Hello everyone. Even though I said that I would be trying my best to not check the site for a while, I decided to try to not keep in contact with anyone and not mention if I’m online or not unless I really want to. I feel that this is one of those times. If you are sensitive to anything that relates to talking about mental health, please refrain from reading any further as there are mentions of that in this thread.
As most of you have realized, mental health is a thing. It exists. And like physical health, you should be taking care of it too. Like physical health, mental health can affect you in a lot of ways. It impacts on how you perform out in the world and how you think of yourself and the world around you, how you see it.
I myself have been dealing with bad mental health for at least 2 years now. I don’t know how it started, it just started going downhill until I realized, oh, my mental health is in the dumps. And unfortunately, I refuse any help that is offered because that’s who I unfortunately am.
I found WCO in December of 2020. The more I got comfortable with the site, the more I realized that the community here is awesome and I just really loved it here. But, while I never admitted it till now, I have serious jealousy issues for the little things. Like, I would get really mad and jealous when they announced a high rank and it was someone who had started roleplaying after I did. I always did my best not to show it but that’s how I felt and I would feel so sad because I didn’t get picked.
That was probably a sign that oh, I should take a break and try to work with myself and figure out why that happened. But like I said earlier, I refuse help, so that means help from myself. Another sign that I should have taken a break way earlier is the fact that my motivation left at such long periods and consisten periods of times. At times I would be forcing myself to write out posts even though I knew I didn’t have any motivation. That became an instant problem when I got picked to be a high rank.
A month into the position and I knew I was doing bad. I wasn’t being consistent with posts and I liked working behind the scenes a lot. But the thought that was going through my head was why would I leave the site if I like it too much, after I got something that I’ve always wanted? But then I received some news and I just quit. I told myself, no, I need to leave, my mental health is bad, really bad. While WCO isn’t the cause of the problem, it definitely helped with making the problem worse.
So I’m here right now, saying, take a break if you feel like you need it. If there’s a consistent sign of WCO feeling like a chore instead of a nice hobby, take a break. If you’re unsure if or when you’re going to come back, make an activity post with your characters and then take a break. If after a week or two you feel like you like the nice break and want to keep it going, do what you need to do, announce that you’re leaving if you want, and then go on your nice break. Try your best to forget about the site. I won’t promise you anything, but my hope is that if you do this you’ll end up being way happier and able to focus on your personal needs.
If you’re unsure if you need a break, think about it. Do you forcefully squeeze in a time in your day to log on everyday even if you’re busy? Do you not get things done because you feel like you have a duty to respond to your roleplays? Do you tell yourself, oh I’ll get to answering these roleplays tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. If you do experience these things, try to not log on for 2-3 days. If you notice that you feel happy because of the break, try taking a longer break to see if you feel better. If you’re unsure if you need a break even after this, try cutting down your time on the site. Try not logging in every other day and see what happens. You might discover things that you weren’t expecting.
Check in on yourself
