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I suppose it should be a given that group project syndrome never goes away, even out of school, but if you sign up to help with a thing, you should fucking help with the thing. I've got one person in this exhibit planning process who hasn't responded to any emails or put in any concrit on any wording in any document or anything in literal months. At this point I don't trust most of them to do any worth so I can't do the delegation I was originally hoping to do.

At least I don't have to weave all the pieces for the exhibit myself. Though I worried we won't have enough, at this point. Ugh. Not, like, no pieces, but scanter than I'd prefer.

The Torchwood renaissance is trickling down, as I've gone through just about everything worth rereading on the AO3 (it's been a while since I've had the issue of 'I want to read about Character X, but they've been tagged for their supporting role in 80% of the fics they're tagged in, making filtering useless') and I'm not about to try trolling through LJ or even DW.

I have managed to somehow write over 11k of stuff, but it's largely unactionable stuff. Half of it's reliant on the context of the RP I was in back in the day, so most readers would lack the context for anything I wrote (not that I care about other readers, but why post it at that point). The rest is just so abstracted and ephemeral scenes stuck together that I'll be lucky if I manage to wrangle even one of it into a postable fic. So we'll see. And I've reviewed the 95% complete AMTDI fic, and yeah, the problem really is 'this fic is required to end on a dis-satisfactory return-to-stasis note,' which is too quiet a tragedy for 'I'm going to go out screaming' Owen, even if it's par for the course for quiet Tosh. Torchwood loves a good failure, and 'Owen and Tosh fuck but nothing comes of it' is just a 'meh' failure. There's no emotional oomph.

Also I think at this point to finish it properly I'd have to chance rewatching canon and I don't know if I can convince myself to do that. I'm bad at watching stuff these days. I keep thinking I should watch something, but I'm never in the mood for any of the stuff on my list, or I keep thinking 'no, there was something else I'd been meaning to watch, but I'm not sure what it was.' And nothing I have managed to get off my ass and watch has struck my strongly enough to get fannish about it. None of the new Treks have done it enough for me that I haven't even bothered to watch the last of SNW or any of the new Academy one (feels like it would give me the motts). I have zero interest in even approaching Heated Rivalry. What are we doing for poly fandoms these days anyway?

OK, over on tumblr Te has invited a 'tell me about your weirdest fics' challenge, and since it involves some actual writing and critical thought, I figured I'd post it over here too.

( It was a struggle to come up with 5 )

In searching my archived fic I also found at least one older snipped marketd as published but not listed on the AO3, so if folks want a cracky dS/10th Doctor fic, that's been posted and backdated.

I've been meaning to post for about a month now and just keep not getting around to it. That initial impetus was getting some alarming news about an ex-coworker, about a year after the fact (I'd been told at the time I didn't want to know, and on the one hand that's true, but on the other hand, I probably said some charitable things about him that I wouldn't have if I'd been on the same page as everyone else). But it's not worth going over, so here we are.

I watched the new Knives Out movie, and I've seen a fair amount of good commentary on how the movie handles religion, but I haven't seen anybody talking about the obvious plothole of ( imagery-related spoilers )

I didn't come out of it wanting to read fic about it, either, which isn't too surprising, but what is surprising is that I came out of it wanting to reread the Donald Strachey mysteries, so that's what I've been rereading, alongside a bunch of old fic. There's still just no current fandoms that have got me wanting to write anything, so it's been Merlin, and Magnificent Seven and even Voyager and I've been desperate enough to drag out some old Torchwood wips -- one was about 95% complete, the other was barely-strung-together fragments that included Jack being stuck with an alien device that had him looking female without actually being a sex-swap fic. On top of it being a time travel fic. I have no idea if I had a reason for doing that, or where I was going with it. Unsurprising that that one never got finished, but the other one was so close to done, I don't know what it was missing that I didn't finish it off. Possibly just the fact that it was going to have to have a lackluster ending, being a fic centered on Tosh and Owen. They're legally obliged to not have a happy ending without a hell of a lot more work than 20k.

