air as good, clean, decent folks.
And yes, that’s crazy. That’s the thing about mental illness. It’s insane.
But behaviour wise, it’s agoraphobia. I stay home.
The difference is that I have the power to end my inner quarantine. All I have to do is open the door and let people in. Make more room in my heart and my mind for the simple human things that provide the bread and butter social interactions that human beings need in order to be emotionally healthy.
This idea occurred to me when I was waiting at the door for my Chinese food to arrive and I overheard Joe and Julian on a Zoom call with Joe’s parents and his sister.
It struck me then that this warm and living world that I have wanted to be a part of for so long is not so very far away.
It’s right here in this apartment, in fact. The only thing keeping me on the outside looking in is my own fear. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with me that makes me unfit company for most people most of the time. That’s the insanity talking, and I am under no obligation to listen.
I can hear it now, raving about how to let other people into my life would be to expose myself to CHAOS and the UNKNOWN and the (even worse) UNPREDICTABLE and how the only safety comes from keeping people AWAY and leading my usual kind of soul-destroying cloistered life.
Yeah, whatever, crazy person. Rant all you want. Tear out your hair and ear the sackcloth and self flagellate. Gnaw the furniture, if you need to.
But I am opening that damned door no matter what you think. I will listen to what you are trying to tell me, but I will by no means take your advice.
Because you are crazy. And I’d be crazy to let you run my life according to your demented whims, you grizzled old loonie.
So this is it. I am opening that long-locked door in my mind and in my heart and making a conscious decision to seek out and embrace more human interaction.
And the crazy part of my mind is just going to have to learn to deal with it.
Because I have nothing to be ashamed off, I am lovely company, and there are people out there who want to see more of me.
So why not give them what they want?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.