a conspiracy of cartographers

Dusting off Dreamwidth because I actually have a longform post! Here, I'm feeling helpless and sad this week in the face of current politics, so I wrote up a bunch of feelings about being Jewish American! Idk idk have some navel-gazing.

( I don't remember learning I was Jewish. )

It occurs to me that I may be terrible at New Year's resolutions in part because my brain thinks of years as having September-August cycles (ie the way a school year/summer break is scheduled) rather than January-December ones. Leaves beginning to turn color? Time to figure out what habits and schedules to change in order to optimize the year! I think this means I should take advantage of my brain's comfort with fall as a time of change in order to make some nicer habits!

Obviously one of these is posting to DW more often. I have stopped worrying and learned to love twitter, but it has no archival-diary function, which is my favorite thing about journaling sites. Also, wow, being able to condense my thoughts is a nice skill, but at this point I feel like I need to relearn how to uncondense them. And so: an uncondensed list of things I would like to do!

1. Get back on tumblr tbh. I need to just pare it down to people whose posts I consistently like, and then give myself a half-hour time limit per day and make myself stop after that before I can go into a weird guilt spiral about never catching up. It's okay, self. Tumblr is infinite.

2. Stretch in the evenings?? The apartment of Gondor often mainlines shows in the evenings (the past few months it's been Warehouse 13); this is the ideal time to roll out a mat and unwind a bit. I have a job that has a lot of heavy lifting! My back has been REAL MAD lately! I should be kind to my body, it's the only one I get unless awesome cyborg enhancements are coming to the general public sooner than I anticipate.

3. Enjoy some new media! I ... have peaced out of Doctor Who so hard :( Instead I am watching Outlander, lololol; I definitely want to give Farscape a go, since it's all on Netflix. (I am told that the viewing order is in some way fucked?? Any pointers from people who know Farscape would be much appreciated.) I have also fallen back into the habit of reading actual books; just finished Jemisin's Dreamblood duology, and Leckie's Ancillary Justice is next on the list. EXCITED.

4. Write ... some books ...? I mean, I have a post-Thor 2 plotty political fic to write with filiabelialis, and unrelated shorter Loki/Amora and apparently Sif/Lorelei fics, and probably some Gamora/Nebula if I can bring myself to care about the GotG part of the MCU enough; but then I also have some original projects to finish! And to start! And to middle! I think the takeaway here is that, just as I need to block out a half hour per day for tumblr and then call quits, I need to block out probably an hour per day for writing (and then NOT call quits if the writing is actually working). When my days were more structured I got lots more writing done per month, so now that I have a job with weird hours I need to do my own structuring.

5. Gonna learn to vid! This has been a backburner resolution for a while, but verity has offered to actually teach me, so hell yes I'm doing that. (She's also offered to teach me how to break an egg one-handed, as per Thor's skill at that in her fic halfway between the gutter and the stars -- GO READ IT it features the very best Thor -- but presumably learning how to break eggs will take less time than learning how to vid.)

I think all this is doable! It'll be nice to settle in and work on getting comfortable inside my life; A and I just redecorated the apartment, so physically it's lovely to be in; I've had lots of summer adventures and am happy to lay low for a bit. Such good summer adventures, though: some New York friends came up to Boston and took me to a One Direction concert with them, which was pretty great; the following week filiabelialis and I went down to NYC to visit (mostly different) friends. And I think I want to get back into the habit of having a narrative for adventures, either the gallivanting ones or the at-home ones. I like the way it makes them feel more permanent.

Summer!! Everything is a riot of green, and the air feels thick, and we keep having blazing sunlight punctuated by torrents of rain. I'm sure by late June I'll be wailing about how I can't stand the heat -- and my sleep is already much more restless, seriously, my body hates heat -- but at the moment it feels like a lovely change. Plus I get to wear skirts and shorts and dresses and tank tops! Yeeeeah summer clothes.

Work feels much less stressful now that -- that it's summer, or identifiably the most stressful single thing in my life, I don't know. It feels very doable, which is nice! I've been entertaining myself by playing Marvel Bingo, otherwise known as the little ping of happiness I get when a customer's name is shared by a character. I've had Tony, Steve, Bruce, Natasha, Nick, Maria, James, Erik, Jane, and (Baldur) Thor, although bafflingly no Clints or Phils or Darcys yet. I've had Virginia and Margaret, along with lots of variations though none of them Peggy, and Elizabeth and variants though no Betty, and I'm not holding out for a Pepper even though there was that guy named Shark once.

Baldur Thor is no longer my very favorite, though, because last week I rung up a woman named Laufey. I now will not rest until I've collected the entire Norse pantheon!! (Terrible life choices.)

I've finally stopped dithering about and showing Housemate K the Angel/Buffy crossover episodes from the first two seasons of Angel, and we've officially embarked upon season six. I'm gonna ... very judiciously edit, for my own self-care, although I think the only one we're actually tapping out of entirely is Hell's Bells. Possibly we'll do Once More With Feeling tonight! And meanwhile I've given up on basically all other tv except Elementary and Warehouse 13 with Polaris, because PERFECT SHOWS ARE PERFECT, or at least mostly perfect, and if I need a break from Buffy I might do judicious rewatches.

Also WisCon is in three weeks! I feel a little bit like I'm carefully pulling myself from one nice thing to the next -- post-work telly-watching with K! adventures with scribe this coming Friday! out-of-town friend visiting next weekend! WISCONNN -- but I also feel like that's okay right now, and a lot better than I was doing, and honestly if I have a series of bright points to head towards, that feels much nicer than the tired determined slog.

All the leaves are turning, and it's so cold at night now that I can't go outside without my first few breaths hitching into coughs. (Thank you, very mild asthma, you're my favorite.) I traditionally hate November because 'tis the season of brainbads hitting many of my friends, but -- winter is coming! I love long coats and hot drinks and SNOW, and skeletal branches against the sky that goes a very specific blue this time of year; and I love how I can take long walks without getting overheated, though sometimes warm enough to take off my outer layers, and I love the weird looks bundled-up passersby give my bare arms.

I may finally have a second job that will stop me burning through my savings, but it's at the hovering point between accepting the job offer and my background check going through, so even though I know intellectually that I'll be hired by the end of the week, it seems unreal right now; and I don't have my hours yet, so I can't collapse the actual shape my life will take from the various possibilities. (I did offer to start working anytime after 4 AM, so I could potentially have a workday that gets out a little after noon, and have whole glorious half-days for errands and writing and time with Amiel when they have early days. I know I'll spend the rest of the month hating myself before I adjust.)

I'm also going to have Emma cut off all my hair this weekend -- proper all of it, I'm angling for a pixie cut with a potential for spiking. Why? Because my hair is a fluffball I can never figure out how to do interesting things with; because it always gets in the way when I'm kissing someone; because my default sartorial choices are in the casual-cute-femme range and I'd like to be a bit more visibly queer; because, fuck it, CHANGE THINGS UP, who cares if it's the wrong time of year for a haircut, more cute hats & scarves for me!

This entry actually brought to you by my blind election terror. I voted! absentee in North Carolina! I deeply and sincerely hope it goes blue again this time! The apartment of Gondor is probably going to dig down this evening with booze & blanket forts and check the news on the internet as it rolls in. All recommendations for news sites with streaming video most welcome, by the way.