Tag: personal

5 Years

Content warning: alcohol abuse, binge drinking, discussion of risk of violation of consent and assault, underage drinking, social pressure, childhood trauma, anxiety, PTSD, coping, domestic abuse, suicide mention, self harm mention

I have been drinking since I was twelve years old. Alcohol, that is – water and I go way back. I grew up in a drinking heavy culture with easy access to alcohol and the understanding that booze makes you fun, in spite of my own traumatic experiences as a child showing me that drunk adults were not fun. Nonetheless, I jammed to that song and by the time I was legal to drink, I was seasoned, and it tipped over rapidly into a binge drinking habit that nearly ruined my life.

Content warning: alcohol abuse, binge drinking, discussion of risk of violation of consent and assault, underage drinking, social pressure, childhood trauma, anxiety, PTSD, coping, domestic abuse, suicide mention, self harm mention

I have been drinking since I was twelve years old. Alcohol, that is – water and I go way back. I grew up in a drinking heavy culture with easy access to alcohol and the understanding that booze makes you fun, in spite of my own traumatic experiences as a child showing me that drunk adults were not fun. Nonetheless, I jammed to that song and by the time I was legal to drink, I was seasoned, and it tipped over rapidly into a binge drinking habit that nearly ruined my life.

I have not been drunk since December of 2015. Let’s talk about it.

Why Was I Drinking?

Johnny Lee Miller as Sherlock on Elementary sighing.
Let’s do this.

Over five years of moderation – what I chose instead of abstinence sobriety, knowing my own reaction to abstinence and how often I would still be exposed to alcohol living in Pittsburgh, working in games. And games are part of how it got so bad. Corporate had a huge part in it too, but conventions were the tipping point.

To be clear, I still drink alcohol. But I went from, at worst, a full bottle of liquor a binge (binging over 8 drinks a night, multiple nights a week) to now at most, two small glasses of Manischewitz or mixed drink every couple weeks or so. Sometimes, I’ve gone whole months without even tasting alcohol beyond Listerine. But for me, sobriety is about not being drunk, not abstinence. Learning to control my intake, my exposure, and learning to not get drunk.

Surprisingly, with that came the significant limitation of what I drink – mostly it’s for special occasions or to try something special. To me, with a family history of alcoholism, during this pandemic, this has been a massive achievement. I am proud of how far I’ve come.

Detective Bell and Watson from Elementary at an interrogation table as Bell says "Let's cut the crap."
Let me get to the root of things.

I got there because of three very specific things:

  • Coping with trauma surrounding alcohol by becoming one of the drunk people, including PTSD and anxiety
  • Environments seeping with alcohol and drunkenness in my social and professional life, including people buying excessive alcohol for me
  • People telling me that I, a person with low self esteem, was “more fun” and “better to be around” when drunk

…all of these things combined made me into a monster of a drinker. One corporate networking event, I was given so many free drinks that I enthusiastically drank to hide my anxiety that I passed out in a Subway bathroom, broke my phone, missed work, and had to call my spouse to rescue me while I couldn’t find my car keys. My first Gen Con, I willingly drank an extreme amount of alcohol the first night, aided by many of my peers and people far older than me purchasing me multiple drinks and encouraging me, even when I was obviously drunk.

The drinking made the people around me include me more, talk to me more, say nice things to me – and it dulled my deep, untreated anxiety and PTSD from being around drunk & drinking people – plus everyone else was drinking, and seemed to be drinking a lot at these events, and so many people were drunk or had behaviors that triggered my PTSD about drunk people that I thought I wasn’t the only one. After that night at Gen Con, I woke up without a hangover after getting mad sick all night, and everyone else was wrecked. I thought it was normal. I thought it was okay, and that most people were like this, just like they were in corporate, where I’d watched coworkers and bosses drag in hungover for years. It was not normal, nor was it okay.

What Changed?

Sherlock on Elementary talking to a perpetrator who pulls a drawer out at his desk to reveal a gun. Sherlock says, "It's come to that, has it?"
I considered any degree of self harm, or hoping that someone would finally end me.

After an abusive relationship where my partner encouraged me to drink because I was “more fun” and “not annoying,” where they abused me less when I was drinking, I got to the point where my last Dreamation, 2015, took me over the edge. I was manic, in the midst of a traumatic episode post-abusive-breakup, and I don’t remember most of it. I am sure there are still people I should apologize to, but it took me two years to apologize to one of the people I hurt the most out of shame and self-isolation. I was destroyed after that weekend.

After that, I stopped drinking at all within a week. I tried to cut it out completely for a while, and then at the end of the year I was at a work event and got so trashed I had to be escorted home, got in a verbal fight with a coworker, and broke some items at home (not to mention the bruising from being sloppy). A coworker had said something triggering during the event and I just cruised down the hole, and after that, I realized abstinence and exposure needed some recalibration. My goal became to moderate, minimize, but also avoid environments where drinking was common, plus I made the goal don’t get drunk not don’t drink, and it helped.

