I went back to work today, my staycation coming to a close with the first call that came in at 7:10 this morning. Surprisingly, I didn’t want to throw my laptop into the street nearly as much as I usually do. Typically, I want that thing smashed into pieces by noon. Today, it was just an underlying feeling of “I want to go home, I don’t want to be here right now”. Aside for the calls that weren’t my job, it wasn’t even a bad day, just a busy one. I wrote a troubleshooting article, I took my calls, I didn’t want to scream like I usually do. I think, and this is just a theory, that the time away did me some good, let me reset myself for a while instead of death-marching myself into a heart attack. I don’t even necessarily dread tomorrow, it’s just another day at that point. I don’t usually feel this way after my mini-vacations, usually I’m grouchy, irritable, and ready to lash out in all directions. But right now, I feel relaxed, kind of. It doesn’t hurt that the temperature right now is “comfortable”, rather than “boiling hot”, I think it makes me less of a mess when I’m not burning to death at my desk. I’m not antsy, not on edge, my happy pill seems to have worked extra good today. If this is what being normal feels like, it’s a pretty good feeling. It does however, have me at that “wistful, nostalgic” feeling again though. Because a part of me feels like it’s the last week of summer vacation as a kid again, even though technically every day is summer vacation now. I have an itch to start playing FFXI, the same one I get every year around this time, even though I don’t have a clue what I want to do. But if I do, I think I have a different mindset about it. I watched a Mister Happy video not long ago about FFXI having another surge of players, causing servers to have to be blocked off from creating new characters on. But that isn’t what stuck with me, what did was a tagline he borrowed from Old School RuneScape, which was “Playing Alone, Together”, which kind of made sense to me. I don’t have the same level of time I did back then, but neither do a lot of people who do play. They progress doing whatever on their own, and party up when the time allows, and the situation calls for it. https://youtu.be/n8xmW_VwKP8?is=TkV33BD9s3f9rNsI It made me feel a lot less down on myself for playing with Trust character and not partying up with people like I used to. That, oh, I don’t have to in order to progress, I can just do things at my own speed with the schedule I have. It’s not 2006 anymore, I’m not able to sit in my room and no-life the game in front of a PS2/X360, I have too many responsibilities for that, and that’s okay. It’s here when I do have time, when the urge does hit, and I can play it until I’ve had my fill. Right now, I don’t have that same kind of anxiousness about work, because it’s going to be what it’s going to be, and that it’s okay to use my PTO to get away from it. I don’t have to just hold it for doctor’s appointments, I can in fact use it for myself. I only have one life, and I don’t have to spend every waking moment of it locked into working and thinking about, stressing about work to where I can’t sleep at night. It’s okay to just leave work at work, like I used to before the world ended. That once I clock out, it’s not my responsibility to worry about until the next day I’m in. Or with FFXI, I don’t have to feel anxious about leveling classes solo, or doing missions/quests/whatever I get distracted by on my own. I’m not as far behind as I worry that I am, and it’s not like I can’t get there, albeit slowly if I just work within my limitations. Or if I just never get to things X/Y/Z, that’s fine too. The world is my oyster, and everyone else is in the same boat. It’s okay to play alone now. My biggest issue with a lot of things is learning when to just let go of my anxieties, and it’s a battle doing so. Spending five days not thinking about work was a wonderful thing, and I really do need to use my PTO more, ideally before I run dangerously close to a meltdown because I’ve redlined the engine way too long. Right now I feel loose, in a good way, not so tightly wound that I’ll lash out at the slightest problem. Maybe that will translate over to FFXI if I decide to follow that urge to play it. Or if I play something else entirely, it’s something I need to just let go, stop stressing over the ghosts in my head, and have fun.