An Office, a Water Bottle, and Crippling Anxiety

You wake up in the middle of the night after a night out drinking too much and realize you’re absolutely parched. You reach for the water bottle on your bedside table and are hit with a horrifying discovery: the bottle’s empty. What to do? The kitchen tap looks so incredibly far. Those few feet might as well be a miles right now. You’re still half drunk, yet half hungover already; you have a Plague Inc. deadly combo of headache and nausea, and everything is shit. So, you get pissed at your former self for not refilling the bottle, and anticipate how pissed your future self will be for not simply getting up now, yet… you go back to sleep. Against all better judgment, you just go back to sleep, clicking the snooze button on all current negative feelings, because no matter how thirsty you are, you just don’t think you can manage getting up.

When Everything is Shit

I’ve been in this situation far too often. Not just because I have ADHD and get drunk a lot (don’t tell my mum I have ADHD), but also in a metaphorical sense — or, to be exact, an allegorical one. I am great at postponing and an absolute master at flaking out. The only consistent thing in my life is my Duolingo streak, and that’s only because that green owl has me hostage (834 days and counting…. send help).

Anxiety can come in many forms (tag yourself: I’m the paralyzing one), and for me personally, anxiety has never prompted me to do things. There are people who get urgency from pressure and anxiety, who’ll be overprepared and early to meetings because they feel an inner need to. It makes them refill the bottle when it’s not even half empty. That comes with its own problems, of course, but I can’t relate.

My anxiety? It makes me go back to sleep. Every single time. Or rather, it keeps me in bed, frozen, attempting to sleep, and failing. Overthinking every single life choice that led to this moment. Imagining the worst possibilities for the next day, no matter how insanely unlikely they are. Trying to get my mind off it all, thinking of a cool TV show instead, only to automatically drift back to those same annoying thoughts before I even realize I did it. Until my alarm is suddenly ringing, splitting open a painful crack across my head. And I haven’t slept. And I’m still thirsty. And I still can’t get up. And everything is shit™.

You Gotta Do it Everyday — That’s the Hard Part

What I’m trying to say with this metaphor (it’s an allegory!) is that this feeling of not being able to just go and do what I need has caused me to miss out on so many things I wanted to do. It has made me skip work in the past. Parties. Classes. Hangouts. Networking events. All because I thought “I can’t do it, I’m not able to”, and froze.

Last week, I once again woke up at 5am, thirsty. Half drunk and half hungover. A whole day of work ahead of me in just a few hours. However, the weirdest thing happened: I got up. I filled my water bottle and drank from it. I washed my face. Then I started ironing the shirt I wanted to wear to work that day.

Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those advice pieces where I tell you your life will be fixed if you wake up at 5am every day and drown your face in ice. I’m also not advocating the handling burning-hot objects when you’re — albeit only partly — drunk. It was more of a revelation, a eureka moment. And with no bathtub, because I’m more practical than Archimedes, thank you very much.

Whenever people ask me what my favourite part of DunDev is, I always talk about having an office space. After years of working remotely, it’s such a godsend to be able to make fun of Alex and Phillip right to their faces instead of doing it through a computer screen — jokes aside, I will eventually talk about the differences between remote and office working for game development in a future post, stay tuned. That being said, it’s not lost on me how surprising this answer is, considering that having an office space requires one of my least favourite things in the world: waking up at an ungodly hour (sanity check: 7am) and getting out of bed to leave the house. That is the moment my I can’t do it voice is at its loudest. So why would I like it?

But it Does Get Easier

My time in Dundee hasn’t been free of that voice. I had days when I was late to work because of it. I even had a day when I didn’t show up to work at all because of it. Yet I found myself changing without really noticing as the days went by. I started adapting my habits to accommodate the objective. I began choosing my outfit and preparing my bag the evening before — an achievement I proudly share with many nine-year-olds around the world. Alex and Phillip kept a seat for me at breakfast. I made peace with the fact that leaving the house without cleaning the dishes is fine sometimes. I stopped caring about the still-visible wrinkles in my ironed shirts.

The weeks passed, and wouldn’t you know, it got better. Over my last few days here, I was never even late (well, maybe I was five minutes late, but by Italian standards, that’s basically early). Doing it once, doing it twice, I eventually realized: well, shit, I’m doing it. And if I could do it yesterday, and the day before, why shouldn’t I be able to do it today?

I don’t think there’s a universe where waking up at 7am doesn’t feel like a chore for me. I also don’t expect to win over that voice every single day from now on — not even my Duolingo streak is that good. Despite all that, there’s a prideful comfort in knowing I’ve won so often. It’s like going into a new job with a full portfolio of successful work experience. It might still be nerve-wracking, but you know you have the skillset for it. I can now talk back to that voice with a confidence I didn’t have before.

Waking up in the middle of the night thirsty and half drunk might just be an inevitability of my being. Yet, maybe next time I’ll reach out to my side and find a half-full bottle on my bedside table. Worst case scenario? Even if the bottle’s empty and that voice calls for me again, I now know that I am capable of getting up and getting what I want.

Thank you for reading my ramblings, I did actually write this at 5am after waking up from a night out… I promise the next post will focus more on game dev.

Drink your water, folks, see youse next time!

Allie

allie@mvgiestudios.com