Almost Missed It!

    "How do you keep doing this?" he said. "Keep going, when everything is so horrible?"
    Horrible. Was that what life was? I had never put a word to it. Pain had a way of breaking time down. I thought about the next minute, the next hour. There wasn't enough space in my mind to put all those pieces together, to find words to summarize the whole of it. But the "keep going" part, I knew the words for.
    "Find another reason to go on," I said. "It doesn't have to be a good one, or a noble one. It just has to be a reason."

~Carve the Mark (Veronica Roth) ...sorry, I forgot to note down the page number.

I had an appointment today out of town, which meant spending 4 hours on a 15min appointment, to account for bus times. I'd planned on sleeping as late as I could and then getting up and ready, leaving for the appointment, and coming home and doing things.

I woke up around 6:50am, unable to sleep again, and with a dehydration headache (the only downside to winter). So, I did what any sensible person would do. I got up, made breakfast (and drank plenty of water!) and then played video games until I had to get ready to leave.

Unfortunately, this meant that I was really tired by the time I got home, so I did a little bit of stuff and then had a nap, first setting an alarm to give me enough time to do things before I had people over tonight.

I slept right through that alarm, and for another 45min. No longer relaxing get-ready-whenever time, but I was running distinctly behind.

Fortunately, my friends were very understanding and allowed me to finish my baking while they sat and chatted and worked on their characters (D&D, I'm the DM).

The session went well, despite me feeling completely unprepared. I love storytelling (as you may have guessed), and I have a story I want people to go through, but I'm probably the least experienced roleplayer in the group, so game mechanics were a bit clunky.

People left, I wrote up notes to remind myself of what's happened, and now here I am. My first late night blog post! (Aside from the suicide one, but that one was a bonus weekend post. This is a regular weekday post.)



Basically, what I think I'm getting at here is that today was a day of nothing going quite according to plan, and me having to force myself to adapt and keep going. Had this happened two years ago, I'd've been a complete wreck, likely not even being able to handle being a DM, and not trusting myself with such a big responsibility again for a long time.

The changes were subtle, and painful, but I wasn't a wreck today. In fact, I enjoyed myself. I felt a bit flustered at times, and apologized to people around me, and they seemed to be genuinely okay with it, and I was therefore able to relax and reduce the pressure on myself, enough so that I could enjoy myself and my friends.

Change takes time, and work. It doesn't always seem likely, or even possible. But then, one day, you get to look back and see how far you've come. Even baby steps add up.

Change happens when you put in the effort. When you take whatever steps you can handle. When you keep pushing forward against all odds. You just need to find your reason to keep going.