De-stress and Christmas

Sorry that I've left this blog to laze about a bit ... it's only that while I've been working on the wiki, I haven't found something "sexy" enough to post here.  Recent writings include socage, the barter economy, fulling mills, notes payable, land ownership, windmills, debt and elder authority.  Individually, these are dry, dry subjects, some of which are probably wholly unfamiliar ... but the collection of these things helps to establish a vision of the game's setting apart from the majesty of cheap adventure writing.  But because I understand the lack of excitement these things convey, I've held back discussing them here.

Still, it's work done, in case people have wondered why I haven't posted here in many days, especially with my leaving such a crummy post to carry the load of appealing to new readers.  Ah well.

Coming into Christmas, my "job" requirements are down to about four hours a day (I'm on salary), and I have straight time off coming the day after tomorrow, which should last until just after New Years.  I'm on "call," but last year that amounted to my editing two paragraphs.  Sorry, sorry.  Shouldn't talk about work.

That doesn't mean I'm going to be writing more here or on the wiki, or on my mapmaking blog either.  I'm seriously thinking about investing some money into the European truck simulator game, which I've been talking about for about a month and which someone might buy for me for Christmas.  I'm unhappy that there's a time compression element to the game.  In my mind, if it takes 116 hours and 23 minutes to drive from Lisbon to St. Petersburg, then that's how long I should have to play.  But I'm obsessed with these stupid ideas.

If we can talk about the process of design and the effort of work for a moment, a lot of my day is a gentle up-and-down slope of stress, de-stress, stress, de-stress, with the goal to create a flow that has no serious peaks.  In real terms, this means getting into a task that requires intense concentration and problem solving, followed by periods of getting a cup of coffee, chatting for an hour with my partner Tamara, digging again into a different hard task, putting that down and playing a light video game, then taking up another hard task and so on, as steadily I move from awake and alert in the morning to drowsy and resistant to another hour spent on some kind of work after nine p.m.  I take a shower, tell myself there's time to work tomorrow, recount how much I've done in the day and read myself into the grave of sleep.

Overmuch de-stressing can lead to self-doubt and depression, which causes the mind to resist any possibility of engaging in new stress.  But sometimes one has to take two or three days to quit everything, even when there's no pressing need to get out and do something.  I'm not like most people.  All my family from the previous generation has passed on now.  I don't communicate with my siblings, nor have I associations with any cousins.  I have a younger clan that plays D&D with me, a few friends that are, like me, no longer interested in going to bars in the evening.  We don't see each other often because we're all working on our art.  It's what we wanted to do when we were teens and it's become central to our lives now.

The younger clan is likewise busy:  they rush around, they go to bars, they shop all day or slave at jobs.  I see them to play D&D.  I see my grandson once or twice a week, when we take care of him so my daughter can rush around.  These are my connections to the outside.  I have one event for Christmas: I'm making Christmas dinner on the 25th.  Apart from that, all my time belongs to Tamara or to myself.  So of course I have a lot of time to spend here, or on one of the other projects, or playing a truck-driving game.

I remember when all my Christmas days were filled by someone's calendar:  working without time off, dinner with this family, dinner with that family, nights out with these friends, nights out with those friends, Boxing Day parties, New Years' Eve parties, office parties, volunteer events, school plays, church plays, seeing the philharmonic play Handel's Messiah, all of it.  But hell ... I got, um ... tired of it.  I mean, how many years can you sit in an auditorium and listen to the same musicians play the same piece, before realising there's more to life?

Being broke for those years after 2015, then being forced inside through Covid, I've come to realise I rather like a quiet, event-less season.  I enjoy the idea of Christmas, of course ... I watch my favourite Christmas movies, buy gifts, get a tree together ... in fact ...

We didn't buy one last year, too much Covid ruining the holiday.  We prefer one that's real, and we like not to put too many ornaments on it, because it's the tree that's the decoration.  Here it is, sitting next to our big TV, diapers on the old beat-up coffee table I always think I'm going to renovate, cars on the floor though my grandson was here two days ago, gifts under the tree ... if ever I have doubts, the tree's there to remind me that yes, it's Christmas.

Recognise the picture behind the tree?  I've had it more than 20 years now.

Yes, those are boxes behind the TV (they have books and magazines), and that is and AC unit tucked under the table, reminding us that it was summer.  It's -25C outside and it's supposed to be -40C tonight; was last night, and is supposed to go on like that all week.

All this is to explain that while I work all the time, I also don't work all the time.  The prospect of sitting quietly for four hours driving a make-believe truck strikes me as very relaxing; I can ponder the next wiki page or blog post, I can stack my thoughts about how the hamlet page gets organised, I can plan a road trip next year, I can think about longer term projects, and still feel not bored.  I'm doing something.  If there's anything I hate in this world, it's not doing something.

Feels like a tremendous waste of my time.