Constantly Wound Up

Recently, I remotely attended an event called Summer Games Done Quick.  It's basically a convention for a subset of video game players, and it raises money for charity.  Literally, every penny they raised this time went to Doctors Without Borders.  (They raised a lot of pennies, I'll get to that later.)

I found myself in kind of an interesting mental state during the event, so I thought I'd discuss it a bit.

So, this convention was unlike most of the ones I've attended, in that it more or less had no breaks.  First, it was literally a 24 hour a day event.  There was always something happening.  Most conventions have events until dinner time, and then you're done for the day.  But also, when you attend a convention in person, you have to tend to your physical needs, like using the bathroom, eating, etc.  Because you're away from home, these things take time, which you would use to mentally unwind a bit.  

There was none of that during this virtual event.  You could take the event with you to the bathroom and to the dinner table.  You probably SHOULDN'T, as I was to learn, but you could.  I normally don't watch much TV, or even livestreams, but I made an exception for this event.  

The results were interesting.  I experienced a kind of mental static, a distracting hum of sorts, when I wasn't immediately listening to the event or doing something else on my computer.  This was particularly obvious after watching for a couple hours straight.  I'd take off my headset to go to the bathroom and hear it.  Or maybe feel it, I'm not really sure.  The hum came with brain fog, reduced mental capabilities, and snappishness, though both of those might also be because I didn't sleep terribly well.

Besides the unusual schedule, where someone was always playing something, my brain also seemed wired, like it only slept reluctantly.  When I woke up, I was near-immediately awake, and usually only after 6 hours or so.  Combined with the weirdness of my bedtimes (sometimes after 2am), it was... not a healthy situation.  

That's possibly why I got sick with a cold... though I'd be more inclined to say I probably already had the cold and the unhealthiness of my sleep schedule simply exacerbated my symptoms.

In addition to the cold virus, I got a lot of exposure to various kinds of people and various kinds of video games.  It was pretty cool to see so many gender non-binary people.  There were various guys with long hair, people who specified their pronouns before starting their speedruns, and people who presented as neither male nor female or some mix of both.  And of course, there were people of color and people from other countries represented in this mostly-US event.  

I think next year I'm going to have to very selective about what I watch.  It was really fun to see a lot of the things, but I don't think I want to be this tired or this sick again in January, when the event goes again.  I didn't cancel any of my regular life events, but I still became this tired and sleep-deprived, so something definitely needs to change for next time.

It was a really successful run this time, though.  The previous record for a Games Done Quick drive was $2.2 million, and this year they got over $3 million, all of which went directly to Doctors Without Borders.  Seeing everyone get so jazzed up at the live event was kind of awesome, although it made me very glad I wasn't there due to the sheer noise levels.  People were VERY happy, and VERY loud.

It's taken me a few days to get back to normal.  I might not quite be there yet, even now, honestly.  There's at least some truth to "don't watch TV for hours, it's bad for you."  Still, most of my symptoms are cold symptoms now, I think.  The static's gone, and I'm less crabbity and grumpy.  Hopefully soon the cold will go away and I can get entirely back to the usual life.