I have had the edges of tipsy a few times, but I have even dumped out drinks to risk going further. I started promoting safer drinking spaces and sober spaces, like with the Soda Pop Social, at cons that I attended. I realized that my abusive relationship would have been shorter, my experience with assault may not have happened, and my childhood trauma may not have existed without drunkenness. I pursued therapy doggedly and I stopped attending a lot of events that bred the environment that triggered my bad behaviors, and stopped hanging out with people who did the same.

What Does This Have to Do With Games?

Johnny Lee Miller as Sherlock on Elementary speaking to Lucy Liu as Watson saying "As long as we're together, what does it matter?
We have to be more than together. We need to be committed to safety.

I’m talking about this in a gaming space because dear lordy, is it relevant.

Gaming spaces are flooded with alcohol, references to alcohol, and alcohol abuse, plus predators who take advantage of that. We have seen in the past years many people plied with alcohol, harmed, and then shamed for participating in a toxic and drenched culture of legacy game people, people with power and authority and charisma, and people who have been chosen as darlings of the industry using alcohol to do business, take advantage of people, and abuse the power that they have.

Drinking in moderation can be safe and fun, but when you apply power dynamics and people thinking it’s okay to do business (or pleasure) to an environment full of alcohol, surrounded by and surrounding alcohol, it is toxic and dangerous. The fact that the only drinks we really mention in games like D&D are alcohol is no coincidence to our alcohol focused culture. There was even a “get drunk and get interviewed to spill beans about the industry” interview series that was wildly popular on Kickstarter, and I spent months of anxiety disgusted and upset about it. Few people seemed to care, because hey, drinking’s just fun! Right?

The Fear

Sherlock and Watson from Elementary standing together as Sherlock says "What's it to you?" to someone offscreen.
It is so important to me that things don’t worsen, and instead get better.

And now, we are in the pandemic. We are isolated. We are all broke. When the tide turns, if it does, and we return to events like game days, conventions, private house cons, I feel like the risk will be amplified. Predators will be in full force, and we’ll all want to celebrate, and to celebrate is to drink, according to a lot of cultural baggage we have. We also have a huge influx of people who are designing and gaming who have never been to these events, who may not know how to be safe, or who may be vulnerable to people and structures of power.

I want to see us avoid the pitfalls that will happen. So, the people who may be at risk mostly have been told what to do: be careful, don’t trust strangers, don’t drink at conventions or events, etc. I want to talk to people who don’t think they’re at risk of predation, addiction, or moreso, promoting dangerous behaviors.

  • Don’t offer people alcohol first. Offer soda, juice, food, etc., and only have alcohol as the next option if they opt towards it.
  • Eat meals or snacks with booze. This makes people less likely to get smashed.
  • Go to other areas of the event than the bar or go to restaurants without alcohol.
  • Check in with people if they have been drinking and ensure they are safe to go home/to their rooms without risks, including by finding them someone they feel safe with to escort them if they don’t feel safe with you (if they hesitate, etc.).
  • Bring things other than booze to hotel rooms, or if you do bring something special, limit sharing to one small drink for each person, and don’t serve intoxicated people.
  • Don’t serve drinks to or buy drinks for people who are intoxicated visibly.
  • Avoid using phrases like “I need a drink” or “you look like you need a drink” or referencing partying/drinking to relax or have fun.

For people running conventions, you have some responsibilities.

  • Don’t centralize events near or around the bar, and host actively dry events.
  • Consider offering drink tickets for of-age attendees limiting drinks to 2 alcoholic beverages, pre-purchased through the con and processed through the hotel or event location.
  • Do room checks for room parties to ensure people are being safe, including shutting down parties that are too heavy.
  • Discourage bar socializing by making spaces elsewhere to socialize that have access to water, soda, juice, snacks, etc. (helpful: avoid harsh lighting in these areas if possible, but don’t make them dark – think welcoming).
  • Don’t have alcohol themed events.
  • Have food available in some fashion, whether it’s providing local menus, snack bars, food related events, or helping to arrange food outings for smaller cons.
  • Don’t recommend bars or host major events at bars for cons, game days, or house cons.
  • Encourage events that would normally include alcohol like dances but instead bar alcohol or intoxication from the event.
  • Encourage vetted buddy systems, roommate check-ins, checking less-used areas, and checking with people going to their rooms that they’re with someone safe or that they have a safe escort.
  • Encourage digital check-ins on Discords, Slacks, or other private spaces when guests reach their rooms for the night or reach different at-risk events.
  • Vet staff and special guests rigorously for safety. Post staff & special guest lists in advance of events and allow people to give feedback, if possible.
  • Have a safety coordinator for your event!

This all sounds like a lot of work, but welcome to the modern era of conventions: where we try to give a shit.

For those of you who struggle with alcohol or addiction, I am always here to be your dry buddy. In fact, when I attend cons or events in the future, I am hoping to connect with other people attending who will be dry buddies – people who attend events with you and jointly agree to skip the alcoholic drinks and leave if things get rowdy, and escort each other safely away from events.

We can never guarantee someone is safe alone, or fully safe with any other person, but we can make an effort to vet people before events by getting some references before allowing them to have any access to vulnerable people. I will always try to keep you safe, but I am not perfect. We have to work together, be honest, and stick to what we promise together as a community.

