It’s Wednesday and I haven’t written for 5 days because I’m terrified of how to start the second scene of the novella I’m overhauling. But yeah, through some self-trickery and grit I managed to squeeze some blood from a stone, 287 words in 30 minutes, in the only writing session I’m having today.

When I was trying to analyze why I get sucked into video games so easily and for hours, I realized (and was horrified) that I quite physically enjoyed the feeling of being stuck. Being stuck, distracting yourself in escapist entertainment, only feels bad when you’re thinking about what it means or all the work you have to do or all the decisions you have to make that you could have been making if you weren’t stuck. But while I’m stuck, it’s peaceful. It’s a fuzzy void. It’s not painful at all, except there are also no feelings. Nothing. It dead.

In a SpyXFamily thread over at Reddit there was a bonkers post that was really just a wall of text saying they love the anime so much they want to live the characters’ actual lives. They researched the time period, the real-world equivalent of the setting, becoming a spy, and they’ve convinced themselves that this is the life they want to live. There were a few comments that called it out for what it looked like: a call for help for someone who was in a deep spell of loneliness and maybe even some mental health issues. There was one that simply said, I get it.

It wasn’t me who said that, but I wanna say I do get it. I’ve been trying to capture in words why the thought of wanting to live inside a video game, specifically Hollow Knight because of the gorgeous 2D art, is something that happens to people. I can’t explain it because it’s bonkers and impossible, but why exactly do I yearn to hang out in a beautiful, non-existent place like that? And why is the feeling so strong it feels possible?

I know the answer to that now, of course, but when you’re inside that maelstrom of boredom or despair (these are both pretty strong drivers for me), creating an entirely new reality is much more pleasant than having to live in the current one. I’ve done it so much all my life I figured I should become a writer hehehe.

Today I did a batch of laundry that was all towels, steamed mashed potatoes for my last batch of mushroom bourguignon (which held up pretty well in the ref for a week), finished a bunch of work stuff early in the day, walked spontaneously at lunch to shake off the bad vibes (kinda worked), had a bunch of meetings, meta-gamed the Cazador palace quest in Baldur’s Gate 3 so that I still get to keep Astarion but not break my paladin oath (patch 8 for genpop when), and finally decided to get some writing done against the odds.

I would rate the writing session a 2 out of 5 energy-wise. BUT AT LEAST IT WAS NOT OVER ZERO.