So I wrote the below post back around Otakuthon last year. I never posted it or looked back on it because I feel like I wasn’t read to post it. Between that time and now, it’s been a roller coaster of it feeling like the right time, and it no longer feeling that way. After all the time, the only thing I’ve learned is that sometimes, things might not always feel like the right time.
But only thinking about doing something is the same as not doing it at all.
You can spend all your time wanting to do something or thinking about it, but not doing it because you weren’t ready, but in the end, it doesn’t matter if there’s not at least any proof of trying. In the last 6 months, I’ve felt I have changed and also felt like I made no progress.
I want to start getting into my blog again because, it sounds stupid, but I feel like I need a hobby. Hobby might not be the right word, but something to put my time into. But what about cosplay, you ask? They kind of intertwine. Ideally, trying to make time to updating my blog is pushing myself to work on cosplay without the time restraint or stress of having to finish things for a convention.
I find that in the past, I get really stressed out to finish things and end up short-cutting and often not actually finishing what I want to finish; I end up pulling all nighters and just being exhausted at conventions to even cosplay. That, or I end up hanging out with friends anyways and don’t put my priority towards my cosplays.
I’m hoping by disciplining myself to just work on things on a regular basis because I want to, will help me work on my time management, and not having to cut doing things properly.
As to not make this post super long winded, I included my original post I wrote last year, unedited. Half of me wants to read through it and delete half of it, but I think it’s good to know what I was thinking then and have some confirmation on the things I thought.
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Wow, I haven’t written an entire post for 2 years.
Without delving too much into it, I was in a bad place in my life.
I definitely have a wonderful supportive group of close friends. They knew on varying degrees what I was going through. I know I could always go to them if I needed to, but I didn’t want to. There were a multitude of reasons why. Some were justifiable. Some weren’t. However, it was reason enough to not want to out right say anything. Some reasons were pride, not wanting to be a burden, feeling like they wouldn’t know how to handle it, feeling like they wouldn’t understand, feeling like there was no point to talk about it, feeling like I needed to appear strong so they felt like they had a shoulder to fall back on. It was the same reasons for not wanting to talk to my parents about it as well.
Eventually bottling it up just got worse and I would have random bouts of agitation if I got too stressed and ended up developing anxiety and panic attacks. I would occasionally drop hints or say offhanded things implying what was wrong, not in hopes that someone would pick up on it and know what I was talking about, but because it was the only way I knew how to talk about it without outright saying anything. At some point I had just closed off to almost everyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to do anything.
I had lost my motivation and passion for cosplay, and it wasn’t even so much the cosplay than it was that I had lost my motivation and passion to create. I had eventually gotten in this vicious cycle that I pretty much only went to conventions to see friends, but would then get stressed that they would be too busy cosplaying with other friends to hang out with me. That, in turn, caused me to feel obligated to add a bunch of things to my cosplay plans just to keep myself busy, but instead made me feel overwhelmed and nothing would get done.
For a while I thought if I didn’t open up anymore, it also wouldn’t open up the chance for me to get hurt. Doing that within itself eventually hurt me because I had grown so detached from a lot of people.
I’m not sure where my breaking point to wanting to get better started. I can only relate it to the events leading up to it. Part of it was due to reconnecting with Canadian friends at Otakuthon who now seldom come to American conventions. I had forgotten how happy and cheerful that group was and it felt easy to kind of “throw my problems away,” so to speak. It felt inspiring and it wasn’t something I’ve felt in a very long time; I haven’t been that type of person in a very long time. Not to say that my current friends don’t make me happy already, but I had gotten into a rut in my general lifestyle that the change of pace definitely helped.
I can’t say I don’t still have bad days, and I also can’t say I’m even better. I can’t say that I won’t get back into a rut again. But 15% motivation is better than none.
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