Can't take the fandom out of the girl
Dec. 14th, 2022 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterMood of the day: the abject mortification of hitting 'post' on a giftfic comment so long overdue that you're not even sure the author wants to hear from you anymore. I'm nearly done digging my way out of the overdue comments hole, and feeling very guilty at having left so many beautiful fics sitting unacknowledged for so long. (This is not me fishing for reassurance, btw. Life happened to me and I wouldn't un-happen it for anything, but it happened in a way that must have been hurtful and disappointing to people who worked hard to make me something nice. I'm sitting at a gently remorseful midpoint on the 'no big deal' to 'I'm the scum of the earth' spectrum, which I figure is probably a fair place to be.)
I'm starting to feel the itch to be back in fandom again, and especially to be back in exchanges. I just need to be a lot more realistic about what I can commit to under my new life circumstances. I don't have the same amount of free time as before, and even in what free time I do have, I don't always have the energy for productive fandom stuff. More than anything it's just a huge mental shift to make, because I've always tended to be pretty all or nothing about my hobbies. Like, I've never really done just a little bit of something I'm into - either I don't care enough to bother at all, or I get super intense and pour all my available energy into it. (My husband has suffered a lot from this tendency. All those TV shows he's fallen seasons behind on in the vain hope I'd someday stir myself to watch them with him! And then he takes me to see one (1) Star Wars movie and gets years of Kylo Ren Hell for his efforts.)
But the fact that I can't go on weekend-long treating binges or spend hours writing a single comment doesn't mean I have to quit. I just have to approach things differently. The biggest thing will be learning to write in short bursts and let fics come together over time, instead of getting deep into the zone and churning out thousands of words in one long sitting. Can I actually make a change that big? IDK, it's literally the opposite of my lifelong writing process. But it's either try or quit writing for the next few years, so. Might as well try. The other day I had a fic idea spontaneously come to me for the first time in forever. It's very modest, so probably the perfect kind of ficlet to start with.
I'm also thinking of signing up for Chocolate Box as a test run. The low minimum should make it achievable even if (when) I meet teething problems, and my commenting approach will just have to be 'as long as I can manage in a new, shortened sitting'. It's a bummer because I actually really LIKE slowing down to articulate every last tiny thing I love about my gifts, but it's not worth a noncommenting relapse. 2023 Lucy will be chilled-out, balanced Lucy who does her thing in moderation and neither misses out on all the fun nor stresses herself out trying to cram in too much of it.
I'm starting to feel the itch to be back in fandom again, and especially to be back in exchanges. I just need to be a lot more realistic about what I can commit to under my new life circumstances. I don't have the same amount of free time as before, and even in what free time I do have, I don't always have the energy for productive fandom stuff. More than anything it's just a huge mental shift to make, because I've always tended to be pretty all or nothing about my hobbies. Like, I've never really done just a little bit of something I'm into - either I don't care enough to bother at all, or I get super intense and pour all my available energy into it. (My husband has suffered a lot from this tendency. All those TV shows he's fallen seasons behind on in the vain hope I'd someday stir myself to watch them with him! And then he takes me to see one (1) Star Wars movie and gets years of Kylo Ren Hell for his efforts.)
But the fact that I can't go on weekend-long treating binges or spend hours writing a single comment doesn't mean I have to quit. I just have to approach things differently. The biggest thing will be learning to write in short bursts and let fics come together over time, instead of getting deep into the zone and churning out thousands of words in one long sitting. Can I actually make a change that big? IDK, it's literally the opposite of my lifelong writing process. But it's either try or quit writing for the next few years, so. Might as well try. The other day I had a fic idea spontaneously come to me for the first time in forever. It's very modest, so probably the perfect kind of ficlet to start with.
I'm also thinking of signing up for Chocolate Box as a test run. The low minimum should make it achievable even if (when) I meet teething problems, and my commenting approach will just have to be 'as long as I can manage in a new, shortened sitting'. It's a bummer because I actually really LIKE slowing down to articulate every last tiny thing I love about my gifts, but it's not worth a noncommenting relapse. 2023 Lucy will be chilled-out, balanced Lucy who does her thing in moderation and neither misses out on all the fun nor stresses herself out trying to cram in too much of it.
