Tag: goals

2021 Retrospective

What a year! Or, I suppose, three-quarters of a year, since I didn’t post my 2021 Prospective until April 2021!

2020 lingered into 2021, and it seems to be tagging along into 2022, as well. We are still living the pandemic lifestyle, which for me is also the pajama lifestyle, despite my best efforts at this year’s theme. As I write this, Omicron variant is surging throughout the U.S., and I have spent the last two weeks either hiding out in my house or in the woods.

So, without further ado, let’s talk about my 2021 theme — “making my outsides match my insides,” i.e. my year-long focus on dressing up my meat car.

How’d I do?

Er… not so well.

I’m hesitant to call anything a failure — “I learned 100 things that didn’t work,” etc — but I was probably less invested than I have ever been in one of these themes.

And, in fairness, I knew it going in. After all, it took me three months to write my 2021 Prospective! I even talked to my therapist about the ambivalence I felt going into the year.

And as a result… I saw few results.

Time-lost gentlethem?

I still don’t look like a time-lost noblethem in my day-to-day life. I still routinely spend my days in pajamas or athleisure.

I did, however, pull together some cool outfits for parties!… of which there were few in 2021.

Stylebook?

I did add a bunch of clothes to Stylebook — 52 tops, 16 bottoms, 4 pairs of shoes, 7 dresses, and 20 accessories!

I’m not exactly predictable about using it to record or plan my outfits, though. But! I am still using it as of this week, and that’s not nothing.

Selfiegeddon 2021?

Let the record show that — until today, when I went back and added a whole bunch of forgotten photos — I hadn’t added anything to my “Selfiegeddon 2021” album since July 2021.

However, after collation, I do have 53 photos in there, which means I actually met that goal? Hooray! Here are a few I especially liked:

Snazzual Fridays (or any days)?

A partial success. I did a few of these, but I also frequently got to the end of the month, saw the item in Todoist, and hit “postpone” — especially near the end of the year. I can’t remember which of my selfies were for Snazzual Friday, and I can’t honestly recall what the last one I participated in was.

Body image?

I haven’t gotten more comfortable with having the body of a hobbit and the aspirations of an elf. I can’t say I’ve actually cut my hair as I’d planned, still worried about looking like a chubby teenaged boy. I basically never feel like someone other people would find attractive.

Wardrobe curation?

Generally a success. I got some great new clothes from StitchFix, but I recently discontinued my scheduled fixes, only because I couldn’t fit more in my wardrobe!

I did get rid of some items that didn’t make me feel great, didn’t fit well, or didn’t fit my personal style (such as it is). I also got better about doing seasonal purges.

Health, not weight?

I can’t say I remembered this goal past April 2021! Sweeteners (artificial or otherwise) and beer still have a large role in my diet. I would definitely not say that I killed my sweet tooth or that my diet got better.

But my various health measures remained stable, and I don’t want to kill anyone for a donut, so I can’t say it was an unmitigated failure.

But what did I learn?

I learned that, more important than looking like a time-lost noblethem is… being comfortable.

I can’t even stand having an itchy tag in my clothes; how am I supposed to stand hosiery, fitted suit jackets, or jewelry that clangs against the keyboard?

I also learned: I’m not doing it for myself. I put on real clothes only a) if I’m in a meeting and I’m going to be on camera, or b) in the rare event I leave the house. If I were doing it for myself, I’d do it as part of my regular routine. But I don’t.

I want people to see me and see an eccentric time-lost noblethem. But I’m not convinced that’s something I care about seeing myself; I’m fine with the vision inside my head.

… which doesn’t exemplify “inhabiting my meat car,” does it?

Also: I still struggle to see fat as beautiful. An ad for plus-size lingerie comes up in my Facebook feed, with an actual plus-size model, and I still feel revulsion. I don’t like this, and I wish it weren’t so, but there we are.

I need more positive body role models, but I’m struggling to find them at the same time as I work to cut back on the media I consume.

But! I will say this: I got a lot of joy looking back through those selfies from the year. I do see progress towards loving what I am — towards expressing myself through fashion — even if it’s not what I could have hoped.

Now, on to what else happened this year…

A year of endings

This year, we unfortunately lost two of our cats, Brianna and Burnbright.

Brianna was 15, and passed in March, to an aggressive nasal tumor. Burnbright was 17, and passed in May. He was still recovering from brain surgery to remove a meningioma when complications from diabetes and kidney failure told us it was time to say goodbye.

It’s hard to lose one cat in a year, let alone two. Burnbright was the first cat I adopted as an adult, and has a special place in my heart. Brianna was the cat we never expected to adopt, my beautiful feisty princess who we almost lost once, in 2020.

I still miss them, and it still hurts.

  • My beautiful princess Brianna
  • And my sweet prince Burnbright
Rest in peace, my darling kittens.

One less momentous ending was the end of my Out of the Abyss campaign. You know, that thing that caused me to write 80k words of emotional hurt/comfort with my character’s NPC boyfriend? That had a big impact on me — it literally felt like the end of a relationship.

A year of new beginnings

Because having merely one cat in our house seemed untenable, Matt and I adopted three new kittens in June from the local shelter. They were ~9 weeks old when we adopted them; two of them are biological brothers, and one of them was socialized along with the other two. As soon as we saw the trio, we knew we couldn’t split them up.

Nerds that we are, we named them after characters from P.G. Wodehouse novels — Monty Bodkin, Gussie Fink-Nottle, and Pongo Twistleton.

The only thing that has made the stress of this year bearable is having these kittens around; at my most bereft, I would just take a break to pet them.

  • Mr. Pongo Twistleton
  • Mr. Monty Bodkin
  • Mr. Gussie Fink-Nottle
Presenting, left to right: Egg, Bean, and Crumpet

Also this year? I became a manager — my title is now Engineering Manager, Frontend, and I have a team of two reporting to me. Nothing can really prepare you for management, but I’ve been studying the theory and attempting to apply that to my work. My company has also provided a great deal of training, mentorship, and onboarding assistance in this regard.

Other interesting stuff

  • I read 16 books. I did not reach my goal of 27, but honestly pandemic brain has ruined my ability to read, and reading is a habit I have to relearn.
  • My first short story publication — “The Mirrors of Her Eyes” — appeared in Daily Science Fiction.
  • I queried 10 different agents for Lioness; had 5 requests for partial/fulls, but so far no offers of rep.
  • Did a “Words in May” challenge.
  • Wrote 35 blog posts
  • Wrote 80k+ words on Bright Future, my druid and drow-fancying retelling of the Out of the Abyss adventure.
  • Started playing Pathfinder 2e, running through the Agents of Edgewatch module with some marvelous human beans I somehow met on r/lfg.
  • Traveled to San Diego for a work retreat. I stayed at the historical and haunted Hotel del Coronado, met my coworkers for the first time, and saw my friend Skye for the first time in 15 years. Of course, I also took lots of pictures of flowers and sea life.
  • Sunburst anemone, Anthopleura sola
  • Black tegula (sea snail), Tegula funebralis
  • Heermann’s gull (Larus heermannii)
  • Sweet potato sea cucumber (Molpadia arenicola)
  • Eccentric sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus)
  • Gould beanclam (Donax gouldii)
Photos from Coronado Beach in Coronado, California (near San Diego)
  • Visited my mom several times.
  • Went camping with my dad in August, in some of the worst heat of the summer!
  • Hosted a visit from Matt’s parents.
  • Started my Morrowind Remastered stream and YouTube series.
  • Spent 3 nights, 4 days in a yurt in western MA for my birthday.
  • Made 249 iNaturalist observations
  • Took a Bushcraft 101 class
  • Spent a great deal of time in my garden and in the woods.
  • Grew an elderberry from a cutting. (Let’s see if it survives the winter in the ground).
  • Foraged and ate a wild mushroom for the first time!
  • Actually got to do some larping! I played two one-day events for Cottington Woods 2, and a 1-day event for Shadowvale.