Sherlock's father saying "Shall we attack it together?" to Johnny Lee Miller as Sherlock on Elementary.
Yes.

I want to see a safer community someday, but I fear the pandemic will increase our risk including when it passes. Be safe and be thoughtful. If you feel you are at risk for alcohol abuse, avoid at-risk spaces if possible, and check in regularly with a buddy regardless of where you are. Find help now, and know that your way of getting help doesn’t have to be the same as everyone else’s, so long as it works for you. We can get through this, all of us who struggle.

A Very Merry Mental Illness to Me

Hey, friends, supporters, consumers, and colleagues. this one is a little important.

I hope the best came for you in major holidays for each culture and religion or lack thereof that came before this post, and the same wishes for you in the festivities (or lack thereof!) to come. Please stay safe in the continuance of COVID-19 and the many dangers all marginalized people face, and seek joy in every moment – even if it’s fleeting, it heals more than all the rest.

That being said, this is me. Beau Sheldon.

Beau in a black and grey hoodie tee with festive makeup.
Me. 2020.
Content warnings for discussion of mental illness, physical disability, financial insecurity, gender identity, gender dysphoria, mention of hallucinations, mention of schizoaffective disorder, mentions of political and social issues in the United States, and details of creative dysfunction.
Continue reading “A Very Merry Mental Illness to Me”

Let’s Talk: A Thoughty Update…among other things

I apologize if this is the first some of you may be hearing of my current health status, but the quarantine has made communicating really difficult. Please watch this video and feel free to reach out, but do not feel any obligation to give platitudes. Things have been rough but I’m doing my best! <3

What is the future?

Turn is currently doing wonderfully, just short of funding and 21 days to go! We just announced international shipping, and I’m very excited for what is yet to come in stretch goals and work I do after the game is live!

But I need to talk about the future, because mine is uncertain.

Brie in a leather jacket, looking out the window.

As many people know, in November of 2018 I had a car accident. I fell asleep while driving my car in a parking garage and hit my head and wrenched my shoulder. When I went to the hospital, they said I had a mild concussion and shoulder sprain, and advised me to follow up with a doctor if I had any significant symptoms.

I was in grad school, so most of the symptoms of bad concussion issues were able to be dismissed as burnout, for me. I didn’t mean to do it, but I was cramming hard and desperate to get through school, while struggling with one challenging job and another job that really challenged my now-addled brain. By the time I was nearing finals in the next semester, I had been struggling with concussion symptoms – genuine brain injury symptoms – for months.

I found tons of typos in work I was reviewing – my own work, where typos were normally rare at worst. I was getting carsick while driving, and had gotten dizzy after seeing Black Panther, slipped and bumped my head in two places on my car door. The dizziness, nausea, and unfocused confusion were too much, so I went to the concussion clinic. They confirmed my fears, that it was worse than expected, and also that my delaying it had made recovery longer – and possibly less likely.

I did physical therapy from May to September, before I ran out of car insurance funds. I still do the exercises at home. I thought I was improving, and I have at least somewhat. But…

When preparing the Kickstarter for Turn, I let John take a look at the draft, and he pointed out many errors. The kind of thing that shouldn’t really be an issue for a functioning brain that’s working well, you know, like swapped words, nonsense sentence structure, and so on. Some of it seemed like gibberish. I didn’t even notice! He had to review it for me.

Reflecting on it, I reviewed a variety of my work. I read my recent submission to Return to the Stars, and how many confusing edits there had been, because I didn’t even recall the disorganized things I had written.  I read my work on thatlittleitch, which is unedited, and how my sentence structure is even more confusing and inelegant than before the accident. Many things I have written, I have forgotten, or don’t recall clearly, and if they aren’t edited, they’re often confusing, especially if they are longer.

Brie covering their face with their hands, in a maroon shirt.

I had an appointment coming up with my concussion clinic doctor, who expressed that like we had known, my delayed treatment combined with comorbidity of a variety of my illnesses (fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, PTSD, bipolar) will make recovery harder. But, if I’m still having issues with confusion and language, it could be a greater concern. So, I was assigned speech therapy (alongside physical therapy for my shoulder, which hasn’t healed). I can’t have that appointment until December, because they don’t have space for me.

My doctor basically explained that this could continue to be a grueling process. They don’t know if I will ever be back to what I was before. They want to ensure I can continue working, but if speech therapy isn’t effective, we will run out of options pretty quickly. And even if it works, it’s a long process, with unreliable results.

What does this mean?

Turn may be my last large project. I can still fulfill the work, absolutely, but we baked in extra time for what is to be done. I have a freelance project to fulfill for Orun, which I’m going to be advising them may involve a little more editing than planned (but I hope not). But going forward, I may max out at 1000 words for a given project, or just take a lot more time, and I can only ask editors to do so much work.

Pretty much everything I’ve been working on is going to be more limited, require more oversight. It’s exhausting to imagine, and I feel broken. This is part of why Turn has felt so desperate to me – what if I never make something amazing again? What if this it? And while I do my best to ensure I have good editing, the process will be harder. I don’t know if I can put myself through a super hard process every time I want to make something. And I don’t know if I’ll ever get better.

