T w e n t y S i d e d
Hey everybody! For this week’s article I’ll be glazing you all. Christmas is my favorite holiday so I won’t be posting next week. I’ll be spending the majority of the week spending time with friends and family. So if you can stomach some earnest love and appreciation for you guys, as well as a bit of me opening up about my personal life and what may color my posts on here, read on. Regardless, have a great holiday season whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, Festivus, or any other winter celebration. You deserve to enjoy this otherwise miserable season however you see fit and I hope you have a great time.
I already introduced myself with my typical sort of opening with people when I meet up to play Magic or board games in a game store or local meetup spot, but I feel like I’m in a place now where I feel comfortable revealing more. Once I’m closer to people, I think it’s important to show my hand more and to me it’s worth the chance that I scare people away. I’d rather people know where I’m coming from when I act like an asshole out of nowhere. I feel like I’ve hit that point with you folks on the site.
To start, I’m going to do the annoying millennial and gen z thing. I’m going to list my mental health diagnoses. I’m bipolar. I have extreme social and general anxiety. I have PTSD. All of these things are diagnosed and verified by multiple sources including my psychiatrist and I’m undergoing active treatment for all of it. I have other fun stuff going on in my very smooth brain but those are the ones that will be relevant to posts I make here. That all means that some weeks I’m going to be so anxious or depressed that I can only bring myself to post something that amounts to a discussion prompt instead of a typical full length article. In the most recent case I’ve just been legitimately ill on top of things which is made it extra fun. Loved your responses on your own spoiler practices, by the way.
I bring this stuff up because at some point I will likely write an article about video games that trigger phobias and PTSD. I will almost certainly write an article about bipolar celebrities and bipolar representation in media. I am a lot more than a sum my diagnoses but I spend a lot of time researching abnormal psychology and mental health because I find the topic fascinating and I hope you all do too. But more importantly I think it might be helpful to know these things when I inevitably say some contradicting information and opinions. My opinions are pretty consistent on things but I will occasionally just say stuff I straight-up don’t mean and not notice until my wife or one of my friends points it out to me. Most likely it will get caught before I post or quickly thereafter and edited to fix the mistake, but you never know for sure. We’re all human. In my case being manic has led to very hyperbolic thinking and talking. So you can expect lots of “the worst” and “the best” when I don’t really mean that. It’s also something I try to catch but will miss inevitably. I know my opinions are not the end all be all, but some weeks my brain is really pushing that thought on me pretty damn hard.
Thank you for reading my little sob story and being willing to allow me to indulge in some oversharing. I was very worried about feeling like an invader into someone else’s world here but you were very welcoming to me and my articles here. I have very much enjoyed engaging with you all. I wish I wasn’t sick for over a month now so I could have interacted with you all more and made some better posts. Regardless, I read your comments and try to respond when I can. I expected intelligent responses because of the audience that Shamus as well as the other writers here have cultivated and I wasn’t disappointed. You guys are great. I love having a place to discuss my opinions on nerd media and culture. If I ever have a week like last week where I don’t respond to you, know that I read and appreciate your responses and feedback. It means a lot to me that you take the time to read my posts in an era where most video game and nerd culture media is taken in via YouTube video essays and podcasts.
Please have a wonderful holiday season.
And if this is a tough time of year for you just know that you’re not alone. I’ve been where you’re at. Some days are better than others but no matter the quality of the day, it passes. Maybe you feel alone this year but who knows about next year? Who knows about next week, even? Hang in there.
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An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Been a weird December for me, been on a psychocosmic horror kick for the whole month. Playing a bunch of Look Outside while watching classic Christmas movies, like The Shining. So much winter in that movie, and sleighs and whatnot. And Perfect Blue, which… well I don’t think it has anything to do with winter, but it’s got a glowy white woman in it. That’s festive.
I always make sure to thrown on a seasonal horror movie or two in the lead up to Christmas. Gremlins, Krampus, and Black Christmas. Keeps things interesting.
Thank you for sharing, Ethan.
Interestingly, more people in the periphery of my life have been diagnosed, or have divulged to me that they are bipolar. I welcome the opportunity to learn more about this particular mental health issue, as knowledge and understanding leads to more compassion.
Is there any chance that Bay will do some more writing for this blog in the near future? I really miss their Sims story.
I meant to get back to this comment a LOOOOOONG time ago but kept forgetting. Sorry. Thank you very much for appreciating what I have had to say.
I talked to Bay about whether they would write for the site again and their response was essentially, “Never say never.” I don’t want to speak for them in any way so I’ll mostly leave it to that. I will just say that they’re doing pretty well and very much appreciate your inquiry.
