“Most nights I feel that I’m not enough
I’ve had my share of Monday mornings where can’t get up
When hope is lost and I come undone”
Lewis Capaldi – Survive
Happy New Year! I know I’m technically a little early with this post, but if you know me at all, you know how that goes. I wanted to get this posted before the year fully closed its door. This isn’t really a year in review so much as it is a check in. A “how I’m feeling now” post. If you’ve been around here long enough, you know those tend to be my thing. So this post is not a clean wrap up or a highlight reel. It’s a snapshot of where I actually am. Fair warning, it’s a long one, so settle in.
2025 was a good year. It really was. There were moments and memories I never would have imagined for myself, things I’ll carry with me for a long time (you can find them here). There were highlights and bright spots and experiences that stretched me in ways I’m grateful for (and here). It was also a long year. A hard one in places. I made mistakes. I fucked things up plenty of times. I learned a lot, sometimes in the gentle way and sometimes the painful way. I’ve felt on top of the world and I’ve felt about as low as I can remember. Both things can be true at the same time.
Now onto the post, it’s a long one so buckle in. I would say it’s a fact that most people love clean narratives. The comeback story. The redemption arc. The moment where everything finally makes sense and the weight lifts and you get to say, see, I made it. I don’t think that’s how surviving actually feels for a lot of us. For some of us, surviving isn’t a turning point. It’s a pattern. It’s a series of ordinary days where you wake up and decide, again, to show up. Not because you feel hopeful, but because leaving feels heavier.
Before I go any further, I need to say something quickly. I’ve been blogging (if we want to call it that, sometimes it’s just me rambling honestly) for over fourteen years now, which still feels strange to say out loud. That’s a long time to keep opening yourself up in public, especially as the landscape shifts and attention spans shrink in this era of shorts and reels. There were years where this space felt alive and reciprocal, where conversations spilled out beyond the post itself (2016, 2022, & 2023 for sure). There were other years where it felt like a quiet room I kept returning to because it was familiar (here’s looking at you 2017 and 2018), not because it was inspiring. Sponsored posts came and went. Collaborations faded. What stayed was the need to put words somewhere before they swallowed me whole.
I’ve said before that I might be finished writing here, and usually that just meant I needed a break. Sometimes a short one, sometimes not. This time feels different. Not like quitting exactly, more like standing at the edge of something and not knowing if there are more chapters to write. Maybe there are. Maybe there aren’t. These pages already hold a lot of memories and probably more words than necessary. But that’s always been me.
Tonight isn’t meant to entertain or impress. I’ve been struggling lately and this needs to exist somewhere outside of my brain. Writing like this isn’t about being seen, it’s about not letting the weight turn inward and harden into something sharper. You know that if you’ve been here at any point before today. Not every day in real life, Second Life, or World of Warcraft (you know I had to get WoW in there too) is supposed to be perfect. Some days are just about endurance. You wake up already worn down, not always from one big thing, though that can happen too, but from an accumulation of things. Weeks and months of carrying small, unnamed weights. The kind that don’t justify a breakdown, but also never quite let you fully rest. Everything feels like it takes more effort than it should, and you start rationing energy without even realizing it.
Lately, that weight has come with a deeper sense of disconnection. My friend circle feels thinner than it used to. Not empty, just very sparse. (I’m as much to blame as anyone when it comes to socializing and need to be better about it.) Granted most of what I thought was my friend circle ended up being shitty people who showed their true colors when everything wasn’t perfect. I still have a few but conversations don’t linger the way they once did. Check-ins feel occasional instead of natural. There’s a quiet awareness that if anyone stopped reaching out, the silence might stretch longer than I’m comfortable admitting. It’s not just a Second Life thing either. It’s World of Warcraft too. Granted we still have our weekly WoW time, but outside of that with Midnight (that’s the new expansion in case you aren’t a WoW player) coming and the holidays people are just much less present. It isn’t resentment. It isn’t anger. It’s grief for closeness that’s faded slowly enough that no one noticed it happening.