So, this is basically just a post to explain the situation. It’s me trying to find a way to say “hey, my brain is damaged, and I may never be the same again, so I hope you don’t desert me, and I hope you understand that I am doing the best I can.”

I’m trying. But, after this Kickstarter, things may be different. Er, well, they will be different – I just don’t know how. I hope you’ll stick with me.

Love to you all <3

A pigeon hopping across pavement.

Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/thoughty. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, follow the instructions on the Contact page.

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, or, What to Do When You’re Living the Dream…But?

Today, I am 30 years old, I work in my dream job teaching leadership using games, and I make $0.85/hour.*

Leading with Class, in case you don’t know (most people don’t!), is my YouTube show where I teach about leadership using roleplaying games. It’s the dream job I made real for myself through a lot of hard work and the support of my loving, and incredibly talented, partner John. It also still doesn’t feel much like a dream come true, because it comes with some overwhelming “but”‘s.

I get to teach leadership…but it’s not in a respected role.
I get to teach using games…but it’s not seen as “fun.”
I get to work from home…but I can’t pay my bills.
I get to work with my partner…but he doesn’t get paid any better than I do.
I get to share my vision with the world…but almost no one watches my channel.

In 2014, I made the decision to continue my pursuit of an education and get my degree in organizational leadership. From there, I continued on to graduate school and got a degree in leadership – and over that two year period, experienced continued health and career setbacks that left me unemployed at graduation. My job became Thoughty – and Thoughty is still my actual primary income. All $300-ish a month, maybe. I have ten years of career experience that the lessons learned can apply to my work in leadership, but no one wants someone who was mostly an admin in a position of leadership, and my health disallows a full time job.

So, whatever, fine, I said. I’ll make my job. With John’s encouragement (and from my other partner, Dillon), I started working on scripts for Leading with Class. Even now, it feels endlessly selfish, and working on Leading with Class instead of trying to dig through thousands of jobs to find at least one that pays $15/hr. and only requires 25 hours a week felt irresponsible. But I did it while still doing freelance work (as I am now) and Thoughty, and it was so wonderful to make something that meant so much to me!

What was less wonderful was the lack of feedback and viewership. I am incredibly grateful for the Leading with Class patrons on Patreon – honestly, it means the world to me that anyone would support this work. But it’s still extremely quiet. On all of our videos combined – all of them – we have fewer than 350 views. I’ve shared on LinkedIn, Facebook, G+, Twitter, Mastadon, and Instagram, and of course, they’re on YouTube. I’ve done streams on Twitch to garner interest, answering questions and writing the script live to engage viewers.

We have three comments on all of our YouTube videos combined.

Now, we’re lucky enough to have followers and subscribers on our various media accounts! There’s just really low engagement. I know we’re kind of a niche interest, but I’ve only ever seen (personally) fewer than 5 total shares of Leading with Class content outside of my own personal shares, John’s shares, and the dedicated shares of some of my close friends on G+. Most shares aren’t accompanied by any positive recommendation, either.

And you know, yes, this does sound like whining. But as a creator, as a person who struggles with impostor syndrome and serious anxiety and depression, and as a person, I think it’s essential that my viewers and readers know me as a real person, and that they know the truth. The truth is, creating the thing that means the world to me, living the “dream” like I am, is heavily dented by struggling to make it through financially every day and hearing basically silence when it comes to my work.

I am used to silence when it comes to my work. People don’t link and share my site(s) or my work very often, and this has been notoriously challenging for me. I struggle with professional envy, seeing others get praised while I can barely get a retweet at times. But I thought, with Leading with Class it will be different! Even if it makes no money, even if it gets no press, I’ll be making something meaningful. I’ll be using my degree to do what I wanted the most!

But if a YouTuber makes an amazing video and no one watches it, does it functionally exist at all?

When one of my key purposes with Leading with Class is to educate, and there are no new viewers, who is really learning? If one of the necessary aspects of so-called “edutainment” is that it is spread broadly and enjoyed by an audience, have I created anything really at all? Did I get hit on the head by a backdrop while recovering from a brain injury and struggle to put words together to make episodes and even my best friends, people I respect and admire, haven’t watched a single episode?

This is the episode where we stopped using the backdrop because it fell on my head. Such a headache!

And I suppose it does often just burn me that John puts in so much work to make these episodes look beautiful, to make me look and sound competent, even through brain injury problems, and yet as of this writing, only 22 people saw our latest video? The lovely work he did? That makes me so sad! I feel I’m wasting his time. This thing that is meaningful to both of us feels injured by the quiet, by the feeling that we are working so hard, this is so good, it means so much, it should go far and silence.

I do try to bolster with every like our videos and posts get, and absolutely I could be posting more often. But the hype machine only does so much when no one else turns the gears.

And I don’t want people to think I hate making the videos or I don’t think they matter. I do think they matter, and I love them, and love creating them! I had to take a hiatus in July because my recovery from my brain injury (sustained last November) was taking a long time and writing and filming while trying to also do freelance work and get through recovery was just not working. I struggled so much, and I cried so hard about taking a hiatus! It would doom the show, I knew it, and what if we could never start back to it?