All right, friends, I think that wraps it up for 2021. Let’s lay this one to rest and grow just enough in 2022.

Featured image by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash

2022 Prospective

Let’s switch things up this year — let’s write the prospective first. After all, 2021 is over on December 31st, and then I have all of 2022 to reflect; I can literally write the retrospective any time. But the sooner I announce my 2022 theme, and put it down on paper, the sooner I’ll know what I’m fully committing to.

So without further ado, 2022 will be…

The Year of “Enough.”

I’ve felt overwhelmed for a while now by all the “stuff” in my life. In my day jorb, I am an engineering manager at a startup — itself a stressful situation — and in my personal life I try to balance too many hobbies, including larping, TTRPGs, writing novels, and streaming games on Twitch.

This is a lot. A lot of commitments, and a lot of possessions. A lot of mental energy consumed tracking things, maintaining them, and disposing of them when they’re no longer useful. This is the outer and inner disorder contributing to my lack of calm.

It got both better and worse when I started treating my ADHD. I now have fewer “dunwannas,” and hard, boring things are easier to do than they used to be. But at the same time, once I was medicated, I felt like possibilities were open to me that weren’t before. And when that happened, a million ideas I wouldn’t have bothered with before crowded through the door to my attention.

It’s exhausting. Even when I relax, I can’t relax. I feel like a tireless engine that always needs to do, do, do.

My goal in 2022 is to pare down my life to the essentials.

What does this mean? I’ll give you a few watch words and strategies that I have in mind.

Cultivate boredom.

I want to be okay with doing nothing, even just for a few minutes at a time. Meditation helps, when I actually do it. But there are other ways to be bored.

Watch my kittens play.

Pet Lirazel.

Stare out the skylights.

Listen to the hum of the refrigerator.

“For every new thing you bring into your life, ask yourself: what will you give up?”

These words of wisdom came from Janessa, the director of marketing at my company and an all-around brilliant person. I would have phrased this less eloquently by saying something like “interrogate everything that comes into your life.” Or: “one thing in, one thing out.”

There’s a tricksy bit here. Many commitments aren’t explicitly brought into my life; they sneak in. Thus cultivating awareness of their arrival is a necessary first step.

For example, my Pathfinder group decided to commission art of the party. And by “decided” I mean I instigated it, and thus I’m the one who had to compile everyone’s preferences and communicate with the artist. Did I think of that before I posted “hey folks wanna get some party art done?” in our Discord?

I did not.

Was it worth the time I spent herding cats? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see.

But I am getting better at…

Saying no.

Or at least, better at saying, “maybe,” “let me think about it,” or “let me check my calendar.”

It might be worthwhile keeping note of the things I say “no,” “yes,” or “maybe” to in a single day — maybe in my journal? What we measure, we improve, after all. For example, recently I said…

  • “No” to getting a book out of the library when I have three in progress and hundreds unread on my shelf.
  • “Yes” to playing in a new D&D campaign (that I’ve been wanting to play for a while) — and I’ve been pretty joyful about this.
  • “Maybe” to buying a Worldcon 2022 membership from someone who can no longer use it.

Likewise, I think it’s important that I reflect on what I have brought into my life, and how it’s made me feel. I bought an RPG sourcebook recently, rather expensively, which turned out to be not what I expected. I might still get value out of it, but probably not what I anticipated. How could I have prevented mistakes like this?

And when that fails…

Get rid of the stuff that no longer brings me joy

Declutter, in other words. Both physical things and intangible things like commitments. Recurring expenses. Clothes that no longer fit. Books that represent a person you no longer are, or a life you’ll never lead.

I suppose this is a little Konmari-ish, though I can’t really say I love her methods. Some of it seems very silly and woo-woo to me; I will not start my decluttering journey by thanking my house, sorrynotsorry. I’ve also looked into The Home Edit and uhhhh those ladies have way too much energy for me. I know my library has a copy of Peter Walsh’s book It’s All Too Much — I’ve read it before! Maybe it’s time to take a second look.

… goddamn it, Lise, you’re doing it again. Even if they’re library books, even if they go home after three weeks, they’re still mental clutter.

Ultimately: what a home organization system won’t tell me is what stuff no longer fits my life. That’s a path I have to walk all by myself.

In any case, I started my decluttering today — a “Begin as You Mean to Go On” strategy, as Leigh Bardugo would call it — by going through one of my bookshelves and getting rid of a number of books. Technical manuals that are so old they’re useless, books I have to be honest about never reading, etc.

In the process I discovered…

It’s harder to get rid of things than to acquire them

So now I have a box of books I don’t want sitting in my guest bedroom, right? What am I going to do with them? They’re still taking up room in my house.

I can’t find any book donation bins near me. My town library isn’t taking them right now. The nearest thrift store is a Salvation Army, which I would prefer not to donate to — and the nearest Goodwill or Savers is 40 minutes away in Worcester. The only charity that will do home pickups to my area is the Epilepsy Foundation, and currently they are only picking up clothes, bedding, and shoes.

The library in the next town over is taking some donations of books, so that is probably what I will look into. But that will require me to take some time out of my day — probably a weekday — and drive over there and potentially wait in line and who knows, they might still tell me they don’t take them.

(ETA: I learned that the dump in the next town over has a book donation box! Hooray!)

Whereas if I want to buy a new book, it’s a few clicks away, and it will show up automagically on my phone or at my doorstep.

… maybe the lesson here is “don’t save your credit card info in your browser.” I definitely would do less impulse buying if I had to go downstairs and find my credit card every time I wanted to buy something.

The decluttering burst

I learned about this from the Be More With Less blog. It’s literally “let(ting) go of one hundred things in less than an hour.” It’s even easier if you count throwing out trash.

I’ve tried it a few times, and honestly, the hardest part was counting how many things you got rid of.

But seriously, folks…

No more books.

I have SUCH a backlog. Maybe this is a good year to conquer Mount TBR. As I said elseweb…

If I really, really need to read books that aren’t on my bookshelf — like, say, for the book club at my job — I can use the public library. But as I said above… for the love of gourd, stop, Lise.

Regular connectivity detoxes.

I love ye olde W-W-W, I really do. I work as a web developer, after all! And how else could I miss half of a movie by falling down an IMDb rabbit hole?

I’ve talked before about the “attention economy” that is social media, and what a drain it can be on our lives, so I won’t say more here. But there’s another piece to this, which is the fact that we now have the entirety of human knowledge at our fingertips, on our phones. For someone like me — with ADHD — this can be the source of more “brain stuff” that we don’t need.

