i limit my online presence, play a LOT of runescape, and say a heartbreaking goodbye

26/1/2025

hello and happy new year! as always it's been a minute since i made an entry here... and as always i must call attention that fact... erm... i feel in the last entry i promised a rundown of my summer vacation. i DID write that post, but it ended up a lot more personal than i felt comfortable sharing (ironic, given the details of this post). i started this section of my site specifically because i struggle with articulating myself and my feelings but have benefitted from these kinds of outlets before. putting it into practice is a different matter though!! maybe one day i'll have the flourishing blog of my dreams...

that being said, i feel that i don't really do enough to warrant talking about. i started a journal at the start of this year and every single day i was just like "i woke up. i ate food. i played runescape." i also made it a goal to list at least three good things that happened each day in the journal as a kind of self care practice, and while my days weren't bad by any means, i was struggling to come up with anything "good" outside of, like, the usual daily blessings. it was enough to kind of kill the streak i had going, and now that my days are more busy i'm out of the habit!!! argh!!!!

anyway, that's not really what i wanted to talk about!

recently, i've realized that i have a big problem with not being able to shut up. well, it was less of a "realization" (i've always known i'm a big yapper) and more of an "oh i am suddenly self-conscious about this aspect of myself all of the sudden." i have the terrible misfortune of being someone who is introverted (is very easily exhausted by social activity/being outside my house) but also very outgoing (loves talking to people as much as possible, as frequently as possible). i stay in my house on my computer a lot, but i still want to socialize, so i get online. maybe join some discord servers. maybe play an mmo and meet people. maybe join a new fandom and gain some new twitter friends. and because i'm chronically online and can't shut up, i respond quickly and talk often.

as a result of this, i've been thinking lately that maybe i'm an annoying person. i look back on conversations (because most everything online has a trail) and i get embarrassed about the things i've said. wonder what i was thinking. why did i feel the need to inject here? i also have a terrible habit of talking about myself. not because i'm narcissistic or particularly want to, but because i am usually trying to empathize with others and show how i've been there and i feel for them. i've also notice i sometimes forget to ask questions back to others as a result. maybe some kind of subconscious presumption that they'll supplement the information already. this is a lot of words to say i feel like i'm very rude!!!

all this was causing me a lot of stress during a period where i was already going through the lowest point in my life mentally. so i made the decision to cut back on where and how i can socialize online. i noticed that when i'm not socializing as much it's not something i particularly miss, but it is something i will do if the opportunity strikes, so i don't really see this as a case of self-isolation indicative of something more sinister (though i guess if it was born out of self-consciousness... erm), but just a different form of self-care? maybe i've got it all twisted.

around this time i was also partaking in a lot of discourse. and don't get me wrong, i like discoursing. i'm not usually the kind of person that gets really effected by it and it's actually usually very fun for me, even if i'm viciously arguing with someone. but due to aforementioned mental health struggle it wasn't doing me many favours at that particular moment. and i was getting into it on the daily instead of just dipping in here and there. limiting my exposure and ability to respond to these situations was a genuine help in improving my mental state. for the time being i'm still avoiding getting myself involved, but the issues i generally discourse about are still things that are important to me, so i'm sure i'll return to the Yelling Online sphere when i'm in greener pastures.

in any case! i left some discord servers, muted general chats in others, privated my twitter account, and removed the chatbox from this site. it wasn't seeing much use lately and i've never been particularly happy with it anyway, but its removal was motivated by this thing i'm dealing with. still toying with the idea of implementing something else because i don't fully want to cut that line off, but i don't know! we'll see. i also wiped my links page... in this midst of this i also got really self-conscious about other peoples perceptions of me, which is pretty unlike me!! it made me feel weird about tying sites to me in that way? maybe that's a bit self-centered... i do think a links page is a great resource though and i intend to rework it soon(ish).

of course i'm not shutting the problem out completely, i'm also trying to actively change the way i interact with people. but in the interim period while my brain is still ready to forget as i practice, i think this is a good enough band-aid.

it helps that i've been playing a lot of runescape. like. a LOT of runescape. full tunnel vision. i'm locked in with no regard for anything else in my life. i started up again because of the raging echoes league, but unlike the last league where it kinda crushed my zest for osrs so bad i didn't play for an entire year, it gave me new enthusiasm to play the main game and i've been hitting it hard. i got base 70 stats and i'm working on making my barrows runs more effective right now. we're gaming at levels previously unknown to mankind. and it's been kind of healing!!! picking up runescape again and giving it my full attention kind of made me realize how much time i spent ruminating over my social interactions, and how much happier i was to just be. gaming.

i say a heartbreaking goodbye

this feels like a bit of a weird thing to tack onto a post about something else, and this part of the post is going to be quite sad and discuss the death of an animal. but i did want to say something about it...

my childhood dog passed away a few nights ago. she was two weeks shy of 16, and had been ill for quite some time. we're not exactly sure what it was. she's been slowing down for a while now, old age mainly, but if there was something deeper at play we weren't in the financial position to find out.

we've known her life was coming to a close for well over a year now. near the end she started sleeping and hiding away so much it almost felt like she was already gone. i thought i had a lot of time to prepare for it but it still hit me hard. i guess you can never really prepare for these things. she did go at home though, which i'm really grateful for. we actually had an appointment to put her to rest the very next day because she had stopped eating a couple days prior. vet and grooming appointments always really stressed her out though. i'm glad she was at home with family near her instead of a place she hated.

one thing that stuck out to me when we came home from dropping her off was that a light was left on. my dad has always been a big stickler for making sure all the lights are turned off before we leave the house, and throughout the entire time we had our dog, me, my mom, and my brother would have to fight him to leave one on her for if she wanted to get water. sometimes my mom would intentional loiter around the house to make sure she left last so dad wouldn't turn all the lights off. no one said anything about it when we were leaving to take her in. my dad was the last one in and locked up. but a light was left on.

sweat - oingo boingo