I don’t think anyone did anything wrong. Life just shifted. Schedules changed. Priorities moved. Energy ran out. Somehow, without a clear moment marking it, things became quieter. I’m still figuring out what to do with that. Do you push and risk feeling like you’re forcing connections. Do you pull back and accept that some seasons thin things out. Right now, I’m trying to sit in the discomfort without assigning blame, including to myself. That being said I’m always open to talking with and meeting people, I’m just mostly a platform dweller who on occasion takes photos and blogs, a WoW player (For the Alliance!), and massive Laker fan. I’m trying to expand beyond those too going into this next year so we’ll see what all gets added to the list. If you can tolerate those, sweet maybe we can be friends? Not just like oh hey I follow you on Flickr or Primfeed, but actual in-world friends. I miss collaborating and creating a lot. When I say that list is short right now I mean it. So hey this is me trying?
Creatively, I feel just as untethered. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be creating right now, or even what I want to say. The instincts that used to guide me feel muted. Ideas arrive half formed and then stall. I sit with them and nothing opens up. The amount of posts that have I’ve started to write and then have sat as drafts for months is pretty high. I’ll usually have one or two that I have running with an idea I like to come back to, but right now there’s probably 25 or more. Some are photos that I never put words to, some are words that I never put photos with, and some are anything in between that. It’s extremely unsettling when creativity has always been how I process the world and suddenly it feels mostly inaccessible. For me it’s like losing a language I once spoke fluently.
I keep asking whether this is burnout, transition, or fatigue finally catching up to me. Maybe it’s all of it at once. Maybe it’s my brain asking for a different kind of expression and I just haven’t figured out what that looks like yet. Forcing it feels wrong. Waiting without direction feels just as uncomfortable. Being between creative identities is so much lonelier than I expected. There are days where even logging in feels hard. Where I sit in front of my screen or stare at my avatar and wonder what I’m doing if I have zero ideas. Those thoughts aren’t me trying to be dramatic or dangerous. They’re me being exhausted with the creative process. They come from depletion, not from despair. From caring deeply about what I’ve done here for a long time to not quite knowing where or how to put that care when I can’t figure out what I want to do.
When Lewis Capaldi released the Survive EP on my birthday (yeah the idea of using this song has been in my head off and on since then), it felt uncomfortably precise. Not in a cosmic, meant-to-be way, but in that quieter way where something lands exactly where you already hurt. The title track didn’t feel motivational or aspirational. It didn’t feel like a song meant to fix anything. It felt like someone sitting beside me and saying the parts I usually keep to myself, without trying to soften them or make them more palatable. There’s no performative strength in it, no forced optimism. Just honesty spoken at a volume meant for people who are already tired.
That’s always been the thing with Lewis Capaldi’s songwriting for me. He doesn’t write from a distance. He writes from inside the feeling, while it’s still raw and unresolved. Going all the way back to his debut album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent, songs like Bruises and Before You Go don’t just describe pain, they live in it. Bruises feels like emotional exhaustion made audible, like loving someone until it leaves marks you can’t quite explain. Before You Go carries that heavy ache of hindsight, the awful awareness that there were things you should have said and didn’t, moments you wish you could rewind and handle differently. Those songs never rush toward healing, instead they sit with you while it still hurts.
That entire album is full of that same emotional vibes. Someone You Loved (everyone knows this song even if they don’t like it!) captures the panic of realizing how much of your sense of stability was tied to someone else. Hold Me While You Wait is like vulnerability stripped of pride, asking for closeness even when it might not last. Forever exists in the strange space where something mattered deeply even if it couldn’t survive, and Grace feels like regret spoken quietly, without excuses. There’s nothing neat about those songs. They feel confessed rather than written.
When Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent came out, those feelings didn’t disappear, they just aged. The album sounds deeper, more lived in, like someone who has been through the same emotional stuff enough times to recognize the patterns. Pointless is devotion spoken plainly, almost awkwardly, like loving someone without knowing how to dress it up. Wish You The Best hurts in a restrained way, the kind of sadness that comes from acceptance instead of resistance. How I’m Feeling Now (a major personal favorite) feels like checking in with yourself on a bad day when the answers are uncomfortable but real. A Cure For Minds Unwell doesn’t promise relief as much as it offers recognition, like being seen in the middle of the struggle is sometimes the closest thing to comfort.
