More on Minecraft - some time later

Just thought I'd pop in here again after it had been some time since I've been playing Minecraft. So, I started a Minecraft YouTubec channel which I thought was pretty spiffy. I've even gotten about 13... or so subscribers? Most of them organic, a few of them friends and a few family, but I really haven't been getting many views or anything, so it's still growing. I only started posting minecraft videos about...hrm... two months ago. But the reason I wanted to type today is because I had a really rough weekend. I have been posting these videos online for a little while, pretty proud of all of the hard work and creativity that has gone into not only having to record, but narrate, edit, add in music, and come up with building things and trying to think of interesting topics to do that might make me stand out from other YouTubers. And I like it, and it's fun for me and relaxing and I've even had my first troll, even if it was a brief shrug - it was still a COMMENT and I was so happy! It was Easter weekend and my mom and my in-laws were over, and yes, I'm a 42 year old something who's been playing and posting Minecraft videos, but dammit, I was PROUD of those. My Mother in law complained about the sound. Well, yes, I do tend to speak kind of quietly... Okay, that can be improved with a better system over time if I get more viewers maybe it'll be worth adding in some more money to it...right? I was bothered of course, so it started to weigh on me and I'm like - I can fix this easily, right? I have a good microphone, let's work on getting this fixed. So I started researching good mixers to possibly help my sound...sound better, you know? Headset on, watching the YouTube video and my Mom was sitting on her laptop behind me so I thought it was all hunky-dory, she'd be entertained on her own thing. But then came the nagging - "I'm sure whatever that is isn't THAT important..." And it just really hit me because for FORTY-TWO years all I wanted was my mother's support in everything I do, and no matter what damn hobby I pick up she's never happy for me. I used to draw and write and she'd never hang it on the fridge or put it in a frame. It would get shoved in a drawer or box somewhere. I would make ornaments for the Christmas tree and they'd get put on the "kids" tree but not her shiny white and blue tree. For a time I worked on writing novels but no one wanted to read them unless I shoved it in their faces. I worked on an online store for awhile and she was sort of supportive of that but I felt critized for everything. So....yeah... I got really upset, the "straw that broke the camel's back" or whatever you want to say - but I just broke down. I hid in the closet for an hour and NO ONE CAME TO LOOK FOR ME. Eventually I had to pee and I climbed out again and then my husband was like "oh, you're back." SIGH. I'm fighting on and making the most of my videos though. I just posted 16 and 17 (scheduled for future release) and I'm feeling pretty content that I'm still making better videos than some YouTubers out there. It's just that I'm so bummed that no one from my own family or close friends bother to watch what I make or care about it the way I do. Maybe...maybe someday I'll find some friends who care the same way I do.

Focus on my Mental Health - pt. 21 - Routines

     My week typically goes something like this...

Sunday: Have breakfast, read the paper, catch up on television shows, spend some time outside either walking or gardening, watch more TV, scroll the internet, have a big dinner, and overall just waste a lot of time.

Monday:  Realize I haven't gotten anything new done for my websites and get a bunch of painting done in order to update my Facebook sites, shop site and blogs.

Tuesday:  Clean the house because we're going to have company over that evening to play D&D.  Now that we have a big ol' table (read the previous post if you'd like more details) and since almost everyone lives on this side of town and our FLGS (friendly local gaming store) decided to up and close on us, except for on rare occasions, games are held here.  So, floors swept, kitchen and bathrooms cleaned, etc etc.  Prepare for a game if I am running it that way (which, thankfully I am not currently.)

Wednesday:  Realize I did nothing but clean house all day and return to painting and try to get as much done as possible so that I can schedule posts and can forget about Facebook for the rest of the week.

Thursday: Get burned out and start feeling lethargic and annoyed that no one has bought anything from my shop, no one is responding to my posts anymore and scroll endlessly on Facebook and Reddit.  Maybe do some other household cleaning, make dinner, grocery shop, or anything else that keeps my mind off of feeling like a jobless loser.

Friday:  Most likely I have a D&D game this night or Saturday that I have to prepare for.  Put off planning on it until the day it's due and a few hours before.  Think about it a LOT.  Throw stuff together last minute and attempt to finish painting figures for it and then get overwhelmed and give up and start typing fiercely to get it done in time for dinner and the game.

Saturday: If the game was last night, I feel burned out and just want to relax all day.  If the game is tonight, I realize I wasted all day yesterday by not getting prepared and then have to clean the house again, and don't get the game prepped until a few hours before.  Realize that I've run out of time and should have spent more time on it as when the game actually occurs it's not as engaging as I hoped it would be and disappointed in myself.

REPEAT

     At least, for the last few months, that's how it's been going unless we're gone somewhere for the weekend or someone else is gone and we cancel or postpone games for another time.  I personally think I'm getting a bit burned out with playing so I'm looking forward to having a good week or two to refresh with all of my other plans here in August.  I LIKE playing and have guests over, don't get me wrong, but for YEARS (literally) I never had anyone over except for the occasional family member so now that it happens twice weekly (or heck, last week three times) I feel like my life is swallowed up by this routine that I've been keeping.  And I start to wonder if I'm prepared enough for this craft show that's coming up.
      On the plus side, I know I have well over 60 items - probably onwards of 100 now - and I'll have even more by the time two weeks is up.  But I've also sold a total of 5 things the entire time I've been working this website since April/May and that's sorta depressing.
   