As someone with a partner who suffers from both PTSD and Bipolar Disorder, it’s heartening to see other people with their particular cocktail of complicated brain who want to speak about it.
Thank you. It means a lot to know that people care :)
As someone who isn’t diagnosed with anything, yet, because there is no reason for a diagnosis, yet, I appreciate your insight. The more I know, told by people who are actually involved, the better I can interact with people who are actually involved.
Oh and a Grand Solstice, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanuka or whatever you may fancy to you too and a great start in 2026.
I appreciate your care and interest :) Thanks for the well wishes. Christmas went great
Hope you had a good Christmas! Mine was a little fraught with chores and exhaustion but still better than being at work :D Naturally it only truly felt like xmas once I was sitting in my mother’s house, unable to decide how to spend my time especially with the TV on in the background, hands tingling and beginning to sweat. And in a tizz opening and closing opaque tins of mince pies and biscuits and stollen and lebkuchen, working out which I’d like to eat, and how I was going to eat all the things that naturally ‘needed’ to be eaten, immediately and without understanding that tomorrow brings further opportunities to eat.
Thank you for the post, this seems to be the special corner of the internet where I don’t balk so much at the so-called Millennial/Gen-Z-isms, they’re quite interesting and heartfelt. I really do appreciate your coming to the site and writing articles and interesting conversation prompts, and providing a sorely-missed purple segment again to accompany the orange and yellow ones! :D
Speaking of Millennials, seeing people, like you have done, mention extreme social and general anxiety, but also mention going to social boardgame meetups and the like, always makes me stop and wonder. I’ve always thought of things like Meetup and Tinder as things where if I were confident enough to use them, I’d likely not need to use them in the first place because I’d be socially confident enough to just go out and socialise in general. I’d never have put extreme anxiety and social boardgame meetups together in my mind, just thinking about the latter makes my eyes water in that way that automatically happens sometime when I walk past people on the street who seem confident or cool or threatening. But I’d never have thought of myself as having extreme anything. Perhaps I should, I was so wound up about an ex-colleague being at a work course a few months ago, that upon seeing him I chatted immediately for a few minutes, and then subtly made it so that I could not engage with him for the rest of the course, e.g. not going into the kitchen area, not turning backwards much as I was sitting in the seat directly in front of him. In the same way as I avoided the kitchen area at work for the 5 years I worked at the place I knew him from, not to avoid him, I really enjoyed sitting next to him at work and chatting and we were both the same age and were the junior engineers on the job, but rather to avoid people I didn’t know and the awkwardness of forced small-talk with them. I ended up practically in tears in my hotel room after a couple of days of the 5 day course, ridden with guilt about not talking to him / avoiding him. It’s not like he was actively engaging with me either, he was probably chilled out and not fussed, and was with other colleagues. In fact the only follow up was when I made a jokey remark at the canteen and he didn’t really reply in kind. Or maybe he was the same as me and feeling awkward. He was always so gregarious though, he was practically kitchen-man at work, chatting up all the other staff and grinning. I should have asked him about his new children / marriage, it was a poor show on my part. It’s difficult accepting that those feelings are real and therefore a somewhat reasonable reason for behaviour, or even a reason to not feel guilty. I’m not sure why guilt plays such a part, it’s similar to feeling like I’ve failed at social situations after e.g. organising and meeting up with my university friends for the first time in a few years. Good grief, and there I was saying I balk at millennial behaviour, look at this emotional exhibition I’ve just rendered haha! Testament to how warm a place this website is. It’s been my go-to place to be distracted by at work for almost ten years now.
Anyway point is it’s good to see that despite your severe anxiety you still engage in social pursuits, not to mention enjoying friends and family at xmas :)
Next year, I’ll strive to not load up on chores in the days leading up to it and burn myself out as much. I did manage to complete 2 short games, not the 10 I’d intended but still. Now my target is 100 games this year. I looked at my library/backlog/collection and decided it was time to make serious dents in it, as opposed to completing fewer than 5 in a year. So that’s 2 so far, as I completed them on Saturday and Sunday so they’re technically in the 2026 list.
Thank you very much for the appreciation and the kudos! I do my best to challenge myself to try new things ESPECIALLY when they’re scary to me. I set myself up for success though. I make sure that I have some place I can step away to decompress or the ability to just leave if needed. It also helps that it has been rewarding for me. I met my best friends because I pushed myself to go a trivia event in town
I think a lot of people let themselves believe that people care more than they do. I am CERTAINLY guilty of it. I feel like Millenials are the anxiety generation in general. I’m not smart enough to give a solid answer to why that is, but it certainly feels like it.