But we did, even though I’m still in recovery. Even though the cats insist on interrupting our shoots.

And I’m spurred, truly, to keep working on the project. I want to take it further – I mapped out a second series, and a mini-episode series. I’m even getting the chance to do my first workshop at Big Bad Con – one huge part of Leading with Class that hasn’t progressed far yet, but would mean the world to me to make bigger and broader. This is my dream.

I am a game designer, and love designing games – I want to keep doing that. And Thoughty is still important to me! But Leading with Class is a dream that I feel could make a difference! If it could just… grow. I know I need to work harder, I always do, but I have always worked best with the enthusiasm of others encouraging my progress, and John cannot carry all of that weight. He isn’t my audience.

I suppose, what I’m trying to say is, it is very hard to do the thing you love and feel unfulfilled by it. The perils of relying on others! But we are, as they say, a community, so I think a lot of people could understand what I’m feeling here, so I felt like I needed to finally speak these words clearly, so you don’t feel alone and so you don’t feel like your work is meaningless. Leading with Class isn’t meaningless, and your work that feels like it’s floundering has meaning, too.

So what the heck am I gonna do about this?

First, I’m going to keep writing scripts, filming, hopefully streaming, and doing workshops. I’m going to finish the first season of the show with the full twelve episodes, no matter what.

Second, I’m going to try to do better about promoting the show and increase my social media presence, as hard as that can be.

Third, I’m going to continue to be honest in how I approach this work and my purposes with Leading with Class. I’m never going to bullshit you about the work I’m doing, and I will continue to be transparent.

And fourth, finally, I’m going to be grateful for those of you who are here, who do support me and Leading with Class, and try to keep that in mind when the gremlins come to fight in my mind. I can’t let them win. I’m the winner here!

Thank you for reading, for watching, and for every moment of your being. The world is a better place because of you, even when you think it’s not. And hey. Come join me — in Leading with Class. <3

*For those curious about the time John and I spend on a given episode, here’s a breakdown.

Brie’s time investment per episode
~10 hours research
~5 hours script writing
~1 hours rehearsal
~3 hours filming
= ~19 hours

John’s time investment per episode
~1 hour research support
~1 hour script review
~1 hour rehearsal
~3 hour filming
~5 hour editing
~3 hour graphics and animation
= ~14

Total investment = ~33 hours per episode.

The Patreon currently sits at $28/episode.

We aren’t stopping, though. 🙂

—

Check out Leading with Class on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. For questions about the show, email leadingwithclass@gmail.com.

Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, follow the instructions on the Contact page.

Lag

I was very hesitant to write this post but I think I should.
Things have been quite rough here, and John and I are financially strapped. I also started back to grad school and a second job for the semester. We ended up, after two significant financial hits (one of which isn’t resolved), starting a GoFundMe. 
It took all my willpower but we honestly had no choice. We have met our goal but we aren’t  sure how far it will carry us while  we deal with crises at work and home. We’re grateful for all of the support and care everyone has shown for us!
The purpose of this post, though, is to let you all know that I will be super busy over the next few months and my energy is also incredibly low, but I’m doing my damnedest to keep involved and post. It will just likely be rarer. I hate that, but I only have so much of me, and I’ve already been struggling with physical and mental health, so I have to be careful.
If there are things you think are super important that you want me to know about, feel free to tag me into them or email contactbriecs@gmail.com with anything like that. I also am happy to talk to people interested in doing guest posts (paid with the Patreon dollars). If there are smaller ways of contributing I can do, let me know.
If you’re promoting a project and would like to do a Quick Shot (three question) interview, go to the bottom of the Contact page to see how.
I hope that you will all stick around as I muddle through an incredibly challenging time of my life, and continue to support me. I love you all and I want to keep bringing good things into your lives – and I will do my best to keep doing so. I’m sharing the GoFundMe, my PayPal, and other related things below.
I know this is all very personal, but you all know I’m like that. Thank you all so much for being here!
Love,
Brie
https://www.gofundme.com/keep-the-sheldons-afloat
PayPal.me/briecs or PayPal.me/thoughty
cash.me/briecs
Patreon.com/briecs