     So...in other news I still haven't heard anything about the job.  My husband went in for an interview for a new job, received the offer, worried about it for three days, talked to everyone he knew and they were all split on whether he should take it or not, then he freaked himself out more by reading about jobs similar to it online, and I kept feeling like a terrible wife because I couldn't tell him that he should take it or not.  He's his own person is how I feel, and yes, he's taking care of me at present, but would less then a $100 a paycheck be worth the extra work that he was likely to take on?  I think once I finally broke down the math with him and told him straight out that if he was going to take the job that he shouldn't be having this mental anguish...he turned it down.
     It's not like he doesn't have a job like me.  I think at this point if I were offered any job I'd take it just to get my butt out of the house and learn something new.  Even if it didn't work out and I hated it, I'd have something new to talk about and possibly start looking all over again.  But, alas, no word after that interview and even though I tell myself it's probably a good thing I don't have the stress to worry about while I'm prepping for everything that's coming up in two weeks... I'm also going through the full anxiety string in my head every thing I paint and every time I stop and think about it.

Things I'm anxious about:

• I won't receive a call which means I wasn't good enough, or didn't ask the right questions or they thought I was too stupid or they don't want me because I didn't have references or anything along those lines.
• I WILL receive the call and they'll want me to start right away and I'll be so stressed out over having to deal with my craft show and my new job that it'll send me into hysterics.
• I'll get the job and everyone will hate me and I'll be as miserable as I was at my previous job.
• I'll go to the craft show and no one will come by and no one will buy anything and now I have hundreds of items that I've spent all this work on and they'll end up just becoming Christmas presents for people because I'll never sell any of it.
• My husband will lose his job and then beat himself up over not taking this other job he's been offered because his company starts having major layoffs or the CEO decides to retire which sends the whole thing into a tailspin.
• Another recession will kick in because of Trump and everything will just be terrible because we'll both be without jobs and struggling to make ends meet and we'll never be able to take the cats to the vet or pay off our cars or our house and....well, you take it from there.

     There's a whole lot more where that came from, but I'm sure you get the gist.  Sometimes I just write it down to get it out of my head.  Does it work?  When I'm in the process of doing it, yes.  A few days later when I start to panic that I've completely overwhelmed myself with all of these projects and won't sell a single one... yeah, so it'll come back and I'll freak out again and again.

Plans I have for the near future:

• Get through the two D&D games for the week and try not to be anxious that everyone hates me.  (my character in one game had an in-game argument with another and it actually started to terrify me even after I realized that I was NOT my character, and this was all role play...it was still kinda odd since I've never played into a game enough to have a discussion like this.)  Also, I keep having these worries that my friends only like me for the game and even though we hang out otherwise, I have crippling anxiety when someone cancels plans with me and I start to want to withdraw from everything.
• Work like a beast to get as much stock done as possible because if I can do that maybe I can sell quite a few things because I'll have enough variety for everyone.
• Try not to fret about not getting a call back after my interview because they're all ill-organized and I'm sure I'd hear from my friend if she thought something wasn't going well.
• Also just concentrate on getting into August and getting through the long weekend and out the other side - hopefully make or break this craft thing I've been trying to hard at.
• If I don't hear from a job by that point, start applying to all the places AGAIN, and see what happens.
• Maybe convince my husband we need to take a short vacation before I begin the job because I think I just need to get out of this house soon before my brain explodes.

     So...that about wraps up quite a bit of what's been going on in my head lately.  I just like to please people and by putting myself out there I want to get results and when I don't it really throws my anxiety into high gear.  I know I've always suffered from these issues, but only more recently have I really paid closer attention to what triggers it.  I know my friends cancelling the meetup yesterday wasn't because they didn't want to be with me (I didn't even invite them, so why did I take it personally?!) but then I felt attacked because I read everything very curtly from those who responded the next day.  And I'm sure I was reading into it that way because I felt sad.

     I need to get out of the routine of feeling bad about myself.  But sometimes you need a little pick me up, you know?  And who better to give you that then your friends?  And I feel bad because I feel like I'm not really close friends with any of them, and I shouldn't be bothered by that but I am and I guess I just really miss having a close friend that's not my husband... I know I've talked about this before but I come back to it often enough in my thoughts.  Maybe it's because of how it always happens slowly and I try to do my best to keep in touch but the next thing I know they've all but stopped talking to me until I just give up...  I don't want to give up this set of friends, it's taken years to get this far.  Oi vey.

What Happened Since May

      So....something happened in May after my vacation.  Or rather, maybe it started in June, a bit after my birthday?  I think that's probably about right.  I fully had plans in order to post more awesome things about the House on the Rock, thought I'd tell everyone about the story that I was writing - I'd gotten in over a chapter of writing, had a lot of ideas of where to go next and I was really on a roll with the spring planting outside too...

