A Moogle  🏳️‍🌈 💻 🎮 🎶 🇸🇪

There have been a lot of social and environmental changes over the past month where I work - new hires, new workflow, new playtest policy, new seating arrangement, new design mantra, etc., and I've been handling it about as well as someone on the spectrum would: Not at all.

Rather than happening all at once, the changes have come at a rate of one every couple of days, inadvertently keeping me on "high alert" status, mentally. As a result, I've been missing a bunch of work due to waking up with gastrointestinal issues (let's leave it at that).

Thing is, I've been either too stupid or too proud to go talk to my manager about it. Finally, this morning, the head of HR pulled me into a small meeting with him and my manager.

Oh, and to top it off, I've been stressed due to stepping down my antidepressant medication, as suggested by my doctor. Anyway, the meeting leads off not with "You're screwing up, stop it," but instead with, "Hey, we've noticed a bunch of absences lately - how can we help?"

So I swallowed my pride and explained, calmly and at length, what's been stressing me out, and proposed that while things are in a high state of flux, that I work remotely for the next few weeks. And, being a great place to work, my manager said that that's fine.

He suggested I ask my teammates if it would be okay, just in case. So I asked my teammates, and they all said that that's fine. And it's just so incredibly humbling, to the point of tears, to finally work with people who want to work with me, rather than kick me to the curb.

I'm sure they don't 100% understand why I'm so stressed, but they don't need to - the point is that, as always over the past year, and dramatically unlike any other game studio I've worked for, the folks at @ArrowheadGS are there to lend a hand to bring you up, not beat you down.