What's it like to have friends?

Last week I was diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder.
 
I understand that a large number of people on this site are excessively shy in real life or feel nervous in many social situations. If you are one of those people, do yourself a favour and read that article - specifically the symptoms - and if you feel that you recognise any of those traits within yourself please, please summon the courage to talk to a doctor about it.
 
I've suffered from SAD (that's the official - and hilarious - acronym for it) for nearly a decade. I just assumed I was shy. I accepted it as how I was. Even when I read about the disorder it took me a year to work up the courage to actually talk to my GP about it. SAD is a negative pattern of thinking that is extremely difficult to break out of without professional help. And the saddest thing is the disorder prevents you from feeling you ought to talk to somebody about it. It traps you!
 
Chances are less than 1% of you are sufferers, but even if I can nudge just one other person toward getting the help they need I'll be happy.

I think that if I had to use a single word to describe my state of mind, I'd choose Doubt. I second-guess everything I do. Take this blog for instance. I start to write a blog entry, then stop. I think "no-one cares, stop thinking you're worth listening to". A little later I start again. I think "you won't get any replies so what's the point?" I press through, I post it. I read and re-read what I've written. I think "should I have phrased that point that way? People might misinterpret that. Should I edit it? What if I edit it and someone reads and replies before I've finished editing?" I wait; no-one replies. I think "see, told you you're not worth listening to".

This kind of thought process occurs for most actions or decisions I take. It's why despite mentioning my desire to start a webcomic three months ago I still haven't gotten around to it: I don't have confidence in the ideas I have; I doubt anyone will put up with my mediocre art despite knowing that the only way for my art to stop being mediocre is for me to draw something regularly - IE, a webcomic.

This kind of insecurity and lack of self-confidence is why I don't try to make many funny blog entries because I doubt my own humour. It's why I don't like to voice my own opinions. It's why I didn't kiss the girl that time - although that's a (hilarious for you, embarrassing for me) story for another blog entry.

But don't worry; miserable as I may sound I'm not wallowing in depression here. As a matter of fact I'm excited that Pokémon Black and White 2 is released soon!

I doubt I'll be any good at it though.

‘Ennui’ is French for ‘boredom’ but the latter word doesn’t quite express the concept in the same way. Most people consider boredom to be a transient mood; a particular emotion one might feel during, say, a dull afternoon. Ennui is more often used to refer to a more wide-ranging sense of apathy and disinterest that a person may be afflicted by for lasts for days, months or years. Whilst people might feel bored at a certain time or during a certain activity, ennui is more like perpetual boredom.

The depressive mood I mentioned being in before I left diluted itself into ennui, which I have been experiencing for the past few weeks. I don’t want to say ‘suffering’ because it is, in a way, quite useful. For me at least it encouraged me to dwell on my life and think about important things - what am I doing with my life? What do I want to do with it? What does it matter? And so on. The ennui is gone, but I haven’t quite managed to answer all of the questions yet. Those thoughts I’ll detail in a later entry. So suffice to say I’m happy again and back on BZP!

Lately I haven't really been in a good mood; I've been experiencing boredom, irritability, lack of enthusiasm and lethargy. Actually if you read the opening paragraph of wikipedia's Depression article that more or less describes my state of mind during the past few weeks, although depression isn't a word I like to use seriously as it always feels so teenage and angsty.

It may be due to the warm weather England has been having (I don't get on with intense heat) combined with my working a lot of overtime recently, cutting my breaks between shifts to much shorter than they would usually be. So basically in my greed to earn more money I've fatigued myself. I'm not going to whine and mope about it. I'm just going to take some time off of BZP to recover. Bye. Enjoy the summer.

I work an unconventional shift pattern. I do three 12-hour shifts a week, and the exact time/days that I have to work those shifts changes every week. It goes like this:

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday (7AM - 7PM)
Sunday night - Monday night - Tuesday night (7PM - 7AM)
Thursday - Friday - Saturday (7AM - 7PM)
Wednesday night - Thursday night - Friday night (7PM - 7AM)

The benefits and the downsides to working such a shift pattern are both extreme. On the one hand, I have lots of free time and, because of the hours I have to do my pay is very good. On the other, working for 12 hours straight can be very exhausting physically and mentally, and on top of that having to adjust my body clock back and forth between being diurnal and noctural can be even more draining. During my waking hours between night shifts I find myself very irritable and find it difficult to concentrate on things. Because of the length of my shifts I try to get a decent night's (or day's) kip, which leaves me with only a few hours to myself between shifts. I'm like a zombie some days, following an automatic routine between waking up, going to work and coming home. Sometimes I feel a bit depressed thinking about what kind of longterm effects working these shifts might have on my mental wellbeing. Some of the people I work with have been doing that same job for 20+ years, and they're... not the brightest lightstones in the cavern, shall we say. I can't help thinking if they were that way when they started out.

Incidentally I'm not fishing for compliments or pity here. It's just something I'd like my friends on BZPower to see. If I ever seem snappy or uninterested when talking to you, this is the reason.

I love webcomics. A feeling I've harboured for the past couple of years now is the desire to start one myself. I like writing, I like drawing; the only way to get good at either of them is to do them as often as possible, so making a webcomic seems like a logical step. The trouble is... I really don't know what to do. I seriously doubt my comical ability so a gag-a-day webcomic is ruled out. Which means I have to come up with a story, a setting, characters... the thing that makes me hesitate is the fact that the life of a webcomic is dependent on the author's interest in it. I want to create one that goes on for years, but how can I be sure that I'll retain interest in whatever idea I choose? I hate leaving projects unfinished, but as any reader of my stories here on BZP will tell you I do that all the friggin time

Over the years I've harboured this urge I've noted down several ideas for this possible webcomic. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and start working on one of them, and see how it goes from there?

That's it. Every trace of my old blog is gone. It's all been disassembled and deleted, stripped away, slate wiped clean. I am embarking on a new beginning here, a fresh start, back to basics, a blank canvas, stop these cliches Kumata, and have now a colourful and complex blogging livelihood awaiting me. The future is here - or it will be soon, although I'll be calling it the present when it arrives.

The look of this place may change as I reconstruct it. Stay tuned for updates, if you care what I have to say. If not, why are you still reading this? Shoo! Begone with you, uninterested heathen!