First off, a warning: this is a lot of text. It’s all praise, I couldn’t find a single qualm with Shit Sucks, so please don’t feel worried that this is a critique or something. But, because what you created had a lot of written content, I had a lot of reactions to it. I tried to limit what I shared, but as I read I had lots of connections to what you wrote, so I included many of them here. You can ignore all of this or whatever :D I also wrote this as I went, so I’m sorry if the flow of it is wrong or repetitive.
Right off the bat, my brain was like: “I need to steal the idea of giving an option that avoids reading most of what I wrote because I, too, am very verbose!” 😅 And speaking of verbose, writing 15 pages in 72 hours that you actually edit and polish is a LOT, let alone the content.
I also love how many “do this awesome thing, and this is why it’s so awesome, but if you can’t, you can do this.” I aim for that in my work too, and you do it so fluidly. There’s a grasp on the mood you’re setting in every section that works really well. There’s also a grasp on the emotions and feelings people should feel, and the intention behind things: drinking in a moment, seeking out creativity, feeling like part of the world, finding peace and comfort…
Also, in all transparency, I know you were worried at one point about this not being considered a game. I actually messaged you to say that, after the die roll at the beginning and the scene-setting, it qualified 100% to me. I messaged that to you on Discord and then found, on page 6, that you specifically say that “dice throws are, I am told, an almost ubiquitous convention of the genre” and yeah, you got me 😅 If anyone else reads this and has read/does read Ether’s work here, please know that they 100% got me here with absolute prescience 🤣🤣🤣
As a stoic, one of their biggest things is “we can’t control what happens in life, but we can control how we react.” It’s almost exactly what you wrote about here, and (essentially?) say it’s BS. I’ve always worried when I shared that, because there are a zillion circumstances that I can think of where, even if such guidance would help people, it’s ridiculous to expect people to be able to do it. If my tooth hurts so much that I wanna die and my head is like “just imagine the pain as a reminder you’re alive,” my response would be VERY negative and certainly not helpful… So, later, when you write that you CAN “realize you’re thinking something that isn’t serving you…” and guide people to work on that, I feel like that captures it perfectly. It’s something I’ve struggled to capture for a long time now, myself. And I do it sometimes! Like these days, I no longer think about how I SHOULD accomplish [x] to feel valid for existing. Now I literally compare my accomplishments to “did I accomplish enough to make it worth not playing video games all day instead?” And if my answer is “yes” (a ridiculously easy bar) then I won that day!
Anyway, I feel like I could write a whole essay celebrating what you wrote here and the things I agree with. I haven’t seen anything I disagree with, many of which are said in ways that hit home as well for me as any “productivity” expert would, and I put that word in quotations because the ones I pay attention to have learned to focus on self-care, self-growth, making life fun, and celebrating what you accomplish vs “grind grind grind.”
This is fantastic, and I love it. I plan to utilize this when I’m spiraling into depression, when those first signs hit and I’m trying to resist giving into it or becoming fully submerged. In fact, this has made me want to create a game where you’re a lighthouse keeper, feeling obligated to help others while wanting desperately to go and explore. But you feel unsafe outside of the lighthouse, so you often retreat back to it and blame your obligations for it. A lot of that comes directly from your creation here (how safe spaces are made to be retreated to without shame, loving yourself, the “taking stock” questions, etc).
I do think that you’d benefit from a form, even if it’s primarily useful after reading it all, that’s like a “worksheet” of all of the activities and questions and such so you can easily access them when needed. As you said, you didn’t have the time to do that yet (again, writing 15 pages in 72 hours is a LOT already, let alone coming up with the ideas, polishing the writing so much, etc.), but I really hope you continue to perfect this. And continue creating work like this. It’s so powerful, and when you feel any impostor syndrome or whatever, please know that it’s of great benefit to me and certainly others, too!
PS: you mentioned struggling with rest. I did too. Most of overcoming that came from a LONG time of Angel telling me I deserve to rest, reinforcing that when things get bad, I can just take the day to play video games or something. It eventually worked. But another, much smaller, part of it is a stoic quote. I can’t remember it of course lol, or even find it, but the premise is: if you overwork yourself, you’re harming yourself, and that’s actually VERY BAD because you’re robbing the world of a future where you HAVEN’T harmed yourself with overwork, with burnout, etc. So not only is burning out bad for you, it’s bad for the world. Since I’m very “I owe the world”-centric, things like that help me a lot. Maybe that’ll help you too, maybe it means nothing lol (especially since it seems your struggles with relaxation are very different from mine), but it helped me.
- ✨Beth