25 February 2010

Withdrawel Day Four: well actually it's three but who's counting

My Day One ended with me getting a reward of playing my game. I think my husband is a tease. But I love him anyway ;)

How does one live for themselves? I'm personally not completely sure. Selfish, only concerned with oneself, or is it something completely different?

Does it mean defining who you are without basing it upon relationships that you have? Or am I completely missing the point?

What I believe it means is finding value in yourself. Defining your value based upon your own merits and not on what others think or what you think others think of you. Now this is difficult for someone who can't even see their own merits.

I am an aspiring writer with writer's block. I haven't been able to construct a story in quite some time on my own. I have started many but finished very few. Ideas come to me and then run away.

When I was young I was always the gullible girl in the neighborhood who deseprately wanted friends and wanted to please people but would get constantly get abandoned or threatened by what the neighbor kids called "the wizard." I doubted the existence of this figure, but they would constantly tell me that he was after me. They would shake up my soda, leave me alone in the wooded area near my home, and once I was even tied to the bottom of a slide with a jump rope. I don't even remember what happened around that point or what caused it. All I am left with is images. I don't even remember if I was scared, hurt, or anything of that sort.

There was another time when I was teased incessantly for a story that I wrote. My notebook that contained it got stolen. Mind you if I looked back at my middle school stories I would probably cringe and wish for their demolition, but back then it was the most important thing to me.

So I'm not really sure how my past has shaped who I am now. I am still very easily trusting but I have a huge bout of social anxiety. I get bored hanging out with people even if we're watching a movie. I have to be engaged in what's going on. I tend to feel detached most of the time.

And the work situation doesn't help. With pretty much no one to talk to at the office outside of work related things, I feel more and more isolated and detached and lonely. It doesn't help that the finances at work aren't there, and staring at my own bank account made me realize I really can't afford to work at a company that may or may not be able to pay me. But that is an issue for me to take up with my boss tomorrow. Until then, I applied for a couple jobs today. I hate job hunting... but honestly, it may be better for my sanity if I got a different position elsewhere.

22 February 2010

Withdrawel Day One: Collecting My Thoughts

So... I need to take a break from my addiction, a game called Mabinogi. Even my friends there understood and are being supportive in any way they can. Guess this is evidence that I have a problem, that even they were worried and agreed that this was best.

It all started I think when the stress of my new position at work combined with the financial stress from after getting married. The "addiction" I have is based on, in my opinion, roleplaying games... multiplayer roleplaying games. What was a simple hobby became an addiction to a story being formulated by many participants. It became more important to me than chores, work, and even sometimes my husband. I did not even realize the downward spiral I had put myself in.

You see, I don't want to lose the hobby, the stress relief at the end of a long stressful day, but I do not want the addiction. I have chosen time and again hanging out on the game over hanging out with real life friends. I burnt out on my other stress relief method, knitting, some point after the wedding, because I had spent a long time working on things for it: my veil, my garter, and some gift bags for my girls. I forgoed most everything productive in real life for the sake of the game.

The stress at work was already pretty bad before I started having online chatrooms (talking with friends from my online games) open at work. My way of staving boredom, curing loneliness, and keeping myself sane became an even worse problem. But I'm not sure that is the only problem. Sure my boss is old-fashioned and does not get multitasking (nor does he probably see that I'm not the only one doing that, but since I don't have internet in my own office it's not as easy to be covert about) but I don't think the internet use is the only problem. This is because just this morning I hadn't even touched the internet computer for anything other than company email and he met me with hostility because he thought I hadn't done something that I actually had. Now part of that could be my fault because I might have forgotten to tell him that it was already done, but I had been working on normal day to day accounting in the office at the time.

My company has financial problems. I have no idea where payroll is coming from this month. He is stressed out and from my opinion he is looking for someone to blame: the government, the economy, me... opinions from some former employees was that we shouldn't even have taken on the 2 mil job that eventually screwed us, and put us in the hole with a large product that we have difficulty selling. I don't know whose fault it really is, but why does it have to be taken out on me, the technical editor who helped edit the proposal for that particular project back in the beginning of my time at the company (5 years ago) who has taken on the accounting job without accounting experience except for what I have had to learn on my own through experience.

I get it, the economy sucks and he's even admitted to taking advantage of us because of it. If Philip had a job and he could afford to, I'd leave. But he doesn't and we can't. So I feel trapped. I am not angry at Philip's lack of a job. I know he's tried and its difficult for entry level with this economy. But maybe I am angry but more so that I am angry because I don't want to be and it is out of my control. And there goes my downward spiral again.

And I have little to no desire to hang out with real friends lately. I'm not sure if this is new or if this is how it has always been. I don't like calling people and I normally don't really know what to do in a setting like that. That's Philip's strength, not mine. But they miss me. I don't even totally understand how I came to prefer online to real life. Perhaps the stress associated with work has reverted me to my college days... where I preferred online to real life because it was easier to meet people online or people I already knew than go out and meet new people, or I figured that everyone usually had something better to do than hang out with little ole me.