Advanced Depressions & Disorders

By Way of Background: I have been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder ("MDD"). I've probably been struggling with this & other mental illness my whole life, but without a proper diagnosis until a couple years back.  Since then, I've been in therapy & feel like I have my life back under control. I also have physical disabilities, which will discuss further at some point.  My family has various diagnoses for things like Anxiety & OCD. (I hate OCD jokes - please refrain.)

Note: It is absolutely not my intent to mock people with mental illness, but rather to invite discussion by sharing my own struggles.  Anything I share under this tag will be my own personal views.

I know it's been quite some time since either a recent post, or a release of another episode of our podcast.  The truth is ... I am finding it exceedingly difficult to wrap my head around gaming in my vaguely post-apocalyptic fantasy AD&D world, while some very real apocalyptic events are going on in real time. 

I've been trying not to slip into a depressive state. It kind of takes all my spoons to work remotely, deal with the public when I am forced to do so (shopping for food, & things like licenses/stickers).  What little I have left has been spent collecting PDFs, reading, and trying to "plan" campaigns out, which I hope we will actually play at some point. 

I have been the opposite of social. 

Covid-19 has me maintaining as strict an isolation protocol as I can manage. I bought my family masks. I even made my own out of T-shirts until the orders of masks came in, so I could do the shopping.  When I do go outside, I immediately strip & take a shower, popping my clothes in the wash as I go.  If I don't do those things I have endless anxiety & can't sleep.  But ... the bills don't stop & the fridge won't fill itself. 

On top of that, the protests have made their presence known a few hundred feet from my house. The local stores still have the blockades left up. I am in a constant struggle with my dad to make him understand that black lives really do matter, this is a necessary part of a democracy, no the looters & protesters aren't the same thing, no I don't hate police - but gosh some of these guys need to not be cops. Dad was a cop, and one of the things he taught me was that bad cops will get good cops hurt or killed - but somehow he doesn't remember that lesson now. Protests are protected speech & they don't just arise in a vacuum.  They happen out of desperation & feeling like your voice isn't heard. 

But, I can't make him understand.  I may be mixed race, but I am also "white passing." I have a Caucasian last name, and unless I spend another summer in Mexico, there is little chance that my skin will turn coppery brown again.  I can't be out in the sun much anyway so my complexion can only be described as "vampiric pale."  

While, that hasn't stopped me from encountering my own kinds of bigotry & discrimination, I also recognize that it is orders of magnitude removed from what other people of color go through on a daily basis.  I can walk down the street & (mostly) not get harassed.  I can go to work, and not have to feel like I have to justify everything I do because it's always "not good enough."  And that's without even dealing with the issue of violence & disproportionate treatment in the system. 

At this point, my dad would try to change the subject.  I can already imagine some of the people who read this saying, "why do you have to bring politics into gaming?"  In truth, ... I few places in the US where politics doesn't reach. My student loans are suddenly a political thing. My daughter's healthcare & education are a political thing. My own mental & physical health is a political thing. Trying to bow out of the discussion is just paving the way for worse things to follow. I'm not here to tell you which way to think, but damn if some of you better start thinking about these things a lot deeper.

On to the Gaming:

I have been thinking of future plans.

• I would like to get the podcast going again, & want to work out a schedule with my partner to get some regular gaming in. 
• I want to do a Romeo & Juliet inspired game using Green Ronin's Chronicle System, used in the Song of Ice & Fire rpg ("SIFRP"). One of the themes I discussed in the podcast was using the "wrong" system to sometimes play a game. SIFRP seemed like a largely ignored & much maligned system. I enjoyed the heck out of the quickstart, and I've gotten a copy of the Pocket Edition recently. I can see where people are saying the flaws in the system are ... and I've been coming up with ways to houserule around them.  We won't be using Westeros, but more of Shakespeare's weird "Sorta Italy" from the play, with some fantasy elements because I like that low magic fantasy feeling from ASoIaF.This is made difficult by the fact that SIFRP has seemingly disappeared entirely from Drivethru & Green Ronin's store. 
  
• I also want to start gaming in D&D 5e with my kid.  That will be a challenge in itself, but I might not podcast that.  It'll be more of a blog thing.  The challenge there will be more how to handle the issue of miniatures & my ideas of "set design" for representing dungeons & rooms. 
• I want to start sculpting again. 
• I want to do some art for these games & for the blog again. 
• My AD&D 2e pseudo Wacken (more Fantasy Wacken Inspired Post Apocalypse Inspired game set as an excuse to let me read up on the region & attempt to learn German), is put on hold while we jump to other systems & campaigns. 
  

The gist of it is ... I have to stay busy.  Otherwise it's far too easy to just slip into a depressive state and just get nothing done at all.