Strangers is like the hollow moment when someone who once knew you intimately becomes unfamiliar, like sharing space without connection. There’s no explosion, no betrayal, just distance quietly settling in where the closeness used to live. It sucks when it happens, but we’ve all been there before, and the song is completely that feeling. Forget Me, is upbeat if you just hear it, but if you really listen to it, it carries that familiar contradiction of trying to move forward while still being emotionally tied to someone or something.
The Survive EP takes what those two albums did and strips it down to its barest form. Something In The Heavens reaches for meaning without certainty, I wouldn’t say faith, just the hope that there is something kinder beyond immediate pain. Almost is the frustrating in between space, not broken enough to collapse, not okay enough to relax, just trying to convince yourself you are closer to the other side than you feel. The Day That I Die feels quiet and reflective, thinking about love, memory, and what remains when everything else falls away. Taken all together, the EP doesn’t offer answers or resolution. It offers company. It feels like someone sitting with you in the dark and saying, I’m scared too, but I’m still here. Right now, that kind of honesty matters more to me than “hope packaged as certainty” ever could.
“Most nights I fear, That I’m not enough.”
That line hurts because it’s familiar. It shows up in quiet moments when there’s nothing left to distract me. Like how you can be surrounded by people and still feel peripheral. Like your presence is tolerated but not necessary. That the world would keep moving at the same pace whether you were in it or not. The exhaustion that follows that feeling isn’t fixed with sleep or distraction. It’s deeper than that. It’s the kind of tired that slowly erodes your sense of self. You still function. You still respond. But it feels like you’re running on borrowed energy and hoping nothing else asks too much.
“How long till it feels, like the wound’s finally starting to heal?”
Not all wounds close cleanly. I’ve talked about that here plenty of times. Some stay tender and reshape how you move through the world. They teach caution. They teach restraint. Sometimes they make you quieter, not because you have nothing to say, but because you’re tired of explaining. I don’t always talk about these kind of wounds because there’s no satisfying resolution to offer. So instead, I’ve learned how to live around them. It’s not really the healthiest thing to do, that’s for sure, and one I am trying to be better about, this post hopefully being part of that. Sometimes that looks like logging in and standing somewhere quiet. Letting the environment carry me for a while. Letting sound, light, and motion do the work that I can’t. Not because I’m waiting for answers, but because being present feels safer than just disappearing.
There’s an unspoken vibe (vibe might not the right word but I think everyone will get what I mean) in both real life and Second Life that feels like you should only show up when you’re enjoyable. When you’re creative, engaged, interesting. If you’re not, you should step back until you are. I don’t believe in that anymore, if I ever really did. I think that feeling teaches people to disappear when they need connection the most. Sometimes showing up looks like silence. Sometimes it’s awkward or low energy. Sometimes it’s just being there without knowing what you have to offer. That should be enough. Because if connection only exists when you’re at your best, it’s conditional, and conditional connection doesn’t last.
“If it kills me to, I’m gonna get up and try…”
That sounds like acknowledging that sometimes effort hurts and you’re choosing to make it anyway. Trying isn’t always hopeful. Sometimes it’s mechanical. Sometimes it’s stubborn. Sometimes it’s just refusing to let a difficult stretch turn into something permanent. The line that stays with me is “I’ve still got something to give.”
I don’t (if I ever do) know what that something is right now, and that uncertainty scares me more than I like to admit. But I want to believe that my value doesn’t disappear just because direction does. That even in this stalled, disconnected space, I’m not completely empty. I’m just between versions of myself and maybe that’s not a failure. Maybe it’s a pause that hasn’t explained itself yet. I’m not sure. Tonight as I finished this post up, I stood alone on my quiet corner of the grid. Not a perfect windlight (they rarely are but that’s another topic). No company. No attempt to turn the moment into something meaningful even though it’s New Year’s Eve. Just me, my avatar, and Lewis Capaldi’s voice looping through my headphones. And I made myself a promise that felt fragile but honest. “I’ll survive.” Not because I have a plan. Not because I feel strong. But because something in me still refuses to disappear.
Life is hard right now. Not in a dramatic, everything-is-falling-apart way, but in that slow, grinding way that wears you down piece by piece. I’ve been here before, I know I’ll probably be here again, and I know that’s just part of being human, but that doesn’t make it any easier when you’re in it. I’m trying to figure things out in real time, without a map, without certainty, and without pretending I’m okay when I’m not. I don’t want to fake clarity I don’t have. Some days it feels like I’m moving forward, even if it’s only an inch. Other days it feels like I’m standing completely still while everything else keeps moving around me. I don’t always have answers, and I don’t even know if I have all of the right questions yet. I’m just doing the best I can with what I have right now, hoping that effort counts for something, hoping that it’s enough.
