Social Backlog Paralysis

Most backlogs are passive and no pressure; your Steam library, your reading list, maybe your YouTube watch later playlist. But I have a particular backlog that is paralyzing—my Discord DMs.

When a friend sends me a DM, I make it my mission to read it and reply, no matter how long it takes me. I’ve had DMs with dozens of messages, from several people, dating back months, their icon perpetually camping in the top left corner of my screen. And the longer I wait, and the more messages they send me, the more paralyzed I feel to open it.

And I feel really bad about this >.<

I don’t want to inadvertently ghost someone for that long, making them worry why I’m not responding. Because I want to reply to all their messages, to show them that I do care about what they have to tell me. But it becomes this immense sense of awkwardness of having to explain why I was silent.

My friends understand when I explain it to them. Some of them are probably used to it now. One of them even said I didn’t have to read all of their past messages. * I still did it anyways and replied to nearly all of them.

I try not to let it control me like this, but like many of my backlogs I can’t let it go easily. I just feel that I need to go through it all, sooner or later.