For example, recently I learned about 1000 Hours Outside — a challenge to spend a thousand hours outside in the next year. It’s mostly aimed at kids, but adults can play, too, and once I saw that one of the trackers was a coloring sheet, I was ready to sign up.

Noooooo, Lise. A thousand hours outside in a year is ~2.7 hours per day, and how tf would I fit that in my life? Do I just want another thing I to feel obligated to do? I already have a hard time getting outside as much as I would like; this would only make it harder. To say nothing of the mental effort of tracking that time, or figuring out what counts as “outside” time.

So, it’s important to me to get away from it all ™, where all is “a constant drip of all the world’s knowledge and more new ideas than can fit in my head.” A complicating factor is my seeming inability to just ignore the internet if it’s there; if I can be connected easily, I will be.

One solution I found: Last year I spent three nights in a yurt in western Mass the week of my birthday, and I just made a reservation to spend four nights there again this April.

I chose this place because of a very specific feature — there’s no wifi in the yurt, and cell reception in this part of MA is spotty. I left my phone locked in my car for most of the weekend, and checked in once a day with my husband, when I was up at the main house and had access to wifi.

Of course, I can’t spend four nights in a yurt all the time, so I will also need to figure out some way to get short-term detoxes, as well. Something to noodle on.

Banish perfectionism.

I’m working on it.

Time-boxing helps.

Making myself sit here and finish this post and not eat until it’s done also helps.

Speaking of…

That’s all, folks.

I’ve screamed into the void enough for now. Maybe I’ll add more later. Maybe I won’t. Now I’mma go eat dinner.

Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash

2020 Retrospective

What. A. Year. After the past 12 months, I would like to go back to living in precedented times, thank you very much.

But hey, a long time ago in a galaxy far away — when COVID-19 was just a whisper on the wind — I wrote a 2020 prospective, where I set the theme of “green witch.” As I do every year at this time, I’d like to reflect on how that theme played out over the course of the year.

Staying in touch with the natural world

Despite its awfulness — despite a pandemic and losing my job — something beautiful came out of the year for me. When my time-intensive social hobbies (like larping) disappeared overnight, I had much more time and energy to devote to the natural world.

This year, I made ~700 observations on iNaturalist. I learned to identify many new taxa — mostly plants, but I also started getting into mushroom identification and mycology. I foraged wild foods, and made things out of them. I discovered new conservation areas and hiking trails. I laid on the ground by a vernal pool for nearly an hour, observing fairy shrimp. I did several “socially distant” hikes with friends, teaching them what I knew about the natural world.

For once in my life, I saw the turn of the seasons, day by day and week to week.

To my points from the original post:

Planting a garden. I did this, to varying degrees of success; I tried to grow tomatoes, bell and jalapeno peppers, parsnips, and lettuce from seed. I had my hands in the earth; I tilled the soil; I watered my plants; I repelled woodchucks and blossom end rot.

The final product was meager — a bumper crop of tomatoes, a few peppers, and not much else — but the experience was worthwhile. Caring for plants was something that took me outside nearly every day, even when I didn’t have the time or inclination to dive into the deep woods.

Foraging wild foods. I did this, too! We discovered the brambles growing as volunteers in our backyard were in fact blackberries, and Matt harvested them and made a delicious blackberry ice cream from it. I also made zucchini bread with autumn olive I had harvested from a local tree. (And learned, in the process, that autumn olive really should be pitted before doing so).

Sadly I did not find a great source of elderberries this year — I saw a few plants, but not close to me or in a place I’d feel confident with harvesting.

Taking a nature walk once a month. Sort of? I was out in the woods a LOT this year, and it probably averaged out to once a month. But most of it was in the spring and early summer, my favorite seasons for natural observation. I don’t think I got out in the woods at all in July, and December was also a wash for me.

But I also logged more iNat observations this year than I had in previous years combined, and I participated in a two virtual bioblitzes, so I really don’t feel like I “failed” here.

Also it’s important to remember that one doesn’t need to “get out” in nature. Wildness is everywhere! I found new-to-me plants like bush honeysuckle and broad-leafed helleborine and European beech while out on my runs. I got up close with a garter snake basking on the tarmac of my road. And I just now returned from a walk down my street where I saw a red fox cross the road in front of me.

Honoring the cycle of the year

My first thought is: I would have liked to spend more time on this, on slowing the passage of time through observing it, turning regular time into a festival heterotopia. I especially wanted to honor the solstices and equinoxes, those turning points of the year — but I never quite managed to make it happen.

But I’m thankful for what I did do. I observed my usual traditions around traditional Western holidays — Muppet Christmas Carol at Christmas, Vincent Price movies at Halloween. In celebration of finishing another (final!) round of Lioness edits, I hosted watch parties of several Three Musketeers movies. I bought holiday and birthday presents, and took pleasure in selecting the right gifts.

Plus, one thing observing the natural world regularly did is help me see the passage of time. I watched maple buds turn into leaves turn into forest litter, and that taught me much. I saw the mycelium underlying the whole forest floor, and learned you cannot kill me in a way that matters.

(Description: screenshot of a Tumblr post, reading:
Me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit
Mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters.
Me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT SCARED OF YOU)

Given all that, maybe it doesn’t matter that I didn’t do anything to celebrate the solstices.

Living hyperlocally

I got to know my town and neighborhood much better this year. I chatted with neighbors (and sometimes argued with them) on the Facebook community for my town. I learned where to find one of my favorite spring ephemerals from my local nature group. I started having milk delivered to my house weekly from a local dairy. I discovered new trails, new landmarks, new lands, within the boundaries of my own town.

To the individual points:

Attend a town meeting. I did not do this — perhaps because the last town meeting was held in a gymnasium at the height of the pandemic. However, thanks to vote by mail, I did vote in local primaries for the first time, which was enlightening.

In January, before the pandemic hit the U.S., I attended a meeting of the landowners’ association I’m part of, and learned about our efforts to fight fanwort in the lake. (I also walked the two miles to the high school where it was being held, rather than drive).

Do more local shopping. This was hard to do this year — again, because pandemic, and the shortage of many goods at the beginning of it. (I never thought I’d be lining up at the Hannaford at 7am for toilet paper).

But also during the pandemic, my local dairy started delivering door to door! I now enjoy having local eggs and milk and creamer on my doorstep every Thursday morning.

Other than that, I shopped at Aubuchon more than Home Depot (small chain vs. large chain), and I tried to use Target rather than Amazon (chain that generally treats its employees decently vs. putting more money in Jeff Bezos’ pocket).

It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.

Improve my relationship with my neighbors. I can’t say I made much progress on this, even though the pandemic might have given me the opportunity to.

Not being wasteful

Complete Uber Frugal Month challenges in January and June. I did this in January but not in June, ironically, even though in June I was out of a job and strapped for cash flow. I found the exercises interesting to do, teaching me a great deal about my relationship with money, and what my goals were.

Read The Zero Waste Home, and incorporate at least one of the tips into my life. I did not read this specific book due to interminable waitlists (thanks, pandemic), but I did read 100 Ways to Go Zero Waste, so I think that counts. I took notes on the tips I liked, but there was a lot of dumb in there, I gotta admit. It was emblematic of “clueless city dweller has some bullshit ideas about the natural world,” which tends to get my virtual panties in a wad, since ecological consciousness is intrinsically linked to nature appreciation in my head.

