Stretching myself thin for Blaugust

So, this year, I didn’t get to post much for Blaugust. Between exams for university, my internship at a nearby newspaper, my streams, preparations for Gamescom, the actual event at Gamescom, transcribing a ton of interviews, and more.

I wanted to just briefly go over the reasons for it in a very tiny post: I have a problem.

So, my problem is that I stretch myself thin a lot. I try to do all the things all the time at the same time but I never actually find the time to do so. I spent five days at gamescom dealing with sleep deprivation, physical pain, chronic pain, a drained social battery, and despite all of that, I felt like I had the responsibility to keep going and push through it all to make those interviews and blog posts happening.

Similarly, I sacrificed my break during Gamescom because PR folks asked if I can squeeze in another interview. I could have said no but because of how much these folks did for me, it felt like I couldn’t, after all. It felt like there was this impossibly weight on my shoulders that got heavier whenever I mouthed “N” and it got lighter when I voiced “yes”.

There is no such power dynamic at play but it felt like it. I felt like I had to commit to it and do my best.

To that end, I’m a people pleaser and someone who hates to say “no” to things.

I’ve also spent a lot of time agonising over the Blaugust award designs to the point where someone else just took over and created something simple, good-looking and fairly stylish. Nice. But had I said from the get-go that I cannot do it, after all, this wouldn’t have happened. In my head, I couldn’t delegate this task after all because I already spent so much time working on it (sunk cost fallacy) but also because everyone else is also doing something and because I’m not doing enough.

In the end, I posted nowhere near enough blog posts compared to the 31 I wanted to go for this month. I gave up on the YouTube thing I had planned, too… and my social batteries were drained all months due to the many dates and work shifts I went on, to the point that I just couldn’t also read posts and write comments.

And that’s fine.

I learned my lesson, I think, and that lesson is to just say “no” more often.

That being the case, I’m happy I still got to write the 25 posts necessary to hit Diamond… I think that’s fine in and of itself, given that I can’t just have rainbow awards each year. Gotta make sure people understand that 31 posts in 31 days is hard to do, after all. Huge respects to anyone who made that, though. Good job.