Let's be reckless
2023 really did a number on me.
The Welfare office demanded that I take career consulting appointments that kept me occupied throughout the summer, which made keeping a steady schedule for videogame related work incredibly tricky. I had weeks where I didn’t touch any of my games (Virtue’s Heaven was on a hiatus anyway, but I also had other things cooking along) and by late August, I felt miserable.
Since I was sort of forced to be out and about more often, I started to notice how exhausting it is for me to be among other human beings. Even though the sessions only lasted an hour and they weren’t that far from where I lived, the days where I had a consultancy appointment still completely drained me.
August was also the Month where some things happened in the local chapter leadership of the political party I’m a member of, that completely destroyed my trust in that leadership. In general, 2023 was the year where I realised that I just hate Germany, especially those parts that claim to be on the progressive side of things. You just have to look at how cowardly supposedly progressive parties dance around the fact that Israel is currently in the process of levelling the most densely populated place on Earth. I mean, I get it to a degree. It’s hard to navigate this stuff when you’re German and I’ve seen a lot of people over the years fall ass backwards into right-wing conspiracy theories, when they’re trying to be anti-imperialist. But there are some very public statements being made by Israel’s Government that very clearly state their intentions and yet everyone here keeps pretending that what’s going on down there is just a normal state doing self-defence and not blatant ethnic cleansing.
As much as my ADHD medication helps me, so far it hasn’t really helped me much with feeling less stressed out when I’m in a place with other people, especially strangers. That makes doing things like political activism, or organising really hard for me, because it ruins me mentally. On the other hand, this entire world is spiralling into misery with each passing day and I don’t see anyone in my direct vicinity who’s even remotely equipped to do the kind of work that should be done and I think this is where a lot of my frustration comes from. I cannot do this kind of work and currently have no idea what else I might be able to do, so I have to rely on other people to do the work, and no one does it. That leaves me just flailing around most of the time, which isn’t very useful either.
The interesting part about this year as well is that I probably felt more isolated this year then I ever did during the Covid lockdowns 2020 and 2021. I had so many experiences this year, where I just realised that my life and who I am is just fundamentally different from those of a lot of people. I’m trying my best to find a place for myself, but it feels that at every step the rest of the world tells me that it doesn’t really seem to have room for me. It’s actually quite fascinating that even with the support of an individual coach, a very open-minded approach and a lot of applications, I still haven’t even managed to get an interview for any of the Jobs that I applied for this year. So I lost trust in the people who I thought might be fighting for the same thing I want to fight for, things keep getting worse on a global scale, and the world around me keeps telling me that what I can do and who I am has little to no value. Sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it?
One of the Books I read over the course of 2022 and 2023 was “Revenge Capitalism” by Max Haiven. It deeply affected the way I look at how Capitalism functions and the function of the state as an organ of sanctioned preemptive revenge. However, there are two quotes that I drew a lot of strength from as I slowly clawed myself out of this mental hole I found myself in late Summe
- Revenge is the reckless determination that what you love has value in a world where it is rendered worthless.
- When you live in someone else’s Utopia, all you are left with is revenge.
We all exist in a world that only values us in regards to how much we’re able to contribute to Capitalism’s continued existence. Some can navigate this fact better than others, for numerous reasons, but at the end of the day, we are all judged by how much “Value” we can contribute to the grand idea of maximising profit. For those of us, who have been pushed aside by Capitalism, insisting on the fact that our lives and our wishes have value, even if we are the only people who believe that, is an act of resistance. Maybe it’s futile in the grand scheme of things, after all, we cannot overcome Capitalism on our own, but during the latter half of this year, I drew a lot of strength from this idea.
I frankly don’t have a lot of concrete things that give me reason for optimism next year. It’s very likely that at some point I’ll release Virtue’s Heaven (I hope I do, I have ideas for future games I need to get to) and that might bring some money, but it won’t be enough to get me out of poverty. Will I find a job? Well, 2024 marks the tenth year since I graduated University and in that time I can count the number of interview invites that I got on two hands and the one (part-time) job that I did get, completely obliterated me in 2018. So as much as I’m going to keep pushing towards something better for myself and hopefully for those around me, I don’t think that much will change. But I’ll still try, because fundamentally I do believe that what I love has value, even when no one else seems to share that belief.
If I’m going to do one thing in 2024, then it’s to keep insisting that what I love has value, even when the rest of the world deems it worthless.