What I am doing differently, trash-wise, from 2019:

  • Cleaning out K-cups to recycle the plastic and aluminum. I also canceled my standing order for them, with the goal of eventually not using them at all. (Once I get through the backlog).
  • Recycling a few more things I didn’t know I could recycle (Recycle Smart MA is great for this, if you also live in the Bay State).
  • Using handkerchiefs and rags instead of paper products more reliably. (Still not gonna clean up cat sick with a rag, though).
  • Driving a lot less — again, thanks to the pandemic and now having a fully-remote job.
  • I asked for a bunch of things for Christmas that would help with less wasteful living — Stasher bags, beeswax wraps for food — but, alas, did not get them. Will have to invest in some myself.

I’d like to do more in the future, of course, but as in everything, home environmentalism is a practice, not a destination.

Pay off my student loan and Matt’s car loan. Done! Actually, we paid off all our consumer debt this year, despite my not having a job — including the balance on our HELOC post-bathroom reno, and credit card debt for Brianna’s health crisis in January/February. The combination of frugality, a severance package with release of claims, increased unemployment due to the pandemic, and finding a new job relatively quickly actually left our bank account in a pretty good state.

Knowing things

As I said in my original post, intellectual curiosity is already a huge part of my life, so I expected this sub-theme to be easy to accomplish.

In some ways I was right — if nothing else, I know far more about identifying fauna, flora, and fungi than I did a year ago! However…

Join the “friends of the town library.” As I mentioned, this goal required me to print out a form, write a check, and go into the library LIKE A BARBARIAN. (A barbarian librarian?)

… and then said library shut down completely for the first six months of the pandemic.

It’s been open for browsing-by-appointment for a couple of months now, so if I was really determined, I could have done this. But let’s be real, I was more determined not to get COVID.

Visit a few new-to-me local parks, attractions, hiking trails, and businesses. The pandemic made this difficult for inside locations, but as far as hiking trails and conservation areas went, I get a gold star here.

I visited Robbs Hill for the first time to photograph hepaticas, on a tip from someone in my local nature group. I visited Cowdrey Nature Center for the second time ever, taking a new trail that made a ring around the river/swamp in the center, and identified all kinds of new-to-me mushrooms and spring ephemerals. I discovered the Lane Conservation Area and the Large Town Forest, both of which border the Hickory Woods I know well. Speaking of, for the first time I walked the ring/main trail of Hickory Woods, from the “official” trailhead back to my house. I also visited the Peabody Conservation Area, another patch of conservation land affiliated with the North County Land Trust.

My Buy Nothing group also played a part in learning more about the roads of this town! My journeys to pick up gifts brought me to parts of the town I’d never explored before, including the weird warren of roads northeast of Hickory Hills Lake, disconnected from the rest of the town when the lake was created as a reservoir.

I also had the opportunity to look at a map of my town from the 1880s, and that’s when I realized the street I live on once cut directly across what is now the bottom of the lake — yet another section of road that once connected the neighborhoods on two sides of the lake. I also saw small roads and farms where the Large Town Forest now is, and that explained for me why the trails looked wide enough to drive a truck through (spoiler: they were), as well as why there were miles and miles of fieldstone walls back there.

(Well, that’s also just… New England. As I tell ANYONE WHO LISTENS, Massachusetts is more forested today than it was in Thoreau’s time. Underneath our feet are the remnants of thousands of Colonial and 19th century farms).

Further reading (literally)

I also did some relevant reading this year. One book I read this year and recommend is Farming, a Handbook, by the poet Wendell Berry. His poetry quietly, beautifully asserts that the people who put their hands in the dirt, day after day — farmers — are the ones who understand the natural world best of all. This is a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with!

Relatedly, I also read Dirt Work: an Education in the Woods, by Christine Byl, who worked trail crew at national parks in Montana and Alaska. This book is a series of essays about that experience, working with one’s hands, and the natural world — including the humans that live in that world. Here’s a favorite quote of mine:

Outdoors is not catalog or movie set, not just work site, not even sanctuary, no matter how nuanced my desires appeared (name the plants, still the soul). Outdoors is a place where salmon swim upstream to die where they were born, where bears eat the salmon so they can survive their winter dens, where humans move through calling loudly, intent on fish and berries and bears. It’s a place to be reminded that, while sport is fun, while the rush of summits, linked ski turns, and belay stances are a joyful thing, they are second. Auxiliary to a world that is not playground but homeschool, where I am taught to settle in, over and over, until being outside isn’t about endurance or leisure, but life.

Christine Byl, Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods

On a completely different (but also related) note, I read two of the Discworld Witches sub-series, Equal Rites and Wyrd Sisters. I didn’t think Equal Rites had much to recommend it — it is the infamous Early Pratchett, and I really didn’t like the gender-essentialist division of “witch” and “wizard” which is the core premise of the book. I did like this quote, which was very much in service to my theme of the year:

“Do you think I used magic?”

Esk looked down at the queen bee. She looked up at the witch.

“No,” she said. “I think you just know a lot about bees.”

Granny grinned.

“Exactly correct. That’s one form of magic, of course.”

“What, just knowing things?”

“Knowing things that other people don’t know.”

Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett

Wyrd Sisters, on the other hand, edged into what people love Pratchett for: humor not for the sake of humor, but in service to a greater theme. This one is full of Shakespearean tropes, and (like all books I love), touches on what it means to make art. It didn’t quite go as far as I would have liked, however.

This year I also read (85% of) Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed. It is mostly about space anarchism — as a friend joked, “the through-line is communism.” But this quote, where the main character observes his wife, felt on-theme:

Text of a quote from Ursula K. LeGuin: “Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called “love of nature,” seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her.”

What else?

That’s a lot already! But some other things I am proud of this year:

  • Rediscovered Dungeons & Dragons! I’m now in four different games with two different groups, and I love it. Still hope to blog more about that at some point!
  • Finished the last round of major edits on Lioness (working on a query packet now!)
  • Got my first short story acceptance — “The Mirrors of Her Eyes” is forthcoming from Daily Science Fiction!
  • Wrote some poems.
  • Wrote some blog posts.
  • Wrote (and continue to write) a D&D/Forgotten Realms fanfic, “Bright Future,” which is about my druid’s relationship with a certain NPC in the Out of the Abyss adventure.
  • Read 25 books. (Didn’t hit my Goodreads goal, but this was a rough year for reading. FOR SOME REASON).
  • Found a new, 100% remote job that (three months in) I absolutely adore. (I am now a senior frontend engineer at Fishtown Analytics, the makers of the data transformation tool dbt).
  • Spent a beautiful two weeks with my mom in Plattsburgh (all safety precautions were taken).
  • Recorded a bunch of videos about Edna St. Vincent Millay poems for Youtube.
  • Started a weekly virtual coworking event, which brought together friends from various different social circles (writing, larping, etc). I think it’s been super beneficial to everyone involved, and it’s been great keeping up with my friends and their projects on a weekly basis.
  • Built Teamer, a tea-timing web app.

But most importantly:

  • I did not get COVID.
  • My (highly vulnerable) mother did not get COVID.
  • I did not lose anyone close to me due to COVID.
  • I survived possibly the worst year in recent memory.