I probably won't have time to miss still not creating any fanworks, though. I'm heading up an exhibit the weaving guild is doing this summer, and work on that is going to ramp up in the next few months. I just got piece number one (point five, I have a backup-maybe-unfinished project I did last fall) on the loom right now, with a 70%-completed draft for a doubleweave scarf after that that's going to involve a heinous amount of pickup work, which is why it's piece number two. But if I do it right it'll be much prettier than plain old overshot, so. I expect that'll take up a lot of focus once March hits. Hopefully I'll post again before then.

I'm still marvelling at having a hobby that I'm willing to spend money on -- I went to a weaving conference last week (got a first-timer scholarship, which covered admission and room and board, but I splurged and got a single room, so paid a little extra) which meant buying extra yarn for the workshop, and then even though I'm well out of storage room and have said multiple times I need to make some things before I buy more stuff, I bought 7 more cones of yarn (some of it was on sale! the rest was just really pretty hand-dyed!). Some of it I can definitely think of things to do with it, the rest I'll just have to try and keep an eye out for ideas, because I don't want it to sit forever.

And I talked to people too, constantly, the whole weekend. My god. By day 2.5 I was wiped, I am not an extrovert by any means. But folks chatted throughout classes, in the hallways, just wherever. I walked out of the dinner hall and ended up talking with some random woman whose name I never caught for like 10 minutes. Plus, also, I ran into a friend from local fandom cons who I hadn't seen in like 10-ish years (MJ and Con.txt). Neither of us were doing fiber things back then, so it was really a (pleasant) surprise.

Anyway now I am back home and waiting for work to ramp back up -- it always slows down in the summer due to end-of-fiscal-year purchasing deadlines, but today starts the new FY, so I'm just waiting for the word that budgets are loaded into the system, and I can start doing work again. Things are also wonky because DC passed an energy savings bill recently, so in order to comply we're finally getting around to converting the building to LED lighting -- which means shuffling folks' offices and encasing the stacks in protective material. We don't have an end date and the last construction project went on and on and on, so folks are just crossing fingers that impact will be minimal on the full-term researchers starting in the fall. I'm planning to hide in my new office with a fucking door so I can avoid chatty opinionated elder coworker for once in my life. My god this would be an amazing time to finally get a new job and quit.

Oh! I almost forgot. I also managed to blitz through all of Elementary in the last month or so, after having had it on my 'to watch' list for years. There are some parts of it that left me kind of 'meh,' and for someone who's great at identifying prosthetic-forehead Star Trek actors in other roles by only their eyes, I could not for the life of me identify Johnny Lee Miller in 3/4 profile shots on multiple occasions. My brain also kept replacing him in my memory with Darren Nichols. I think it was something about the overly upright posture (and also the dramatics). These things mostly resolved themselves by probably midway through season 2, by which point I could focus on things like how unsexy Mycroft was. It's a shame but unsurprising that there isn't more fic. I need to find something to watch that does have a lot of fic, but I haven't come up with anything yet. Though I think the latest season of Leverage: Redemption just finished, or is about to, and that sounds like it should give me something to sink my teeth into.

It's kind of nice having a hobby that gets me away from the internet but still lets me interact with people. The weaving guild I joined last year had a big fundraising sale yesterday, mainly selling previously-owned yarn, equipment, and books, at bargain-basement prices. I helped with setup and cleanup, and came away with a whole slew of new-to-me fiber, and didn't even come close to breaking the bank. And I didn't have time to take a look at any form of social media. I don't have to tell anyone here how glad I am that I never managed to get a job with LC. I'm taking a class with them in another three weeks, so I have several weekends to look forward to of not letting my brain doom scroll. That said, it also means I have two weeks to finish the project currently on the loom (some towels, I'm on the last one but need to fix a broken thread) so I can get it out of the way for the rental loom for the class. Tiiiiiny apartment. At least finishing the project will also mean I can take the clamps off my loom (a makeshift temple to prevent draw-in), I bump into them every time I get into the closet, which I do frequently as it's winter and that's where my coats live.

