B told me to try journaling
In late 2024, I had brunch with a friend I met through my husband. What I thought would be a mildly uncomfortable solo brunch date ended up being enlightening and fun—but still, somehow, uncomfortable.
Truthfully, I’d been having a rough few weeks, so it shouldn’t have surprised me that when B asked how I was doing, what I was up to—all those usual questions when people are still getting to know each other—I reacted a bit viscerally. I’m an emotional person, maybe more so now as I grow older. I’d also had a mimosa.
And how was I doing? I wondered. Not very well. At some point in the year, I’d fallen into a pretty dark rut. I’d finished my novel the year before, and told myself I needed a well-earned break. I definitely did, but without intending to, an entire year passed, and the “break” I’d intended ended up becoming more of a “hiatus”. When I realized this, I tried to return to the pages, get back into the notorious 2023 groove, but was unsuccessful. It was as if I’d been temporarily possessed by the Ghost of Writer’s Past, and would never achieve something of that like again.
Instead, I spent 2024 allotting over a thousand hours to playing video games. I’ve always enjoyed games, especially story-forward ones. This is much aligned with my love of reading novels. If the game has a good story and not-too-intense combat, I was in. Never, never had I played video games as obsessively as I did this past year. In the fluorescent, beaming light of 2025, I recognize how I spent most of 2024 hyperfixating on whatever stories I could get my hands on. I’d emptied myself out finishing a novel in less than six months, but something in me, something craved, needed the familiar and safe shape of a plot.
The stories I played through—Baldur’s Gate 3, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Horizon Zero Dawn—were harbors for my tired mind, they fed my desire to explore new worlds and live free of my worldly limitations. My marriage was going through a difficult patch, I lacked a proper community in the city I lived in, and I tried to limit my spending to avoid furthering our debt. When I roleplayed in these games, I felt so many things: excitement, desire, vulnerability; all emotions I sought when I read or when I wrote my own stories.
When B asked me what I had been up to, I felt viscerally embarrassed that my answer was “playing video games”. What was I, a fucking teenager? I wondered how I would react if a friend responded in this way, how my old self might recoil and be unable to hide the secondhand cringe. I had no excuses, after all, this had been a self-imposed exile of sorts.
The conversation quickly spiraled downward from there, and when I say downward, I mean that the more we spoke, the more I felt like crying. Had I ever gone to therapy? B asked me, to which I said, No, I never thought I needed it. B’s expression could’ve cut through steel. Everyone needs therapy, their smile said. And I, a thousand hours of video gaming into 2024, an election just lost to fascism, definitely needed fucking therapy.
B told me one of the first things their therapist suggested was writing a daily journal entry, something I’ve tried and hated several times in the past. As a writer, it was only logical that I’d enjoy such a practice, no? No, how self-centered to dedicate pages upon pages of my feelings. But it’s cathartic, B argued. You can’t compartmentalize feelings you’ve released into the universe. And man do I love to compartmentalize. I’ve always been so good at it too, or told myself I was.
If 2024 showed me anything, it’s that my abilities have limits. I am not as good at everything as I think I am. I am not infallible though I love to think and say I am. I am wrong. I’ve been so fucking wrong.