Next time we’ll have my 2021 prospective! A warning that “next time” may still be a couple of weeks out — the theme will be “making my outsides match my insides,” but I haven’t plotted out the specifics yet.

2020 Prospective

A slight misquote of Terry Pratchett: “She couldn’t be a prince, and she’d never be a princess, and she didn’t want to be a woodcutter, so she’d be a witch and know things.”

It’s the first year of the new decade, and what do I want to do with it — the year I turn forty?

The theme this year is going to be “green witch.”

… when I mentioned this goal to my friend Kim, their first question was, “Are you pagan?”

So… that’s a tough question. I don’t really want to turn this into a forum on my religious beliefs, but I will say that I have always been curious about pagan nature-based religions, like Wicca or druidry. For someone who grew up roaming through the woods, I find staying in touch with the natural world and honoring the course of the seasons very compelling. But whenever I’ve dug deeper, it has always felt disingenuous to fixate on the gods and practices of a land I have no real connection to.

(Plus sometimes pagan religions can shade in the woo direction too easily. I want an evidence-based way of being in the world, and nature spirituality; is that so much to ask?)

All of this tells you that I’m not going to be embracing my inner pagan. So what is this year about?

“Green” has a few meanings here, and I’ve definitely embraced the ambiguity of the term. I chose it for both “the natural world” and “environmentalism” meanings, with a smidge of “town green,” i.e. the center of a town.

As for how I mean “witch,” I’m drawing from a few fictional sources: Naomi Novik’s book Uprooted, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld witches, and the witches of the larp I’ll be playing starting this year, Cottington Woods 2. (And I’ll even be playing a witch!) I am very interested in the image of a witch as a crone, as a wise woman, as an advisor. Someone who may choose to live in solitude, but is deeply rooted in place, and deeply connected to the people of that place.

With that in mind, I’ve set down a few precepts for the year.

A witch stays in touch with the natural world.

“The witch knows nothing in this world is supernatural. It is all natural.”

Laurie Cabot

I have a love/hate relationship with the natural world. It’s both a sandbox of infinite curiosity and also sometimes deeply unpleasant. Ticks, poison ivy, mosquitos, heat and cold, and the ceaseless movement of wind and air care not for your photo opportunities and learning experiences. Like a narcissist, the natural world can’t really love you back; the best it can offer is indifference.

Which… is a lesson in and of itself, don’t you think? “Loving impossible things” sounds like the title of a course on being human.

To this end, there are a few things I want to try this year:

1) I want to plant a garden. And actually tend it, and harvest stuff from it. Nothing makes you aware of the fractiousness of nature like planting a garden! I have lots of decorative plants and shrubs around my property already, so here I more mean edible plants, like vegetables or herbs. I’ve had gardens in the past, and they’ve all suffered to varying degrees from my neglect. I’m ready to give this another try.

2) I want to forage some wild foods. Not as dangerous as some folks seem to think, especially if you stay away from anything ambiguous. (Like nightshades). Morel mushrooms are trivially easy to identify and tell apart from anything poisonous. Elderberries, too. And I’m fascinated by this recipe for elderberry mead that EB sent me…

3) I want to take a nature walk once a month. Not my normal walk/run, but a journey where the goal is to observe. I want to memorialize these observations in words or in art. Once a month, I think, is reasonable enough to fit into my busy schedule, while still observing the passage of the seasons.

Which brings me to my next point…

A witch honors the cycle of the year.

“The moon has awoken with the sleep of the sun. The light has been broken, the spell has begun.”

Midgard Morningstar

By this I mean both the natural phenomenon, like full moons, equinoxes, and solstices, as well as human celebrations, like Christmas and the birthdays of important people in my life.

Observing holidays is a way of slowing down the passage of time, by making certain days feel special and less like every other day. This encompasses everything from decorations, traditions, gifts, etc.

Right now the way I celebrate the holidays is… non-existent, really. Christmas/Yule is really the only one I have any sort of observance of, which is usually putting up a tree and watching certain Christmas movies. (Muppet Christmas Carol and Scrooged, of course). But I usually do nothing for my birthday or my husband’s birthday, and nothing for any other holiday.

I’d like to change this. Even if it’s just putting out a pumpkin for Halloween, or getting up at dawn on the summer solstice, or going out to dinner on my birthday. These celebrations don’t have to correspond to any faith; nor do they have to be unique to me.

I just want to signpost the fact that time is passing.

A witch lives hyperlocally.

“We were of the valley. Born in the valley, of families planted too deep to leave even when they knew their daughter might be taken; raised in the valley, drinking of whatever power also fed the Wood.”

Naomi Novik, Uprooted

I live in a small town, but I often don’t feel a part of it. I don’t have kids in school here, I don’t go to town meetings, I work in a town 40 miles away from it, and I do much of my shopping in other towns. (To be fair, the latter is largely because it’s so small I have to go to surrounding towns for many needs).

The term “hyper-local” is one that I believe was coined by the Buy Nothing Project — at least, that’s how I heard of it. I heard Mrs. Frugalwoods talking about her Buy Nothing group, where she could donate and receive items in a gift economy model, and that sounded like something I could get behind.

(It sounded very similar to Freecycle, actually, but the rules on Freecycle are much more fast and loose).

I looked into it, but at the time there was no group for my town. I could have joined one a bordering town’s group, but you can only belong to one BN group, and doing so sorta defeated the whole “hyper-local” mandate of the movement.

As part of this theme, I decided I was going to start a Buy Nothing group in my own town. But then a nice member of my community decided to start one like… a week ago, so all I had to do was join it!

There’s more to living hyperlocally than Buy Nothing, of course. (I am, at best, only middle-to-low-buy). It’s making a choice to support local businesses and creators instead of going to the big box store. It’s knowing you can depend on your neighbors. It’s thinking globally, but acting locally.

Some specific hyperlocal things I want to do this year:

1) Attend a town meeting. Our local government is town meeting-based, which means that lots of important decisions are made there — like the plastic bag ban (which I have mixed feelings about), or the decision to ban all marijuana-based businesses from town (which made me livid. Why are you turning down income??) Have I ever attended one of these? I have not, dear reader. I should remedy this.

On a related note, my landowners’ association doesn’t have regular meetings, but when they do, I should attend. Of course I say this, and then they schedule a three-hour meeting to talk about finances on a Saturday where I have a bajillion other, actually fun things I could be doing, so…

2) Do more local shopping. Again, since it’s a small town I can’t find everything here, but I can generally find most things within the tri-city area.

Food is the biggest challenge here, but also the biggest opportunity, depending greatly on season. We have lots of farms in our town, and even more in the surrounding area, but we are also in USDA zone 5, so not everything is available all year. Over the thirteen years I’ve lived here I’ve gotten better at identifying the different local businesses I can frequent, so it’s really just a question of setting up routines around going there instead of the Hannaford.

(And, I mean, I don’t object to shopping at Hannaford; it does support the local economy in some ways. Just not as many).

3) Improve my relationship with my neighbors. This comes back to the Buy Nothing ethos, which states that “the true wealth is the web of connections formed between people who are real-life neighbors.”

Regrettably I don’t have the best relationship with my neighbors. When I moved here, I was new to owning a house, country living was difficult and confusing, and forging relationships with people was at the bottom of my to-do list. I think some of my neighbors took that personally, and I often feel like I’m still paying the penalty for that.