Right, OK, not dead. Still not posting for the same old reasons -- I feel like I've been stuck in amber since waaaay before COVID turned time into a weird soup. My life has still been stuck in the same rut of not being able to get a new job, not being able to progress in any of the areas I want to progress, no matter how much I try, and that leads to the kind of malaise and despair that means not posting much of anything anywhere because I don't really have anything new to say. But it's been long enough that I do have a few new things, I guess, and I'm trying to follow more people and read more people here, so I might as well give it another go.

Fandom-wise, things have still been pretty quiet -- I'm still watching Critical Role but I hate tumblr as a place to try and engage in dialogue, so I'm not really interacting with anyone about things that happen in the show, and I'm not really interested in reading any fic for the current campaign (or the previous one, even). The current campaign is wrapping up soon, though, so we'll see what they do next. I'm otherwise cycling through older fandoms -- I was watching Star Trek while knitting a blanket last year, but could only get through the first two seasons of DS9 before remembering why I stopped (I don't like dystopias or soap operas), and made it through to late season 6/early season 7 of Voyager before running out of project, so I need to find something else so I can finish that for real -- I don't think I really watched all of the series finale when it aired, I think I noped out of it based on spoilers. So yeah, I've been reading a little bit of older Voyager fic and otherwise doing my 50th run on old Magnificent Seven fic, because sometimes you just need dead simple whump or trapped-in-a-cave fic. Though that said, it was a pleasant surprise when I was watching the Equinox VOY episodes and recognized Rick Worthy. I've also been having fun applying modern tropes to older shows -- I've written way too much world-building and not enough fic about how Omegaverse would work on Voyager (I think most Trek fic does Omegaverse wrong because the whole point of Star Trek is that it's aspirational egality, which goes counter to most of the Omegaverse trope). I've also been scraping up some actual fic based on more traditional tropes for Mag7, but that's nowhere near state to post yet either. But hey, it's better than not writing at all.

In non-fandom activities, I've been trying to get into gaming more. I've mostly only succeeded in playing almost 1700 hours of Stardew Valley, which has then ruined me for pretty much any other life sim I've tried. IDK. I've also been trying to play Baldur's Gate 3, which I picked up on sale last month, but I'd frankly forgotten that essentially all the characters are extremely morally dubious, and my good-aligned anxiety ass doesn't like any of the multiple choice dialogue options for any of the characters, so progress is ...slow. I keep putting off playing in favor of more Stardew Valley. I also picked up Hades again, because I want to re-beat it before grabbing Hades 2.

I've also gone off the deep end and picked up weaving. I decided last summer that I wanted to try it, couldn't find a class, and tried to re-learn knitting instead. I re-learned it, discovered I still didn't like it, and finally found a weaving class through the local guild, and have been going gangbusters since. I took another specialized class (shadow weave), joined the guild, took more specialized classes (double weave, summer and winter), and am now volunteering for the guild and going to more specialized classes at a conference this summer. Meanwhile I'm stuck in the world's tiniest apartment staring jealously at people with looms the size of a piano, but the loom I managed to buy isn't shabby at all, I just also want the option to weave things large enough to hide a horse. The only other problem is that weaving isn't nearly as quiet as knitting, or as portable, so it's a bit slower going, but if I'm doing something with less complex treadling I can still watch TV or listen to podcasts while I do it.

So progress. I'm going to try and update more than once every couple years, too, if I can think of things to actually say. I need a new fandom to over-analyze.

Wow, I opened the new post window and then opened my DW in another tab to see how long it had been since I'd last posted, and the most recent entry had the exact same title as what I'd originally titled this post. And it's from 21 months ago (with the last real content being from over 2 years ago. Yikes.
This comes down to a couple of factors: 1) depression = no energy for anything, especially after a day at a job that I hate (all the good people have fled in the time I haven't been posting) 2) My laptop basically ceased to function at anything more than a crawl (it's from, like 2009, so it's served its time), and since I was planning on doing a lot of traveling I tried to replace it with an iPad. This was a mistake. iOS apps run differently enough that between that and the lack of tactile keyboard, they just don't work with my brain and I stopped doing pretty much any writing. 3) I didn't really have any fandoms, or much to say about anything since nothing was changing or things were only getting worse, so what was there to say? 4) I'd also stopped reading DW, to the point where even after the tumblr shitfest, I'd be sitting at home, going 'god, I'm bored and there's no fic, I have nothing to read,' then hours later going 'oh right, what about DW?' Moron.

