Did 2025 Destroy The Baelnorn Content Corner?

I was working on my annual Year in Review blog which, as always, was helping put my year in perspective. It was helping me realize my content in 2025 hadn’t been as bad as I felt it was, although it did take a big hit. I have not posted the blog yet, despite it being January 2026, and honestly, I haven’t even finished the rough draft. I do still plan on finishing and publishing it. I don’t want to miss another year of this tradition, but the more I worked on it, the more I realized I needed to make this blog first.

I started this blog a little over halfway through December and I had hoped to finish and publish it with in a few days. As it’s over a week into January, that obviously didn’t happen, which is a symptom of a larger problem, one I wanted to address in this blog.

What Are The Symptoms?

In 2025, for the first time in over a year, I wasn’t able to keep up a weekly posting schedule on YouTube. Around May I started doing every other week and by the end of the year I was down to once a month. My posting schedule was probably the most obvious and public, symptom of the problems I’ve been facing but it wasn’t the only effect of what I was dealing with. All my endeavors suffered in 2025.

When it came to writing I didn’t get nearly as much done in 2025 as I had planned. I hardly touched my novel and my goal of posting the Baelath Chronicles consistently was not met. To my credit I’ve posted a lot but I was not consistent. I did tinker on a short story I’ve been working on for few years and I made some progress, but it still remains an unfinished draft. I thought it would be done by now. The progress in writing slowed down as the year progressed.

Then there was Amtgard and Belegarth. I went to the most campouts I’ve ever gone to in a year. Between February and October I’d gone to 7 campouts. All while still going to many weekly practices’. Despite spending most of year at LARP, by the end of the year I was going roughly once a month, which is over a 50 percent reduction in my normal attendance. The percentage would be even larger if I took into account weeks where I attended a practice more than once.

My work on world building projects and my running of Dungeons and Dragons games also followed this trend. As the year went on I spent less and less time running Dungeons and Dragons and working on the associated material. Even the times I ran games I spent a lot less time prepping than I normally would and I often put it off till the last minute. Two of the three campaigns I was running died. One out of my control and the other one due to my own negligence.

By the end of the year I felt like I was doing a lot less in my life overall all.

So What’s The Problem

Originally, around the middle of 2025, as my video releases slowed and I was going to so many campouts, I thought I was dealing with a case of burnout. I’d gone pretty hard on YouTube videos the last few years, so I thought It was only natural I might be burnt out.

I tried to tried my best to tackle the problem. I embraced stepping back from making videos and worried less about my schedule. I had hoped after a little while I’d feel refreshed and be able to tackle YouTube with renewed strength.

When that didn’t help, I thought maybe I’d been gong to to much LARP, so I reduced how often I was going to weekly meetings and filled my weekend with other, non-LARP things. That too did not help. Things continued to get worse and the effects of the problem only spread to other parts of my life.

Eventually I decided it wasn’t burnout. I’d done everything I knew I should do to help overcome burnout, short of just walking away from all LARP and YouTube activities for an extended period. Then there were the other symptoms, unrelated to LARP such as my writing and TTRPG playing. So what exactly was it? It couldn’t be my depression getting worse again could it?

Just A Little Surprise Depression

2024 had been a decent year as far as controlling my depression. I was doing much better, suicidal ideation was drastically reduced, I was doing better at putting effort into cooking and keeping up on dishes. I found I had less need for naps and my frequency of times I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed was largely reduce. Other areas of my life, which are embarrassing to talk about, such as my hygiene routine, also saw improvement. Going into 2025 I felt better than I had for several years.

Most of those improvements I saw in 2024 carried over into 2025 and are even lasting into 2026. It’s been a little bit of a struggle but I’ve mostly continued to cook and keep up with keeping the kitchen reasonably clean. Suicidal ideation, which hasn’t completely gone away, was and is still infrequent. My “necessary” napping is still greatly reduced and is usually only an hour or two over the course of a normal day.

So when my issues with YouTube and eventually LARP presented themselves, I didn’t instantly think, “Depression!” In fact it wasn’t even till the Fall that I really considered that my depression was, in fact, getting worse.

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times, “the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s vitality”. (See this Ted Talk). Google defines vitality as “the state of being strong and active; energy” and over 2025 I saw what energy I had drain away. I became less active in nearly every aspect of my life, even if I hadn’t noticed how much till near the end of the year.

Depression, It’s the one answer that fits. It took some time to admit, nearly the whole year, but my depression has been slowly worsening over 2025. Surprise!

What’s The Plan?

Now that I’ve determined that it’s depression I can redirect my efforts to sorting myself out. Normally when I’m making special effort to confront my depression it’s over a big and rather instantaneous dip in mood. I have rarely caught myself slipping further into depression so gradually. I think a year of good habits, stable housing and the right mix of medications really helped here.

So, now I’m in a unique position to try and help myself before things get really bad. Exactly how I’m going to do that I’m sure yet. In part I need to hunker down, grab at what I the things I think I can do, protect that process and build upon what I have. That means re-evaluating my expectations of myself.

Part of me has really wanted to just walk away from all my content creation endeavors. I’ve been at it for years now and, especially in the last few years, I have tried to make a career out of it, but to no avail. Don’t get me wrong, this journey has led to some amazing things and I’ve done great by our community but financially, it has not worked out. However I think quitting, especially under the shadow of depression, is an extreme measure.

I will continue to do YouTube but over the coming months that will look different. I need to figure out a cadence I can work with. I may also branch out on content, notably in with TTRPG content. I will be trying to find things that will hook me through the miasma of apathy and let me progress.

I will also, perhaps, oddly enough, be harder on myself as well. Over the past year, when confronted with sitting down to work and not being able to make progress, I would shrug and take a break. I didn’t want to push to hard, I thought I was dealing with burnout, but now I know better. I need to push through those moments, I need to overcome the apathy and lack of energy to get something done thus building up good work habits. It’s the only way I know how to combat the lack of vitality.

I will also be talking to my doctor about my medication to see if there might be some adjustments that could help. Additionally I feel a renewed sense of necessity concerning getting a therapist. I had one, I’ve been going for years, but my last one moved on from the facility I use and they never found a replacement for me.

Last Thoughts

Well, surprise, it’s depression! I’m so tired of living with this, and people are probably tired of hearing about. This is a constant struggle but I’m thankful that I’m dealing with a gradual increase rather than a dramatic emotional event. It’s more like an annoyance than it is a catastrophe. I am, relatively, alright but it’s not a very fun existence to be living.

I wanted to write this blog to set the stage for my Year and Review blog. I didn’t want to take up that blog with a bunch of personal problems. I wanted it more focus on reviewing my content and setting goals. If you want to find out more about my concreate goals going into 2026 keep an eye out for that blog next.