But having a working relationship with your neighbors is just unquestionably a better way to live. If I got along with my neighbors, I might be able to depend on them to watch my cats when I travel, or borrow tools from them, or let me use their shower when the power is out (we have a well, so no power = no water; my closest neighbors have a generator, though). And vice versa, of course.

A witch is not wasteful.

Witches… get their power directly from the earth, which asks for nothing but a sense of balance in return. Yet still, because of their tie to the earth, witches tend to try and protect it, treating others who squander the world’s resources as foolish, and seeking sometimes to undo them.

Cottington Woods rulebook, “Witchery Skills”

This point ties into both environmentalism and frugality — two themes that often (but not always) go hand in hand. A witch, as I said, is tied to place; stewardship of that place depends on preserving its resources, whether that be funds or forests. It also ties into self-reliance, which was the underpinning of my last two years’ themes.

To that end, this year I’d like to…

1) Complete Uber Frugal Month challenges in January and June. Some of you may recall I once had a frugality blog, and it’s something I still care a great deal about — hence why I’m currently doing the Frugalwoods’ Uber Frugal Month. (At least, I am. I wouldn’t say Matt has 100% bought into the challenge). I’d like to do this again when it comes up in June.

2) Read The Zero Waste Home, and incorporate at least one of the tips into my life. I doubt I’m ever going to be anywhere close to “zero waste” — just like I doubt I’m ever going to be “no buy” — but that doesn’t mean I can’t make improvements in this area. And while I’m sure there are many good books about home environmentalism out there, this is one I happen to know about, so I figure it’s a decent place to start.

3) Pay off my student loan and Matt’s car loan. We’re pretty close, and by my calculations we can finish it off this year.

A witch knows things.

She couldn’t be the prince, and she’d never be a princess, and she didn’t want to be a woodcutter, so she’d be the witch and know things, just like Granny Aching—”

Terry Pratchett

To me this precept is all about intellectual curiosity, with a local focus. Intellectual curiosity comes naturally to me, so I anticipate this portion being the most fun part.

Towards this sub-theme, I want to…

1) Join the “friends of the town library.” I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but they don’t make it easy — you have to print a form off their website and bring it in with a check. So much for living in the future! But I do really love our library and make a ton of use of it, so I feel this would be a good way for me to give back.

Relatedly, I want to attend a program at the local library. I keep wanting to do this, but again, they don’t make it easy. Since the library closes at 8pm on weekdays, the place is usually about to close up when I’m getting back into town at 7pm or 7:30pm. I think I can make this work with a little more planning, however.

3) Visit a few new-to-me local parks, attractions, hiking trails, and businesses. I’ll start by coming up with a list of places I’d like to try!

I think that should keep me busy for at least another year!

2019 Retrospective

For the first time in a long time, this post doesn’t feel like an apology. This was a great year, and I can’t help but think that my theme for 2019 — emotional homesteading — is why.

As outlined in that post, my emotional homesteading plan had six main points. Let’s go over those first, and then I’ll have some things to say about what else happened this year. I might even take some time to reflect on the entire decade!

Emotional Homesteading

1) Meditation and mindfulness practice

This year I forged a regular meditation practice, with some help from the Calm app, which I love. I only started using Calm in May, but from the records it keeps, I estimate I meditate two out of three days, for an average of 10-12 minutes each time.

This habit has helped me to stay on an even keel despite some rough seas this year. Meditation really is a practice, like I wrote — I don’t notice an affect my mood and overall happiness if I skip one day, or a few days. But eventually it eats away at that peaceful refuge behind a waterfall that I’ve worked so hard to build. In that way, it’s a little like the sleep deprivation caused by sleep apnea.

2) Boundaries

As I wrote in my original post, boundaries are about knowing the difference between what I want and what other people want. In that vein I wanted to ask “who wants this?” before taking on a new activity.

I also wanted to be more aware that what I want in the moment may be very different from my long-term needs and wants.

This is always hard to quantify, but I think I did okay. One example I can think of off the top of my head is: I turned down Matt’s plan to run a 10k before Consequences next year, because I knew that running it with other people would bring out the ugly competitive part of myself.

Relatedly, I know there were some things I wanted to do — pretty sure they were what I wanted to do, too — that I passed up because I knew it would be too much for me. (Like declining to play Dammerung larp, which looked fascinating to me, but was super far away, in PA, and would have required a high quality of kit).

It’s still tough for me to anticipate how Lise-of-the-moment will respond to a commitment that Lise-of-Christmas-Past has made, but I’m developing some heuristics. Like: don’t schedule things on the Thursday before a larp, or maybe don’t schedule plans in December when you need to prepare to host Christmas for your family, or if you can, take time off to decompress after larps.

3) Self-care

When I wrote about self-care in the prospective, I didn’t use this fabulous quote, which really gets to the heart of what self-care means to me:

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

Brianna Wiest, Thought Catalog

You know I love my escapism! But escapism can be a symptom of something wounded in me.

This past week was tough for me, for Secret Reasons. So it is perhaps not surprising that I chose to start my Saturday with a session of Craft the World, the silly dwarf building game I’ve been playing lately. And I’m at peace with the fact that that’s the best I could do at that moment. Rest is as important to the self-care journey as anything else.

That said, it can be hard sometimes to tell the difference between the need for rest, and plain ol’ experiential avoidance. I need new experiences, but I also need solitude. This quote from poet May Sarton’s journal sums up this tension:

I am here alone for the first time weeks, to take up my ‘real’ life again, at last. That is what is strange — that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone…

May Sarton

I am still learning this balance. This year, I think I pushed it a little, trying to see where my limits lay. And in the process I had some fabulous adventures! I also learned that I’m actually more of an ambivert than I originally thought, but when my depression is bad, I definitely act more like an introvert.

At the end of the day, I feel I showed strongly in terms of self-care this year, forging the sort of life I don’t have to escape from.

First of all, I got back to walking/running in a gentler way. (I actually meant to run a race, for a charity I cared about, and not with anyone I knew — but I came down with a bad cold and couldn’t!) My fitness showed when I visited Bath in November, and was able to walk the six-mile Skyline trail and not be much the worse for wear (except covered in mud).

Then, I went through the process of getting diagnosed with ADHD, and finally got my diagnosis right at the end of December. (Combined type). I still need to get treatment, which is a challenge all its own! (Not a lot of psychiatrists in our area that are taking new patients).

Oh, and I took some baths in my new bathtub 😉

4) Simplicity and minimalism

I did okay in this area. I did a few “declutter bursts,” where you get rid of 100 items in an hour. (Honestly, counting the items was the hardest part). Plus near the end of the year Matt got into the spirit of decluttering and cleaning the house — partially because his parents were visiting, partially because he wanted to be able to work in the sewing room again — and we got rid of a LOT of stuff, including books, clothes, gadgets, and lots of unnecessary paper.

I also re-read Thoreau’s Walden this year, as promised. In the process I remembered that really everything good in Walden is in the first and last chapters, and the middle is soggy and tedious.

I did not succeed in going through my collection of indie perfumes, mostly because I boggle at what to do with all of them.

