superborb | End of year reflections

Fandom-wise

I was looking over my New Year's Resolutions from last year, and it made me realize that-- well, one of them was to "Be more deliberate about social media usage" and another was to determine what to do with tumblr. I think the effort of crossposting to tumblr and twitter has started to exceed the return, as both interfaces are irritating to use. (And I do suffer strongly from a completionist tendency; if I'm using a platform, I ought to use it fully, or something like that.)

So I suppose I'm only fully on DW and Discord now, with some forays into Mastodon; my Mastodon timeline is a bit quiet, so it isn't as time consuming as struggling with the rampant Twitter bugs.

The year-in-fandom has been -- rather up and down for me. Some friends made, some friends lost; I felt rather upset over the latter, despite it being in the sort of quiet drifting away that happens when a fandom is winding down (or a platform is imploding). But in the end, I've reverted to the philosophical, if we're meant to be friends, we'll bump around and meet again in the future.

I'm inclined to be morose over that sort of thing anyway, but actually in retrospect, I think it was more ups than downs. I met up with many fandom friends in person, celebrated

gdgdbaby's wedding, and made rather a lot of new friends. It's just that the ups were towards the beginning of the year, and the downs towards the end.

And I suppose really, the problem is that I'm not /in/ any fandom fully right now. Certainly, I've been doing Nirvana in Fire book club and weekly cdrama watchings (though mostly it's just me and

halfcactus now), but I've reverted to lurking and rereading fic in fandoms I was never participatory in -- Vorkosigan, A:tLA, Temeraire... But it's the natural cycle of things for me; the frenzy of activity in MDZS was rather an exception to the rule.

Media-wise

I am happy I got back into reading original books, but I seem to have lost steam once I realized that I am rather more picky about original books than fic. I think it's that the exerted effort of getting into a new world is higher without the scaffolding of a canon. Also, so many books are... underedited, which frustrates me more than if it were just bad.

Reading goals never successfully motivated me, but I will try in the next year to get back to it. One can't last forever on rereading old fic, after all.

I am pleased that we're six of seven volumes down in Nirvana in Fire. My Chinese reading comprehension really has risen, though not quite reached at the level required to be self-sustaining, when I might read something and pick up everything unknown by context clues.

RL-wise

I am currently emotionally worn out from a family issue that really ought not be my responsibility, but somehow has become one. I have hopes it's temporary and won't have any lasting consequences, but it has definitely contributed to the end-of-year blues and my inability to do anything but reread fic. I suppose it's good that I know what's causing it so I'm not afraid I've fallen into a cycle of depression, but-- frustrating.

(And it's making it difficult for me to reach out to friends and be a good conversationalist. I suspect this made me take the aforementioned drifting away of fandom friends harder, that if I had been in a better mental state, I might have done better. But that's always the way it is, isn't it.)

In any case, RL is going well. I've slowly, perhaps inexpertly, been trying to increase responsibilities at work; though it's nice I can do it at my own pace, I am intrinsically a bit lazy, so I have to fight my own instincts at that. Last year, I had some lovely trips -- to

gdgdbaby's wedding, as mentioned before, along with an excellent trip to Banff and a visit to bf's extended family.

I also forgot to mention (to RL people as well as here) that bf and I are engaged! We won't have a full wedding, just a dinner with immediate family, but I bought a lovely red qipao (thanks to

x_los's friend's recommendation). I'm pleased that we finalized the restaurant reservation; getting a room for <20 people was oddly difficult, especially since I wanted the food to be good. It'll be Cantonese food, but to be honest, given the demographics of the restaurants in the area as I grew up, that's the food I associate with celebrations anyway.

The year ahead

I suppose I always will put down something about trying to be a better friend, trying to be better about reaching out and maintaining friendships. It's something I know has to be worked at, that it's a skill that needs effort to maintain.

I didn't think I want to do formal resolutions this year, but I went back to look, and I really did hit most of my resolutions (except the one about organizing my DW tags lol). I haven't been good about writing long form meta lately, but doing Topic Topics February really forced me to produce a handful of posts that I am proud of early in the year. Surprising.

So, since it seemed to have worked last year, resolutions:

- More long term projects at work, and more focus during work hours
- Carried over from last year, as it's a continuing resolution, be better about reaching out to people (both in and out of fandom)
- Optimize the keeping-food-on-hand process; perhaps more ready or easy to prepare foods are needed
- Read more original works, with an eye to works from a greater variety of countries
- Two cnovels again

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

eglantiere

ohhhh, congratulations on your engagement! i'm so happy for you, and happy the logistics have worked out.

this year has been - very difficult - in terms of maintaining relationship, for a lot of reasons. in this sense I love that dw just... stays in place, and you can always come back in, it offers something of an anchor that more fast-paced platforms lack, and it's something that feels needed. (I switched to emails over chatting with one friend for this entire year, and it helped, too, although it's a relief to be back to chatting now too.)

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