Peter "Sci" Turpin

I should start using these journals again.

Social media digests no longer repost here, as the plugins I used are now broken. And resetting them currently tries to repost my entire 35k Twitter history in one go. More importantly though, when I made the paranoid choice years ago to stop using my journals for personal things I removed the driving force for using them at all. I lost my primary outlet, and the friends I had were not using the other channels I had somehow expected they would. I cut myself off.

Things have not been going so well. The last few months in particular. I hit a sort of breaking-point regarding my personal identity and business stuff.

Firstly, "the business" isn't earning me anything. At best, it pays for itself. And I've gotten into the harmful mindset that if something isn't working, it means I haven't been sacrificing enough.
The business is broken, and it's taken me breaking too to realise it.

That I've mentioned it first is also a symptom of the other problem. I am utterly conflated with it. I am no longer a person, but an amblatory state of self-employment. It's all people ask me about, and all I am able to talk about. I have in a very fundemental way lost myself.

Since this realisation, I've thankfully had support from a few people who've previously been distant enough not to be pushed away by my change into this, but been close enough to remind me of who I used to be.

I have a little money in the bank right now. Only a couple of hundred, but no debts. It's enough to float along and take advantage of a few cheap train fares. Get myself social again.

I've closed to new orders while I work out how to handle the business stuff. Closing up entirely is an option, but I'd rather not let all the skills, equipment and good-will I've accumulated go to waste.

Primarily though I'm trying to clear-decks. Clear everything off my to-do lists. I've accumulated far too many things that are weighing me down in a swamp of incompletion, sapping any momments of free time into a state of "I should do that rather than waste time relaxing".

And relaxing is what I'm trying to do. I'm letting myself play games, go out, see people, just chat. I hope I might even find the will to read, write and draw again too. Reminding myself of my prior strengths has helped me lay a mental path of where I want to find my way back to, if back is really the word.

When I said I was lost, this is what I meant. I'm trying to remember the person I was, and get back to that sort of person. Maybe stronger, better, if I can.

I'm exhausted a lot right now. I can currently manage 3-4 tasks a day before I'm spent. Things are improving a little though.

I'll try to update with my current plans soon.