Love, Joy, Empathy, and Why I I’m Not Giving Up

Last night I had the awesome experience of going to see Mikey Neumann’s Movies with Mikey Live, courtesy of my friend Anders as a 30th birthday gift. Mikey reviews films and is a video game writer, and he is one of my favorite people. It was amazing – I laughed, I cried, and it hit some nerves in important ways.
There are a few things Mikey said that made an impact more than all the rest, and some of them weren’t just a few words. I’m gonna go through the hard ones first then roll it back to good. This will relate to games, I swear.
—
Mikey at one point asked, “how many of you have been alone with your thoughts for two months?”
I raised my hand (I think there were two or three of us). When he said it, my mind rubberbanded – shot backwards and snapped forward. When my husband John was deployed in Iraq, I lived alone for over a year in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I shut myself inside, I tried to vent it out in journals or on places like LiveJournal that was mostly screaming into a void, but I couldn’t escape my own mind.
My mental health deteriorated rapidly, and my physical health didn’t do well – I’d lock myself in the house for days. I saw people, but it wasn’t broken until I sat on the floor of my mom’s house, completely delusional and fully in belief that the world was ending. I sobbed for hours and sat in terror of what would come and my biggest fear, the scariest thing about an apocalypse, was that I might live and be alone with myself forever.
That fear hasn’t faded. It’s still scary to me, and I worry that my being a trash fire to be around will make that a reality – my behavior and incompetence will lead to my partners and friends deserting me, because I know I would desert me.
So there was that.
Then Mikey talked about his experiences in the hospital when he had his frankly terrifying event last year. I have not been hospitalized long term, but the facts of physically deteriorating, not having diagnoses, and sudden onset symptoms are familiar – and the experience he described is one I desperately fear. Every time I have a twinge in my back, a cold, a night where waking up seems like the worst option. So it shook me up, just like listening to him talk about things close to this before. I cried a lot.
I’m struggling right now because every thing that goes wrong just wrecks me. I made one mistake at work the other day and just destroyed myself over it for hours. I’m still thinking about it. I struggled with design work and almost bailed out on a contract because I can’t look at my own work and see value. I told myself I wasn’t allowed a birthday because I don’t deserve it.
So that also happened.
Mikey also, earlier, had talked about altering perspectives, helping people see movies in different ways that might change how they feel about them. He talked about Deep Dive, and it reminded me how I wished he would do a do-over of the Jupiter Ascending episode because John said it wasn’t nice and that I would get upset. See, I love Jupiter Ascending, and it’s often hard to get people to see the good in it. But it made me think about how our first tries are often not our best ones. That gave me a little shiver of hope. Over the past few years I’ve nearly shut down this blog and quit games multiple times, after my work continued to be inadequate and the blog floundered. I don’t want to end things, but my self-loathing and lack of success has been heavy. But maybe if I keep trying?
Then he talked about the important part – love, joy, empathy.
I honestly can’t remember everything he said. I was so overwhelmed. A lot of people might know that I’ve been struggling with my mental and physical health for a long time, and one of the ways I’ve tried to do that is to try to be kinder.
I’m an angry person. I always have been, angry, ready to fight, every day. I’m bitter and fiery and it’s exhausting. But ever since the Dark Years, I’ve been trying so hard to be better.
I worked on not calling people names and swearing at them. I disengaged from relationships that allowed my anger to grow and fester. I preached to be kinder, to love people, and I asked people to stop hurting people.
But lately, I have not done this. I have been exhausted, surrounded by everyone else’s anger, boiling in hurt every day by the words of my friends, colleagues, and the people who control my life. My work makes me angry. School makes me angry. I am so angry all of the time, and it turns into this cycle of self loathing because I don’t want to be angry, but it often feels like my only alternative is sadness.
My doctors have told me that a happy medium will always be a challenge for me, and that experiencing joy will be fraught because it’ll be hard to find and the crash can often be very brutal. I’m glad they told me, but it’s something I struggle with because it’s true.
I need to change that. I may never normalize to happy, and I might not be able to be joyful without a crash. But that has to be okay. It must be. With that in mind, I’m reflecting on how I pursue games and create them, and how I engage with the community.
Love
– I will give my love freely in all ways, even if it’s just a general love of humanity.
– I will try to ensure that love is a part of my games, encouraged and recognized.
– I will remember that hate is less effective than love.
Joy
– I will have more fun! I want to find at least one fun thing a week to enjoy, in games or out.
– I will support joyful games, bring attention, and encourage more joyful games to be made.
– I will put joy out, too, by trying to post more about good in my life, including the positive work I’m doing in design.
Empathy
– I will support those in my community who struggle in the ways I can.
– I will continue to fight against injustice, and against harassment, and try to find opportunities to change our landscape to support those in need.
– I will let go of bitterness against those who have wronged me.
—
The last of those is one I have already started pursuing, with my apology weekend where I asked people to apologize to me freely, without any given reason, and I forgave everyone who did. It was revolutionary for me.
I have realized, just while thinking on this, that my recent deep struggles might not be solved by these efforts, but that it doesn’t actually matter. This isn’t about fixing me, or anyone else.
It’s about living.
<3

On “Boys”

This is a diversion from games but related to my typical work and my current look into masculinity with Posers, and is as-of-now an unpaid post.

Mike Rugnetta wrote two posts on the subject of the McElroy Brothers and the use of the term “boy.” I found it by a shared Twitter thread by @RowanGayle who I don’t know but said some cool stuff. And reading these things brought me to tears, because I want to talk about why I, personally, consider myself a boy…and why I don’t agree that boy must be or necessarily is gender neutral.

My coming out story is freely available on the internet so I’ll just say simply: for technical terms I use genderfluid nonbinary-masculine to define myself, but casually I refer to myself as a boy. It started jokingly, but then I felt it more significantly that the word fit me better than anything else, and it ties into these things that Mike and RowanGayle are saying. It is not necessarily about gender, but it is about identity, and it interweaves with gender for me.

