checklists
I had my first anxiety attack in December of 2016. It's a bit of a blur of causes and stressors that eventually boiled up to the point where I felt like I couldn't breathe and felt like the walls were literally collapsing in on me. I ended up seeing a doctor and getting prescribed an SSRI. It took a bit, but as I was coming out of the anxiety/depression haze I remember playing a lot of Final Fantasy XV at the time and going through the hunting list.
In the summer of 2019, my cat had gotten out of the house I lived in. She was an indoor cat, and I was beside myself in anxiety. Luckily, she turned back up in just under a week. During the time she was away, I had spent my free time playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, getting every Spirit in the game to maximum level.
In early July of 2024, I had a pretty big depressive breakdown. I had been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis a year earlier, and, at the time, I felt like I was getting better (This would be proven wrong by the end of the year). I had been so deep in the trenches of "My body is fighting me and I am fighting it" that when that war started to look like it was easing up, I started to look outward for my next step and just completely retreated into a shell. Then, of course, the illness came back with a vengeance and I'm back firmly in square one, which is definitely something that is putting me on the verge of another breakdown, but that's a different blog post/journal entry entirely. One of the things I did coming out of this breakdown was download MLB The Show 24 off of Game Pass and start trying to fill out the baseball card collections in that game.
There's comfort in completing checklists. I don't have to explain that, countless psychologists with far more researched evidence and education have explained that in much better ways than me, person with a bachelor's degree in digital media, specializing in the art of realtime 3D lighting musing on the internet could possibly dare to do.
But I think specifically why my various breakdowns were drawn to these specific checklists is a matter of two things: Scale, and importance. There are about 102 hunting quests in Final Fantasy XV, 629 Primary Spirits in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and God knows how many cards in MLB The Show. I find that for these comfort checklists, bigger is generally better.
The other matter is importance. Are any of these things vital? Even ignoring how non-vital video games are: No. The only achievement related to hunts in Final Fantasy XV is for completing one. Spirits are primarily used in one mode in Super Smash Bros. and needing every single spirit maxed out doesn't do anything for you. And while you gain in-game currency for hitting certain levels of completion of the various collections in The Show, said in-game currency is only really used for a single mode. While it's the game's most popular mode, I'm normally far more of a Road to the Show person anyway, where the currency is completely irrelevant.
Do I have a point here? Honestly, not really. Since I've been teetering on the edge of another depressive breakdown I do find that, like checklists, the act of getting things that are on the inside out helps, like some weird form of journaling, I suppose. Every so often something spends too long boiling and this acts as a bit of a pressure release valve, staving off disaster for a bit longer.
Do I have a good ending thought up for this post, neatly summarizing everything in a nice bow? Also no. My English teachers will be disappointed. It's just noticing a pattern of past actions, thinking about why those specific actions, and writing it all down. Now, if you'll excuse me, this Assassin's Creed Shadows map has some more question marks on it. Gotta check off what's at all of those.