Anyway, that's why I'm typing this at work instead of getting work done. What have I actually been up to?

I finished the MLS. That was May 2017, and I've been desperately searching for jobs since then, and have barely even gotten any interviews. I don't want to do public libraries, and my impression is that job opportunities are at a low, but even so, I'm barely getting any requests for interviews, so I've got to be doing something wrong, but I don't know what. I've had multiple colleagues offer to look over my resume, and others email colleagues elsewhere to ask about upcoming position listings, to basically no avail. I keep looking at our own hiring practices and going 'do I need to get a PhD before anyone will hire me?' because that would be a mistake, for both financial and mental health, I'm sure (just trying to find a program that would be good for anything I'm interested in would be a trial). It's basically a 2-year pit of despair, trying to escape this job. I'm not even going to start on how much I hate this job now.

Fannish-wise, I have actually ( watched a few things this year. )
The main thing I've been watching for the past year has been Critical Role -- and I fell deep for the content, but not so much for the fandom? ( It's kind of weird. )
So there's that -- another fandom to watch, but a lot of fans with Incorrect Opinions (I haven't seen any critical reactions to the revelations in the episode just before the break, for example, which is disappointing but unsurprising). But it does mean that I've gotten back into D&D some -- I'd played in high school but we got hung up on the mechanics and moved on to other things. So now I'm doing some online playing and some in-person playing, which at least gets me out of the house?

So there you go -- work life is awful, and the little I can do to change that is being ineffectual, and fannish life is relatively insular, and I'm not sure how much that will change. Woo.

Wow, this thing! I remember this thing! Look at how great I am at using it!

*coughs*

Yeah, sorry. This semester is keeping me much busier than I expected, and I'm also trying to figure out what I'm doing next/looking for a new job (expect a much longer post on that subject if I can manage it).

Anyway, this is just to say ~~that I ate the plums~~ I'll be in St. Louis tomorrow through Sunday for a theatre tech conference. Those of you in the St. Louis area (you know who you are -- and what you did) who want to maybe try and meet up, drop me a line. Either here or by email if you have it. I'm not sure how many of you guys have my phone number (it's changed since I lived there) but yeah.

Guys, I am in desperate need of a place to crash next week. I will be in NYC from Monday til the 6th, and all the usual suspects are not available. If you can host me for even part of that time, so I don't have to spend millions on a hostel, please let me know!

I promise, one day soon there will be real content on here again. Maybe after I finish grad school. Speaking of, I am looking for housing in NYC for two upcoming date ranges: Nov 3-8 and Nov 28-Dec 6. If you can host me for one of those or part of one of those, please let me know!

The end times are definitely nigh, I'm not regularly reading my DW/LJ any more. Really need to fix that.

Uh, in other news, I'll be in NYC again this weekend? And I might need a place to stay? My couch plans look to be falling through. I get into NY at about 10:30 tomorrow night, so I know this is late notice, but I'm trying really hard to minimize my money spending right now, so I can guarantee being able to pay tuition in a couple months. (ETA: All sorted!)

Also, anyone want to hang out, in general? I have Saturday and Sunday mornings free right now.

OK, cats and kittens. So I finally heard back from the library dude the other day, and I will be in New York next week, for the day only. My train in the morning gets me in a little before 9 (and I don't have to be anywhere 'til about 10:30), and then I leave just after 10 pm, and my thing is done at 4:30, plus a quick stop at NYPL HR which should leave me done before 6. So if anyone wants to meet up for a lateish breakfast or for dinner, etc, let me know! Hopefully at this thing I'll also find out when else I'll need to be in New York.

Long time, no complain about every aspect of my life! I was going to post yesterday, but then I spent half the workday suffering from a killer headache, and went straight to bed when I got home.

Anyway, what's up: with any luck I'll be in New York for part of the week after next? It's like pulling teeth to get any details from the people in charge, and I still haven't heard anything from the HR department, but there's theoretically a kickoff event that they'd like me to be at, if we can actually get this field study thing off the ground. That's literally all the details I have, but heads up for anybody who offered to potentially host me for a bit. I'll let you know when I have actual information. Which will hopefully be soon?