5) Creativity

I’m pretty happy with where I landed with this goal. As promised, I did get back to writing — a.k.a. editing Lioness — but not in any sort of hurried way. I’m still working my way through it. It continues to be incredibly challenging, and I keep taking long breaks and then forgetting everything I wrote and then having to re-read.

Other things I created this year:

I also made some progress on the Neverending Cross-stitch Project, and did some sketching as Melusina. I began work on getting this antique quilt I own ready to hang on the wall, but faced some obstacles with how damaged it was, and needing to repair it.

I was really drawn this year towards the advice espoused in Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism: fix or create something every week. (I’m paraphrasing; I don’t have the book in front of me right now).

6) Connection

I feel mostly satisfied here, although there are some further steps I could have taken.

I definitely was more involved with family — I went out to my Uncle Joe’s house twice for family events, and I hosted a visit from Matt’s parents, and my dad. I went to visit my mom a couple of times, in addition to our annual trip to Stratford, and I also went camping with my dad.

I sent out holiday cards this year! And I’m getting in the habit of sending out postcards regularly. (Let me know if you’d like to be on the postcard/holiday card list. Everyone likes getting mail, right?)

One area I would like to expand: I’ve realized I have a need for what my pal EB terms “intimate friendships.” i.e. emotionally deep, connective, platonic relationships. (Funnily enough, exactly the sort of friendship I have with EB!) I’ve identified a few people I’d like to try to forge these with, but I was shy about reaching out. I hope to do so in 2020.

Overall

Living with the theme of “emotional homesteading” worked well for me. You may recall I was worried that, given the number of goals, and the vastness of the mandate, I might judge myself too harshly when I got to the end of the year. But on the contrary, it all feels like a win to me. Maybe I have learned to be more gentle with myself.

I’m happy with what I learned, what I did, and who I was in 2019.

I’m happy.

Other stuff wot I did in 2019

Many of these things were in fulfillment of my famous 101 Goals in 1,001 Days list, the period of which ends in February. At 45 items completed out of 101, I’ve knocked the socks off every other time I’ve done this list. If nothing else, I’ve gotten better at setting achievable goals and following through with them!

So this year I…

  • Read 26 books
  • Visited Bath, England
  • Attended Lucky Consequences in Christchurch, England
  • Attended the UK Freeforms run of Torch of Freedom in Retford, England
  • Did an “authors and American revolution” tour of historic Lexington and Concord, MA
  • Celebrated my birthday in New York City
  • Made an impromptu trip to Cape Cod, and rolled around in the ocean surf at Race Point Beach
  • Went rock-climbing
  • Increased my retirement account balance by 66% over 2017
  • Built a bridge for the stream 🙂 Although it got washed away…
  • Attended the Stratford Festival with my mom
  • Went camping with my dad, and visited Ausable Chasm
  • Planned and executed a “Skyrim dinner” with Alison
  • Painted and decorated the guest bedroom
  • Completed our bathroom remodel (okay, my part in this was merely organizational, but STILL…)
  • Took a knife skills class
  • Played in four theater-style larps
  • NPCed five Madrigal 3 events
  • PCed four Shadowvale events
  • Read Jane Eyre, which I’ve been meaning to read since forever
  • Donated blood, at great personal discomfort
  • Attended the Big E
  • Went peach-picking
  • Had a picnic on an island in our lake
  • Hiked Mount Wachusett
  • Slept out under the stars
  • Visited New Haven, CT and ate a hamburger at the famous Louis’ Lunch
  • Visited 30 (!) new-to-me Atlas Obscura sites
  • Attended two beer festivals, and visited a number of microbreweries
  • Set up a new compost bin

The toll of the decade

At the New Year’s Eve party I attended, I was trying to figure out where I was physically ten years ago, on December 31st, 2009. I couldn’t recall precisely — maybe at Chad and Amanda’s New Year’s Eve party, when they were still holding them?– but it brought up a whole storm of memories about my life at that time.

In the past decade I…

Changed careers. I’d lost my job in May of 2009, and used it as an opportunity to change careers, from statistics/research analysis to front-end web development. For about a year I pursued a number of part-time gigs in both fields. I was probably just beginning my contract as a full-stack developer at Nowspeed around the time of that poorly-remembered NYE party. In June of 2010 I would start my job as a junior front-end developer at IDG, where I still am today — though a lot more senior now!

(Say what you will about the decade, but I definitely know a lot more about JavaScript than I did ten years ago 😉 )

Wrote a theater-style larp! (Cracks in the Orb, which I mostly won’t run any more, because Reasons)

Got into boffer larp. NPCed my first one, then PCed one, then staffed one for a time. Because I didn’t have enough expensive hobbies, apparently!

Wrote a couple of novels: Gods and Fathers, my last trunked novel, and well as Lioness, which, it seems, I will never be finished editing!

Attended Viable Paradise 17, an SFF writing workshop, and thus joined a community of amazing, brilliant people.

Got serious about my health. I sought treatment for a bunch of chronic health conditions — PCOS, sleep apnea, and my familial high cholesterol — and I am happier for it.

Started running. I’m the most casual of casual runners, but I’m still doin’ it!

Fired my shitty therapist, and got a new, awesome one.

Broke my left ankle.

Had cubital tunnel release surgery after my left hand went numb suddenly.

Traveled to England eight times (!), and Canada three? four? times.

Paid off our second mortgage.

Made some major renovations to the house.

Lost my cat Yamamaya to kidney disease, and thus mourned the first death of a pet as an adult.

Watched my mother become sick with a chronic lung disease, and was powerless to help.

Went to many, many weddings, was an attendant in four (!), and blessedly attended zero funerals.

Drove the same car (a 2007 Yaris) for most of that time. It’s still going strong, at thirteen years and 230k miles!

Did… four? 101 Goals in 1001 Days challenges. I’m on track for this to be the best challenge yet, in terms of number of goals completed.

Overall? I think I’m much happier than I was back then, so despite the trash fire of a world we live in today, it was a good decade for me.

Let’s do this again in ten years’ time.

The last photo of the decade: some pfantastic pfeffernüsse. Or at least the last picture I took. (Otherwise it would be a picture of Matt’s butt in tight Regency era trousers, but while that would please me, I doubt he would like it very much).

Weekly Update: October 22, 2019

Not nearly as much to report this week, but I might as well start you off with something I forgot from last week:

Mead Update

The last quick mead I made — the one with a hodgepodge of spices — turned out well, and I finished it off quickly, sometime in early September.

My long mead is now bottled and awaiting… I don’t actually know? I should probably look at my mead book again and see how long it recommends aging in bottle for.

We now have a finished bathroom, though, which means I can look into making a five gallon batch!

Donating Blood

One of my 101 Goals in 1,0001 Days was to donate blood, something I hadn’t done since college. So… nearly 20 years ago now? At the time they didn’t even tell me what my blood type was, which was somewhat disappointing. So when my company announced they were hosting a blood drive though, I eagerly signed up to donate my 500mL.

I’m glad I did it, but wow… I do not handle it well, and I don’t think I’ll be able to do it again any time soon. Despite preparing by drinking lots of water and having a full meal beforehand, I got very faint, clammy, and nauseous near the end; I really thought I was going to lose consciousness. I had to sit for thirty minutes just to recover, and I felt drained for the next couple of days. Despite all that, they were able to get a full donation.

Blood donation selfie: rocking the pale Victorian aesthetic.