     And then my husband got into D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) and even though I'd played briefly back in the early 2000's, I really never got into it that much.  It was rather boring for me and really confusing and I didn't think it was something that I would get into.  But my husband bought a little figure in order to represent his character so I thought...no problem, right?  I'll help him paint it since I used to paint WH40K back then as well.  Who knew that a part of my life right after college would re-appear when I was in my late 30's?  So we bought some paint and I started my adventure in painting again but refused to play D&D myself...

     At first, of course.  I really just did the little blue guy in the photo, and then told my husband he was kind of on his own because I might help paint but I wasn't going to play, my schedule really didn't allow for it all that much anyway.  But then his friends asked if I could paint some of their minis too... so then I've got another one under my belt...then some monsters, and one afternoon I got dragged out and played my first round of D&D after some 15 years.... and it wasn't terrible.

     I think it's a bit less confusing now that I could write up my own character, had a book to look at (instead of my boyfriend in college just writing up a character for me) and then I ended up going to the local gaming store and buying a figure for myself...JUST in case I were to play again, I didn't want to borrow someone's figure to represent my character.

     Skip forward about a month later and suddenly I was buying up all sorts of figures after having painted some for my friends (even a paid commission!) and I bought a few just in case we were ever to play ourselves, and my husband had talked briefly about running a campaign himself since it sort of interested him.  Also it would allow our DM some time off for a week maybe if we ran a game ourselves once in awhile.  Meanwhile, I painted up Ellabee (the purple figure as well as the green, I couldn't figure out whether bard or fighter was more my style honestly).  And I got to play her in a few more games but then she sort of got sidelined when something unexpected happened.

     During a moment of chuckles reading something on my phone at work, I had a co-worker sort of perk up wondering what I was laughing about.  I mentioned the fact that I was starting to paint figures for D&D and that I'd played a little.  She was totally into the idea of playing herself as she'd never played before.  So a few days later we gathered up two more people interested in playing and I was freaking out because I'd never actually run a campaign and I felt that it was up to me to do it.

     So, on a rainy afternoon I picked them all up after work and we went to the local gaming store for some dice and figures, wrote up the characters and then I DM'd for my very first adventure.  It was pretty shoddy really, had a very short and quick storyline and some items to collect and a couple of monsters to defeat and I really didn't know what I was doing exactly but I'd jotted down a map and I think everyone had fun because at the end of the night they were already planning on the next night we could get together!

     Since then, my life has been eaten up by gaming... mostly.  Also the ridiculous amount of tomatoes that came out of our garden that I had to can and eat and make into all sorts of delicious sauces and salsas.  But anyway, for a good month or more we met once a week to play games and I got really excited and into it, picking up all sorts of monsters and painting them and getting ready for the next week's campaign and we finally got out of the original town that we'd spent the first three levels on and I started heading my party into the "big city" where things have halted temporarily since we had vacations to get through and recently I've had my convention to plan for again.

     We did...however, have a week where my husband ran a short campaign and I got to use a new character.  The image to the left is our little adventure this week, trying to get a dragon's egg from some guy and having a group trying to steal it from us after we'd just gotten it.  I'm still semi-confused what happened there...but it was fun and I got to play a new Warlock character I'd written up and it was amusingly amazing to not be behind the screen for once.  Don't get me wrong though, I really miss being the DM now that it's been about three weeks since our last game - we'd plowed through playing during the first gal's vacation, but the subsequent weeks it's been nearly impossible to plan since her schedule tends to be opposite of mine and I was covering her as well.

     So.... since then this has been my life.  I have most recently been working on the graphic designs and merchandising for the convention, but we're going to be doing another get-together next Friday so I have to start writing up the next campaign to get us back going again.  I have more figures to paint and things to prepare for during the week.

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    In other news, during my journey into playing D&D and DMing, I've been watching a lot of videos and listening to things online.  I ran across Matthew Colville who's been playing since he was a kid and had some really interesting information about running games which I've been super into.  My players, however, have been listening to Critical Role.  My husband listened to some of the Podcast from time to time and when we'd go on long road trips he'd played some for me but I really couldn't quite get into it.... my players though were completely falling for the characters from CR and it really just boggled my mind...

     But as I did a bit of sewing tonight (Halloween curtains for the kitchen...I'm weird) I was listening to the most recent one and realized that it's so much roleplay and not as much actual action and fighting that I kind of think I know why it's boring to me...it's a story that has very little advancement because it happens in real time unlike a standard story.  It's interesting when you're there playing it... it might be amusing...but since I'm not the one playing it, it's sort of 'meh'.  But I do remember the appeal of listening to voice actors when I was younger.  You forget where you are when you hear this voice of a character you know...suddenly you're in that show and you're engrossed in the world.

     Maybe it's because I'm older?  I've been there - done that?  Don't know.  But I thought I'd just make a note of this since it's been on my mind lately.