Other places I'm going: Ohio! Super exciting, I know. I got a paper accepted to a library (pre)conference session for an international conference that's someplace I can actually afford to go to (even if the job will pay for some of it), so I'll be in Columbus Ohio in mid-August. That'll be interesting - my first paper. It'll be easy to write, but I'm a little wary of the whole 'question' section - hopefully it'll be like most other conferences I've gone to, and everyone will talk just slightly too long and there won't actually be time for questions.

Otherwise my summer's still up in the air - I'm on the waitlist for one interesting class in Philly, and I should really try to save some money, but I'm going to go nuts if I'm not doing stuff, either. Still. What are other people doing?

Hi, sorry, the internets, I have been meaning to update forever, but my energy levels are either in the tank or completely focused elsewhere. I even have 90% of a post written up somewhere about More Weird Dreams Courtesy of Arthur Darvill, but then I got distracted by Portentous Dreams About Dead Family Members, and, uh, life. Specifically, work, because it has been like stirring shit without a stick this last week, and all for totally bullshit crapass reasons.

I may be a little annoyed.

If I manage to remember/have time for it later, I will post more details in a flocked rant, but this part of it I need to post publicly because I'll need some help with it. I found myself last week suddenly in the position of needing to complete a field study for my MLS instead of being able to waive it, and FRTDNEATJ, I said 'to hell with it, if I'm going to have to do this thing, I'm going to go for the most best bits of thing.' So I'm trying to get a field study at the Lincoln Center library in NYC.

Yes, this is totally a case of 'how hard can I make a thing for myself just because I really want it.' Difficulties involved include: I don't live in New York. I have a full time job. I am taking other classes. I haven't got that much cash. Positives include: I am a glutton for punishment. I am pretty much an ideal candidate, to the point that they may not have anyone on staff with my experience-based qualifications.

So I sent of an email on Friday in a fit of rage-induced efficiency, backed by the University's DC-based mindset that you'd better ask now, in case clearance takes 3 months. And I promptly got a call and an email on Friday asking for more details about my qualifications and what exactly I'd be interested in doing. So I've got a packet of info I've got to pull together, and I have to figure out how I'm going to accomplish this if everyone okays it.

Most importantly, I'm going to be looking for places to stay. If all goes according to (just barely penciled-out) plan, I'd be doing this in the fall semester, one week per month. Two of my scheduling issues plus one scheduling plus means that the best 'week' to work would be Thursday-Tuesday. So I'd get up early Thursday, take the train up with just enough time to get to the library, stow my suitcase somewhere in the building for the day, then go to wherever I'm staying for the week. Friday-Sat I'd work, Sunday would be my day off for touristy things (including trying to get into Broadway shows for cheap), Monday-Tuesday I'd work, and then Tuesday after work I'd go home (probably bringing my stuff to work with me again). Then I'd go to regular work on Wednesday and then to my Wednesday-evening class.

Whee.

Well, it's not really any worse than doing theatre and having an average of 1 day off per month. It's just ...probably more expensive. So yeah. If anyone in NYC would be willing to host someone on a couch or floor (I can bring a sleeping bag & camping mattress if nothing else works) so I don't have to shell out for a place to stay, it would be extremely appreciated. I know I've got several fanpeople from NYC on my flist, and if you'd spread the word, that'd be great too.

This whole thing is still up in the air and not finalized, but based on the fact that I got two responses from two people to my out-of-nowhere 'hey, do you want someone who needs to do 120 hours of work, probably for free' email, I suspect that as long as I can swing it on the work end (and they may be dicks lately, but I don't think they can say no to vacation time), then it'll be a go, so I'm quite hopeful, just also really broke.

I am *so great* at posting. I meant to post two weeks ago, when I went to see Star Wars. It was good, though I could have done with a lot less fanwanky Star Wars references. Which, I know, it's a Star Wars movie. But hopefully the next movie will be more of a 'movie set in the Star Wars universe' and less of what this one was? Otherwise I mostly watched it for the threesome aspects, which were very enjoyable. Please know that this is the only Star Wars movie I have seen in theatres or without being dragged, so still high praise for someone who is not a Star Wars fan (sorry).

