Hello everyone! First off, sincere apologies for the hectic month. I had plans for this earlier in the month, only to delay it due to low energy and then depression hitting me again, and then I got so out of it last week working on Monday’s Yugioh review that I almost forgot an important SFG milestone.
Luckily, I have some actual progress this time around, although I do have to get semi-serious on some subjects along the way.
The Battle Within
I’m pretty positive at this point, especially upon talking with my therapist, that I am on the verge of being clinically depressed. I was pretty roughed up like that back in 2019 when I lost my bestie and then my grandpa, but so far, no losses this year thankfully. Rather, the deep fear and depressions I’ve been battling the past month, have been due to the dread of such things; whether from world events, future calamities that I worry about, or just in general. I’ve always had an extreme fear of loss due to past events in my upbringing, and recent world events just depress me enough to open my weaknesses and leaving me a lot more vulnerable to not taking good care of myself.
Thankfully, I’ve had a solid support network IRL and online, but the downside to that is then I worry about losing those people too, and then my phobia just loops around into an endless cycle of worrying about the what-ifs. Add in general political anxiety due to my LGBT friends and dealing with a close-to-home issue i’d rather not talk about, and I’ve been pretty much a wreck. My continued social media hiatus has done wonders for me not collapsing mentally, and I’ll keep doing that as a result.
Rest assured, I’m still available to contact. My SFG email isn’t hard to find, and people who know me know how to get me on Discord, and I’m not abandoning the twitch fully and still want to stream there (along with my earlier update noting I’d like to be on gaming podcasts, that still applies!). I still am doing my best to stay in touch with devs as I work on newer games for the review queue, and having slowly dipped myself back into a writing routine lately, I’ve been rather proud of myself.
Now the biggest weakness comes from overexerting myself. Sometimes, I end up thinking i can do a lot in one night after being busy all day with other things, only to end up crashing and freezing up due to getting tired and worn out. At the very least, note taking has gone uninterrupted, so that’s good, but you know, I can’t get out of this funk without putting stuff out. Thus, I crunched and did good work on a Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection review, which I implore you to check out. I try to be detailed in my compilation reviews, and I think that review proves my dedication, I hope.
Still, there’s a lot of anxieties ahead. Having friends all over the world is good, as you have knowledge of all sorts of different cultures and get to learn things that you otherwise wouldn’t just being in one state most of your life. The bad from that is well, you hear so much about all the bad and anxious stuff in the world, and trying to play defense to help every major cause on the planet is an easy way to crash out mentally. I can attest to this, since lemme tell you, worrying sick about people I know from the various US States, Germany, Israel, Ukraine, Gaza, and Brazil being OK all in one month is enough to paralyze anyone. It’s kinda another reason I wish I had the platform powers to do charity streams for causes I believe in, but we aren’t at that point yet. Maybe someday I could think of something or do more twitch streams, since that got put on the backburner due to my depression.
Nevertheless, the battle continues, I’m in therapy and have a good IRL support network. Still, this plus my long time phobia of death just really isn’t helping matters much for me, but I’ll do my best to push hard regardless.
Reviews Revving up! For Real!
The good news is my Yu-Gi-Oh review was the longest thing I had written in a good while, and it got me warmed up enough to get to more writing in general; more work done on the bajillionth rewrite of the LRG article, several reviews for games in the queue and a few retro ports I picked up on a whim, and indeed, a system review with the Evercade EXP-R in the works too.
Limiting my review requests during this period was very helpful (the newer games I just got in this week are short retro themed ones, my usual strongsuit), but unfortunately that means Q1 is nearly over and the Switch Legacy queue is still stuck at “almost over”. The PS4 queue is gonna be a mythical legend until I finally get to it, but I will aim to still do it. Just with how swingy my mood and anxieties can get, I just don’t know what a day will be like. I thus, try to now prep on a weekend on as much as I can before I go back to my usual weekly routine, in hopes of mitigating any days I’m frozen in fear to do much of literally anything. Please bear with me, but I hope my final results help out a lot.
SFG Name: 10 Years, and the Logo Talk
I was so out of it I missed a big chance to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of my SFG rename from pokemonbattlezone, a gibberish name i should have never made to begin with. Back when I made an insanely simplistic logo with a goalpost flag, before shifting to the shadowy bird you see now.
A little fitting considering my anxieties and mood swings, but I long expressed interest in revamping the site with a new theme and logo, and I still do want to do this. No ETA at the moment, just gotta dust off krita, doodle some ideas and get back in touch with my artist pal to work out a solution. I’ll slowly approach this when I feel like it VS crunching for deadlines, so I hope that leads to a revamp that’ll truly feel like a recharge when I decide to roll it out. Maybe I’ll do a merch store thingy like some people do?!? not that I think I could brainstorm anything worth putting on a shirt or something…
Conclusion
in short, please cherish yourself and your friends, but not to the point you collapse within. I really struggle with that sometimes. It has also made some of my bigger obligations like LRG Part 3 insanely hard, and with how many rewrites I do before I fully finish the skeleton of the article, and honestly, I’m really enjoying my easing back into things with shorter reviews of some retro ports and remakes coming soon.
Still, I sincerely apologize for well… the entire Q1 being rocky so far. I can’t say I’ll feel fully energized again in this environment, nor will I know if I ever will again. I worry so much that it eats at me and even if one issue were to resolve, I just know another thing would crop up to make me scared to death. Such is the nature of the world, and the downside to all of us having 24/7 news devices.
Yes, it’s even gotten to the point I use AppBlock and other services religiously. Godspeed to them, as if it wasn’t for that tool I probably wouldn’t even have an internet presence right now. I barely have one as is but am happy to still be in touch with my Bsky readers via the autoposter, even if I don’t feel comfortable logging back in again anytime soon. Keep up the fight for LGBT rights and such for me, OK?
And never give into darkness.