The past two years have been something of a wake-up call for me regarding how I view my own work. Don’t get me wrong, I still think that the links, discussions and representation of mental health in games, be they virtual, tabletop or imaginary, are more and more impactful as mental health conditions become less demonised in the public media. With video games continuing to dominate the entertainment industry, there are great opportunities to educate the masses using the gaming medium but not many developers grab hold of this chance, partly due to fear of misrepresentation and partly due to it not being a popular topic when it comes to sales figures.
However, my own motivation has been the biggest obstacle in producing the work that raises awareness of these issues and shines a light on the hidden facets of some of our favourite games. This lack of motivation has had an impact on all aspects of Mind Games – both in article and podcast format. So, I ask you – what is motivation? The English Dictionary defines motivation as:
“The willingness to do something, or something that causes such willingness.”
It’s a decent summary but a very holistic one. To understand better, you must look at the contributing factors that make up motivation itself. To me, it is:
“A combination of; excitement towards the task, general energy levels, your own ranking/opinion of your skillset in relation to the task at hand, and, if applicable, deadlines/time constraints.”
Energy levels are easy to mitigate for. You can manage them by planning around your deadlines, social engagements, family events, romantic opportunities, childcare, sickness and self-care breaks. By ensuring these cross over as little as possible, you can allow yourself a moment to breathe amidst the madness that is daily life. An example of somewhat bad management of energy levels, can be seen in my own life. Recently, I had a very busy eight days of ten to twelve hours of continuous meetings and strict deadlines to complete within these sessions. Shortly after completing this long stretch, I immediately fell ill and have spent the last few days building up my energy again, mostly by sleeping, switching off my brain and demanding cuddles from my cats (they don’t pay rent after all).
Some folks try to boost their energy levels using various stimulants, like the endless amounts of Monster Energy that my friend drinks, or the obscene amount of coffee that I drank to get myself through my A Levels. Seriously, I drank so much coffee that looking back at it, I can pinpoint where coffee stopped having a serious impact on my energy levels. I passed my exams though, so… worth it? It does remind me of people who eat so much of something, they develop an intolerance to it.
However, all the caffeine in the universe cannot counter the low-energy and low-mood that depression can randomly decide to bestow upon you. Popular media displays these “dark days” as some cinematic timelapse of a depressed young woman, locked away for weeks on end (Looking at you Twilight). It’s waking up exhausted after ten hours of sleep, struggling with simple self-care like brushing your hair, and often, plastering on a fake smile to avoid enquiries from well-meaning coworkers and friends. You put on a mask because you cannot explain to everyone who asks that no, it’s not physical exhaustion, I don’t just need to sleep earlier in the evenings, it’s an exhaustion in my very soul that I do battle with every single day, an ongoing war of attrition that is whittling away at the core of your being until eventually, you break.
Deadlines and time constraints are something of a double-edged sword when it comes to motivation. Knowing that you have a finite timeframe to complete your task, can encourage (or force) productivity, heck, we all felt a little glee about finishing an exam earlier than others and just getting to stroll on out the exam hall into the sunshine. However, the involvement of others and their own deadlines into the process, can be a nasty train of thought to travel down. In the workplace, you are a cog in the machine. I don’t mean that as an insult, I mean that literally. Chances are, that important task you are struggling to complete, was originally reliant on someone else completing their task. And someone else’s task will be reliant on you completing your task. If one cog is delayed or fails to deliver, it has a ripple effect that ends up impacting more people than you’d dare to imagine.
When you extrapolate that thought out from just your team in particular, to the organisation as a whole, it becomes almost paralyzing to comprehend. Suddenly, your work goes from a lone brick in a pile, to a load-bearing wall holding up the towering skyscraper that is your organisation’s architecture. For example, 5,000 people are hired by my workplace. From that, many of them have families of their own, friends, pets, all that rely on them for support. On a darker day in my head, the idea of missing a deadline, or taking an extra week to really polish a project, snowballs further and further until suddenly, I am responsible for every sin committed by mankind since the beginning of time.
My mind is convinced of this, despite the fact that I am a twenty four year-old introvert whose greatest claim to fame is making compilations and being sarcastic on the internet. Then again, my year-group in school did vote me “Most Likely To Conquer The World”, so maybe they knew something that I didn’t.
Mind Games started as, and will most likely remain, a solo project. The TTRPG content that I’ve expanded into with Dice and Suffering, does feature my friends in their wonderful roles as players with whacky, well written characters (even if they’re a dragonborn in assless chaps), but literally everything else that makes up Mind Games is done by me. To give you an idea, here’s a list of things that I’m in charge of, that I can think of, although I’m sure there’s more I’ve forgotten:
Website maintenance, claiming the URL, website security, social media, article writing, search engine optimisation, podcast recording, editing, publishing, descriptions, supporting image sourcing, comment moderation, liasing with game developers, liasing with mental health charities and designing new sections to the site – including adjusting the source code itself where needed.
I do all of this, for free. I do this as a labour of love, because video games are such an integral part of my life and my mental health conditions are here to stay, and I never want someone to feel alone when I can make a difference in their life. I do this, despite my full-time job, part-time masters degree study, TTRPG/creative writing ideas, the aforementioned compilations/sarcasm and myriad of other hobbies/social obligations. Even if my motivation levels were through the roof, I wouldn’t always have the time to act on them. I think accepting this fact, is something that’s taken the last two years to really sink in.
I’m not giving up. That’s not what I am trying to get across here.
Throughout the history of Mind Games, I’ve been setting myself unrealistic goals in terms of the content that I produce. Although in the short-term they are reasonable, in the long-term they are not sustainable unless I somehow never need to sleep ever again. I keep making choices as if I am a cog in a machine, with others to contribute and pick up the slack when I fall down, but it’s just me and I can’t do everything – a fact that I’ve always struggled to accept. When I’ve failed in the past, my self-esteem and love for what I do on Mind Games tends to take a big hit. This leads to a negative spiral of failure and my work suffers for it.
So, I hope going forward I can make better goals, nourish that spark of joy and excitement that has kept Mind Games going all this time, and hopefully, start producing stuff that I’m proud of again.
The aim from now on, is going to be:
- At least one article per month
- At least one Dice and Suffering episode per month (as long as I have an active campaign ongoing!)
Anything in addition to these is a bonus, not a requirement or a demand that I’m making of myself.
I hope you’ll stick around for it, as I pick myself up off the ground again and keep trucking on.
Be kind to yourselves,
CaitlinRC.