When I first became a viewer of the various McElroy properties, Griffin’s voice really stuck with me (as a synesthete, to me it is the exact color and feeling of slipping on a banana peel, which makes me giggle). I liked how he talked about the characters they made on Monster Factory, and his enthusiasm. I also appreciated the not-entirely-but-pretty-damn-wholesome vibe the McElroys have thus far been some of the least problematic internet entities I’ve seen (along with Rugnetta and Mikey Neumann), and fuck if I didn’t feel the positivity and enthusiasm pouring out into the world from their media. Even when things were at the point where they could be problematic, they didn’t go there, or if they did, they apologized. That is important to me, so much, and that’s part of what “boy” is to me because of how it reflects in both the speakers and the subjects who are just trying their damn best – not necessarily good, but trying to be, always trying to be.

I see boy as inherently trying. Trying to be better, which is a common refrain for me, be better, and to be what you want to be. Hopeful is not something I am, but something I think translates well to boy-ness, and I don’t talk about how much I want to be hopeful, but I do want that, and I know that’s part of why I cling to boy. In the times Griffin used it in Monster Factory, it stuck in my head as this loving “our boy can do anything!” vibe and I loved that these boys, these no-middle-sliders boys who fumbled were still seemingly loved even though they’re characters in a damn video game. I have struggled so much with feeling okay with who I am, but every time I heard “boy” it poked a little at me, and I finally just let it in. Griffin doesn’t know me and neither do any of these other internet people but boy, boy stuck with me.

There is a playful, loving, hopeful, enthusiastic vibe in the idea of these boys that try so fuckin’ hard to just do the thing and to just be boys. That’s what I love about it, I think.

I’m not a man and have no desire to be, but the soft masculinity that sits in boy suits me. It’s not about men or women, and I think here is the flaw. Not everyone has to be a boy, and it is evident to me by the McElroy use of it that it is not necessarily gendered man or woman, but instead likely an androgynous space where some boys could be – it feels that it could be a soft masculine, but it doesn’t have to be.

My complication with the analysis thus far is more that we are only considering man, woman, and agender identities. It isn’t destroying the gender binary to take gender away entirely – expanding gender and understanding the complexities and variances of gender identity is what destroying the gender binary is.

What is a person who has a gender that is not necessarily binary but it does exist?

I dunno, I guess what I’m trying to say is, when Griffin used boy, it gave me a simple word for what I am. And that’s pretty cool, whatever people end up saying it is later.

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Sagas of Gender, Power, and Emotion

Had a brief discussion just now with John about my experience playing Sagas of the Icelanders at Origins this year, and how it was about gender expression, emotional expression, and struggling with my own abilities.

I played The Huscarl, which is like, Super Manly and involves a lot of behavioral cues, from my perspective. I play men or androgynous/fluid people a lot of the time, more often than women, for any number of reasons, but in part because I can’t be a man or androgynous visibly, or perform that, in any other part of my life. I look and am seen as A Woman and I hate it a lot of the time. So, games! And playing against my assigned gender! This game actually was an element in my walk towards coming out officially, too. But!

One of the things I was discussing elsewhere about toxic masculinity and emotional play (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BriannaSheldon/posts/CMKjyQG2f8p) is that there are emotions I can express as a man that I can’t as a woman. When I played this character, I did three things I can’t do when I’m presenting as a woman without being given dirty looks, being shamed, or being told to calm down:

– I was jovial, which if you look at a lot of historical language is not commonly used for women, and I was allowed to be so just as I was.

– I was angry, blustering, and loud each at least once or twice, but no one looked down at me, in character or out (this was in part because of a beautifully arranged group, but they were all men, and allowed me to perform that). At one point in the game, I even got to play out the experience of a good man hurting someone unintentionally out of masculine bravado and egoism, and it was totally great to get that experience – not because I hurt someone, but because of the perspective it offered on the entire scenario and my character.

– I was seen as displaying positive vulnerability when I did seek help in character.

This is not meant to say that men have an easier time of playing, not at all. Men playing to express feminine-coded emotions is definitely a valid thing and I totally get that, because this is my experience expressing masculine-coded emotions, where I’m allowed leeway that I wouldn’t be as a woman. And I tell you this after edging-up-to-20-years roleplaying, there are benefits to playing against gender, or against expectation.

But this also got me thinking of one of the things I addressed in game. One of the questions of the game, which is a challenge for me, was the subject of fertility and barrenness. However, it gave me an opportunity I hadn’t expected. While most people were concerned about the ability of my character’s betrothed to reproduce, when it came to light that her past husband had been infertile, I let my character experience the fear of losing or not even having virility.

For me, however, it wasn’t of “can I have children?” but “do I lack the power to support the ones I love and give them what they desire?” See, from my perspective, the concept of fertility in history has often been tied to virtue (though that’s a very ridiculous thing), and virility is tied to power. Fertility is reproducing and making, virility is inception and creation. They work together, obviously, but there’s a lot of emphasis on virility being related to a man’s power and him being weak if he doesn’t have it – his body is weak, his body has failed him – and for fertility, the woman who lacks it has wronged herself and the world somehow.

