The original premise of this website back in 2021 when I first launched it was to be a platform for my brand of reviews of games and media related to science fiction and fantasy, as well as talking about life and fatherhood. After only a few months however I did take the site down as I lost interest in writing for it and documenting my life, thoughts and opinions.
Over the holiday season I got the itch to bring the site back, however, things have changed since SciFiDad was last on the internet. My child is older, I've had an existential crisis and have made a fairly large life change.
A large portion of my life was sacrifice. To keep my child and wife fed and safe. I did this by working jobs that I quite frankly found no joy in. Jobs that were hard on my mental and physical health. Most of you know what I'm talking about. Dead end manual labour jobs that give one benefit and one benefit only, they pay. Except the fact of the matter is they don't pay. They may give you money but at the end of the day your physical and mental health deteriorate and you realize that the whole thing has a shelf life. For me I also had to factor in the fact that I am chronically ill and have a substantially weaker and overall more damaged body and then add the damage from the job and I knew I was fast approaching my shelf life for physical labour. This all added up to a need for change.
I wasn't just a change I needed. I was headed down a dark path. I didn't see much in the way of a future for a man that had to somehow support a wife, who cannot work for her own health reasons and a child who obviously cannot work either. So what was I to do? What could I do except keep plodding down the path, break down, patch myself back together as best as I could and keep plodding?
Just months before writing this it seemed like it was my only way. There looked to be no light at the end the tunnel or perhaps more aptly put, no end of the tunnel in sight. This is when the existential crisis of my reality hit. Was this really it? Suffer, go home and use what little time I had to keep everyone at home happy and fed, go to bed and wake up and do it all over again? Day after day? Well it seemed like that's what capitalism prescribed, not just for me, but for millions. An endless grind to make somebody else rich, to add more zeroes to a bank account that doesn't need anymore zeroes. It was a dark time indeed. Mental health was at an all time low. I battled with this for years leading up to this point. I always concluded that I had no option, no choice. There had to be something though and I finally decided that in order to get out I had to make a risky wager.
I decided to return to academia and higher education. That is the gamble. Has it paid off? I don't know. Three months in is too early to tell. Though there are good signs. I'm overall less irritable, more interested in hobbies, such as this website and more relaxed as a father. The mental health struggles are still real but I feel like they are far more manageable. Suicidal ideation certainly isn't an issue anymore and while depression and obsessive compulsive disorder are certainly still the order of the day, they don't consume me anymore. My sleep pattern is slowly returning to an eight hour cycle rather than 10-10+ hours I was sleeping.
I'm supposing that the point of writing all this is probably for my own catharsis because I doubt anyone will read the article and if they do I doubt they will care. I'm not a celebrity, a youtuber or an influencer. I did try my hand at streaming and YouTubing in the past I found that it wasn't for me. For now I'm fine with being an unknown blogger. SciFiDad who talks about science fiction and fantasy video games. A guy who talks about the perils of everyday life, a geriatric college student who is learning new things at the age of 38 and most of all a father who is figuring out each new thing as it comes along. You're welcome to come along with me through all of it.
Till next time citizens of the galaxy,
SciFiDad