In the meantime, I also have a brainstorming/inspiration question for everyone, but especially arts people, academic people, digital humanities people, etc. One of the courses I'm taking this spring for my MLS is Digital Arts Curation, and the overarcing project for the semester is to create a plan for 'acquiring and preserving a born digital work or a collection of born digital works,' with a potential (but not requirement) for archiving it to the Internet Archive. The syllabus (which is at dighist.org / syllabus) (not really interested in leaving a link trail) and has some example works, some if not all of which I'm pretty damn sure are already archived on the IA, so hopefully I will get more details about what the professor is after once classes start (I should also read back on the blog above and see what students did last year, but that can wait 'til I'm at work), but I'm looking for suggestions of stuff I could do.

I'd really like to do something with theatre, but a. theatre people are intellectual-property-possessive, and b. only bits and pieces are born digital. So in case I can't get the theatre option to cohere, I'm looking for other ideas. Not necessarily fannish, but I probably wouldn't mind if they were, to a minor degree (hmm, maybe amv.org...). One week of the syllabus is covering fanworks to some degree (including two articles from TWC), so people would be at least passing familiar if I did something like that, but of course, I am on the privacy end of the fandom pool. Still. Ideas would be really helpful!

...yeah I still haven't given a full accounting of my England trip, I know. I'm just never good at that kind of thing. Plus life has been chaotic, especially at work. Hell, there are still clothes in my suitcase.

Anyway, the reason I am posting, for the three of you who might still read this thing, is I am finally getting off my ass and trying to get an official diagnosis of depression and get some meds that will get my energy level above bedrock levels. Any local DC people have recs, or anti-recs? I'm on BCBS, but I can always search anyone you rec to see if they're on my plan, so that's not so much an issue. And please pass this post along to any other locals who might have info to offer!

I am really glad that I get along with my roommate for this trip. The group dynamics have been really strange and at times awkward. I think I'm also nearing my limits on social time with relative strangers, and will be glad to go back to low-interaction mode for the rest of the trip. I still have to figure out plans for the last couple days in London. I haven't contacted the people from the theatre department, and I'm not sure now if I will, or if I'll chicken out.

I swear, next time I want to take a trip I should just take the damn trip, not sign up for a class. Especially a class that is so obviously created by two people who just wanted an excuse to muck around in England. I know it's early still, but I've learned very little that is actually library related, if anything at all.

*grumble*

At least there's fudge?

So, to probably the surprise of no one who knows me, I am basically incapable of moderation. After only catnapping on the plane, I crashed early Thursday, which meant I was able to wake up at 4:30 am on Friday and spend a whole day up near Newcastle Upon Tyne exploring Hadrian's Wall. I missed a bus (or it never showed or was actually on time unlike the other 2 trips) so I didn't have time for one of the sites, but I still got in two and... lots of photos of weathered stone-cut walls. Sorry, but once you hit about 200 years old (if not earlier) all weathered rock walls really look the same. And then I didn't get back until after midnight. Then I stayed up even later looking up stuff for the next day since my phone doesn't like roaming internationally, so the moral of the story is I'm on my way to Leicester with only four hours of sleep? Go me? Hopefully tomorrow will be not as bad, as I probably won't be gone as long today (I'd like to also hit York, but it probably won't happen) (ETA: nope - another missed connection, but that's OK, as it looks like the minster would have been closed anyway). Plus tomorrow I only have to go to Canterbury, and maybe Dover or Ramsgate if I have time to do that and drop my luggage off before going to the required class dinner.

And, uh, I should probably do more reading for the class? I need to look at the websites for the cathedral libraries again, and prep for whatever I'm supposed to be asking questions about.

That said, after class, other than maybe going to Cardiff, I'm pretty much planning to just hang around in London. So if anyone wants to meet up, the 4th-7th is when I should be free.

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Don't be surprised by the fact you can smile.

(Find joy in life, you fucker.)

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Hello, world

Same as the old boss

wipes off massive layer of dust

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All I ever do is ask for things.

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