If you’re reading this and you’re in a similar place, I see you. You don’t need to have all of the answers yet. You don’t need a breakthrough or a plan or a polished explanation. Staying counts. Showing up in whatever way you can manage counts. Even existing through the hard parts counts. Survival isn’t loud or glamorous. It’s quiet, repetitive, and so deeply human. If this is the last thing I ever write here (we all know the answer to that but I’m not saying it), take care of yourselves. Be gentler with yourselves than the world ever is.
This space exists because people choose to interact with it, even passively. Because someone reads a post, lingers on an image, or recognizes a feeling they hadn’t put words to yet. That matters. Whether you’ve been here for years or just crossed paths with this once, thank you for sharing a small piece of your time and attention with me. It means more than I ever know how to articulate. Thank you. For reading these posts over the years. For faving photos, even when you didn’t know what to say. For commenting, for following back, for sending a quiet message, or simply for pausing long enough to look. None of that was invisible to me.
I don’t know what 2026 is going to look like. I don’t think any of us really do. I hope it brings good things, or at least gentler days, for all of us who could use them. Maybe it’s a comeback year. Maybe it’s a slow rebuilding. Maybe it’s just learning how to keep going without calling it failure. Whatever it ends up being, I’m still here. I’m still trying. As for this space, maybe there will be more posts next year. Maybe there won’t. I’m not making promises. What I do know is this, I’m going to survive. If you’re reading this, you are too. Here’s to 2026, to clean slates, imperfect restarts, and showing up in whatever way we can. Take care of yourselves. Credits, as always, are below. Until next time…
“I swear to God I survive
If it kills me to
I’ma get up and try
If it’s the last thing I do
I still got something to give
Oh, it hurts some times
I’m gonna get up and live
Until the day that I die
I swear to God I survive”
Lewis Capaldi – Survive
Credits:
Head: LeLUTKA.Head.NOA.4.0 ~ Jaden Nova
Head Applier: VELOUR: KALEB Skin for Evo X ~ Kiria Mama
Hair: [MFCNT] THOR Bun – Grooming Hair – LeBarbier Alpha
Hairbase: LeLUTKA.EvoX.Hairbase.044 (BOM) ~ Jaden Nova (Comes with the LeLUTKA NOA Head)
Eyes: Avi-Glam. Prism Eyes – Pack 2 ~ Eye Daddy
Ears: ^^Swallow^^ Gauged S Ears ~ Luciayes Magic
Ear Tattoo: RichB. Ears Tattoo #08 ~ Salvy Hexem
Beard: [MFCNT] Ducky Skunk Beard & Stache – LeBarbier Alpha
Beard Layer: [MR] Jimmi Facial Hair for EvoX Heads Style 1 ~ Daniel Whiskers
Body: [LEGACY] Athletic Edition (1.7.1) ~ MeshBody Resident
Skin: VELOUR: PICASSO HOMME Skin for Legacy (FIT/TAN) Picasso Neck ~ Kiria Mama
Hand BOM: K.O.K.O.S SHOP – SEXI MAN HANDS-BOM ALL BODY. ~ Aleric Dallas
Nails: Pare.Cure Mesh Nails Both Hands [Short] – Legacy ~ Flazedo Resident
Suit Coat/Shirt: [Deadwool] Spade Jacket (Heritage) ~ Masa Plympton ~ NEW @ Main Store
Pants: [Deadwool] Spade Trousers (Heritage) ~ Masa Plympton ~ NEW @ Main Store
Ring (L): ~~ Ysoral ~~ .: Luxe Wedding Ring Eliot:. ~ Fenixdragon Rau
Rings/Bracelets: *RE* Atreides Bracelet & Rings ~ Crashnoww Resident
Earrings: = DAE = SXD1 ~ Naomi Darkheart
~Scene~
Backdrop: FOXCITY. Photo Booth – Gala (Furnished+Surround) ~ Bi Polar
Pose: SP – Arlo ~ SweetDaniellee Resident