These are both shit things, but through those concepts and the setting of the game, with the help of my character’s betrothed and the aunt in the story, I was able to express myself in anger, in vulnerability, and with power, and it was incredibly meaningful. One of my favorite moments I’ve ever had in games was having a touching, emotional discussion with Tracy, playing my betrothed, and sitting next to Eric (playing the aunt) while he encouraged me in character to stand up.

I don’t have a lot of physical power, and my mind is not often at its best. To explore the idea of losing power as something my mind conceived to be a powerful person? That was so helpful to me, to work through some serious feelings, and it echoes even now, months later.

Basically what I’m getting at is that sometimes these games can be super meaningful. We can experience all kinds of feelings and think about all sorts of things, and playing against type can really make a difference in that regard. It was such a beautiful game, and I hope to have many more like it.


(Thanks, as always, to +Jason Morningstar for running a great game, and for my cohorts, +Tracy Barnett +Eric Mersmann +Morgan Ellis and +Mark Diaz Truman)

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I AM Mental

A slight diversion from our normal content, here. It’s semi-political, if my mental health is political. 

Content/Trigger Notice: mental health, depression, bipolar, and similar illnesses are all discussed/specific mentions of binge drinking, suicide, and self-destructive behavior. 

I was going to write about Are You Mental? and its Kickstarter when I got home today. I don’t need to, because there’s this excellent post by Kate Bullock, who is wonderful. I’m going to say shit anyway.

I know I do problematic things in relation to mental health and representation, I totally do, but I’m also extremely aware of how my literal crazy is heavily misrepresented by media and fiction crazy. See, here’s the thing. I live my crazy in public. I don’t think there has ever been a day when someone has asked me about my mental health and I’ve denied them an answer. I joke about it, occasionally, but not often. Often, I’m too busy with it. 

For reference, I have bipolar disorder, anxiety (generalized and social), mild obsessive/compulsive behaviors, issues with seasonal depression, a history of emotional abuse, and have many panic attacks.

Somewhere around 2013ish, I’m not sure when, I started a spiral into an incredibly tragic and damaging mixed/manic episode in which I destroyed friendships, professional relationships, had abusive relationships and may have been abusive myself, wasted more money than is reasonable, experienced massive physical health issues in part because of the irresponsible and self-destructive behavior, and I did a lot of wrong things, including some things that other people would never admit to.

If you ask me? I will try to tell you honestly what happened. There are some times I don’t really know. The funny thing about being so crazy is that you don’t always remember the worst things. Or the best things. Like, I remember drinking an entire bottle of vodka after my then-partner screamed and shook the dinner table for half the meal and tried to hit me. That was not my crazy, nope, but there it was, nestled in the situation my crazy put me in. I don’t remember seeing some of my best friends at conventions where I was so manic, so close to breaking, that I didn’t really sleep for almost 72 hours, and barely ate, and talked so fast I don’t even remember how I managed to talk. I crave those moments. Those moments, at a gaming con, as a gamer, where I was crazy.

I am well medicated, doing therapy, and thankfully with access to good healthcare to keep those things. (No worries, potential employers!) Not everyone has that. Even having it doesn’t mean you’re safe. Everyone who watches me on social media sees these ups and downs of my moods, my bleak moments of depression, my hypomania. Lithium is great, but it does not cure me.

If you sit down and play a game, and you play a mad character, a crazy character, oh, it’s so exciting, isn’t it? To be crazy? To be INSANE? You can do whatever you want! No matter what you do, it’s okay, you’re crazy! Hahaha OMG NOT REALLY.

My freelance career is mostly in tatters. I couldn’t do the work. I couldn’t’ focus. I got nothing done. I have some work – thanks to some very, very generous people – but I’m not a professional. I burned that flag to ashes and dust. I was not a nice person. I wasn’t respectful. Hell, I honestly feel like I lost tons of social relationships alone on this, in part because everyone thought I made someone cheat on their wife,* because that’s totally something I want on my resume.

I am very honest about my mental illnesses so that people can see, in reality, what crazy is. It is not laughing enthusiastically because things are so, so funny, it’s laughing because you actually can’t stop and you don’t know what’s wrong and if you stop you might die. It’s not feeling morose and sad, sitting at a windowsill dripping with raindrops, it’s sitting on your kitchen floor crying because you almost killed yourself, again, you might do it again, you might die. It’s not being nervous around new people you’ve never met before, it’s being afraid to go to your best friend’s house and if they see how much of a goddamn mess you are, you might die. Some of these are figurative. Some of them are extremely not.

Are You Mental? may be super fun and exciting and make a lot of people very happy. All I can say is that I am, actually, mental, and games like that make me feel like I should fucking die.

——————————–

Small addendum: 1) I am not asking for this to be paid via Patreon. That feels weird. 2) I did do consulting on the essays for mental health representation in the Lovecraftesque game by Becky Annison and Joshua Fox, and I’m available to do that for other games. Just comment and tag me and we’ll go from there.

*I literally have no desire to deal with people’s defenses of this or justifications. Just leave it alone, it’s better off dead.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.