The blood drive nurses were great, though, and I regaled them with facts about Vincent Price. Like the Lise do.

After that, the only problem was that on Friday night I was scheduled to attend…

Shadowvale

Shadowvale event 10 was fantastic! However, I was in not great physical shape going into it, due to the blood draw. I first realized there was a problem when unloading the car and making my bed completely exhausted me. Then, walking up the hill to McKnight Hall for registration, I had to stop twice. I cornered Scott, one of the perm NPCs, and asked him to make a request to staff not to murder me too hard that night.

I managed to make it through the evening, though I only fought in one fight. (Where I managed to actually backstab Alex P! Go me!… of course I was so surprised that I didn’t run away fast enough, and he caught up to me, cut me down, and inflicted me with something, soooo….) I went to bed early, after explaining to many people that I’d had a run-in with a tiny vampire. (I probably should have said “tiny benevolent vampire”, though, since apparently someone interpreted this as having been bitten by a tick?)

I didn’t feel fully recovered until Sunday… just in time for game to end. Womp womp.

The highlight of my event was the Nocturne celebration on Saturday night. Nocturne is the holiday of the goddess my character Melusina worships, the Lady of Mysteries, goddess of luck, mystery, and the night. The last Nocturne that happened in game was memorable for her, too.

This Nocturne involved Mel’s father figure, the Masque of Night. You know, the guy who indoctrinated her in a cult of assassins and then, when one of her assassinations went awry, left her hanging — suddenly, unaccountably, and very literally?

Yeah… he showed up in Crown Expedition encampment, gating in from far-away Avaria. And asked Melusina to kill someone for him.

IT WAS INTENSE, yo.

The Masque of Night was played by staffer Matt M, who I spoke to afterwards about the role. Apparently when he asked Lisa (who wrote that plot) for RP instructions, Lisa told him, “Gaslight her.”

Which he did admirably! I asked him why he left me to die, and his response was something like, “well, you were an adult, I figured you could handle it.” When I told him this was all a lot to take in, he basically told me to pull myself together!

I managed to satisfy him that the deed was done (while conspiring with another Veiled Priest to get the target out of town). Later, when we were talking of the assassination that nearly got Mel hanged, I said something like, “it was messy,” and he did a (very clever, I thought) thing where he was like, “Oh, that’s a critique; fine. I thought you were going to get all emotional about it again,” i.e. how dare you express emotional dissatisfaction with it.

And then in the midst of all that he still goes on calling her “little shadow.” AUGH.

So, basically, it was a fantastically wrenching experience for Melusina, but Lise was going YES YES YES and mentally punching the air. It just proves that there’s no emotion so bad that people won’t pay to experience it.

I also had some great RP with Alex P as the Tower Guardian that Melusina is bound to as a Warden Initiate. He’s clearly kind of a spooky guy, given that he’s a shadow/illusion mage whose first question for Melusina was, “have you ever killed before?”, but he also reminds her that shadow is not the same as darkness, and she needs to step into the light. He’s also been super helpful in answering some cosmological questions, just as a powerful mage who’s been… if not alive, then at least aware since nearly the fall of Wystia.

So, basically, he’s the Benevolent Goth Dad to Matt M’s Gaslighting Murder Dad.

All in all, I have never wanted a larp to NOT end as much as I want Shadowvale not to end. I’m in love with the staff and NPCs, the level of personal plot collaboration I have with that staff, and even the fighting style I’m doing. (Flanking is sooooo fun).

Cottington 2, when it starts, will scratch some of this itch, but it’s still a very different game, and right now I’m having trouble summoning up floon about it.

But hey… there are still four events left, and I intend to make the most of them.

Anyway, on Monday afternoon I found my Matt had made this important modification to my Shadowvale packing list:

Fleece-lined leggings, drawing kit… thankfully Gaslighting Murder Dads are self-packing.

ADHD

As I’ve mentioned elseweb, I’ve been trying to get an ADHD diagnosis. I believe this is something I’ve been struggling with my whole life, but didn’t know until recently wasn’t normal. I feel like I probably have the combined type, with signs of both inattentiveness (forgetfulness, absentmindedness) and hyperactivity (all the self-destructive skin picking habits I have, as well as my impulsivity). This all culminated when I took the ADHD test on ADDitudemag.com and scored a 94%!

There’s been a lot of doctor and insurance wrangling, but eventually I found my way to a psychologist who can diagnose me with the disorder. I put together beforehand a document stating why I thought I had ADHD; after I read it to him, he said, “That sure sounds like someone with ADHD.”

He then gave me a ton of paper assessments to take home, for me and for other people in my life. (My mom had to answer some questions about my childhood academic performance; and Matt gets to basically answer all the same questions I do). Once I fill all those out, I send them back to the psychologist, and he schedules me for a computerized test of executive function. Then he interprets all the results, and refers me back to a psychiatrist who can prescribe meds.

If anyone wants to read my statement, I can share it, but the upshot is that I’m sick of thinking of myself as lazy and not living up to my potential. I really feel like if I can corral my attention, I can do nearly anything.

On that note, I have about three bajillion other things I should be working on, so let’s bring this post to a close…

Weekly Update: September 8, 2019

Peach picking, getting back to editing, my talented friends and their awesome books, and NATURE.

It’s been a while — I spent a big chunk of August on vacation. I’m working on a longer travelogue, but in the interest of writing regularly, here’s what I’ve been up to since I got back, or stuff that was tangential to my vacation.

Peach picking

Last weekend I went peach (and raspberry, and blueberry) picking at Carlson Orchards in Harvard, MA. In addition to crossing it off my 101 goals in 1001 days list, it also meant I got to spend some time with my excellent friends Becky, Arnis, Kim, and Dave.

In the process I…

  • Learned how to tell a peach was ready to be picked. (Half yellow/half pink, with the ridges on the top yielding to the touch)
  • Had some fantastic falafel from Chez Rafiki, a Mediterranean restaurant that has a food truck at the orchard.
  • Discovered that the orchard plays alarm calls of certain birds in their raspberry patch — presumably to keep birds from eating the fruit. What a great idea!
  • Bought a case of their amazing Shandy Stand, which I tasted and loved at the Johnny Appleseed Beer Festival.

Now I have SO MUCH FRUIT to eat…

Reading

I of course got a ton of reading done while traveling!

I finished (at last!) The Unbound Empire, the final book of my pal Melissa Caruso’s Swords and Fire trilogy. That it took me so long to finish is not a mark against it; once I was able to sit down and concentrate, it was engrossing! I kept wondering how various things were going to resolve — the love triangle, Ruven’s machinations, etc — and I can truly say that it delivered an end to the series that was surprising, but, in retrospect, inevitable. I’m truly, truly pleased with the conclusion, and I’m excited to see more of Vaskandar in the new series.

In continuing adventures of “I have incredibly talented author friends,” I finally read Django Wexler’s Ship of Smoke and Steel, the first book in his YA fantasy trilogy, the Wells of Magic. I actually had read part of it already, it turned out; he’d sent it to me to critique back when he was still calling it “Deepwalker.” It’s the story of ruthless mob boss with combat magic, Isoka, who gets thrown onto a giant ship/city, Soliton, and has to figure out how to commandeer it in order to save the life of her sister.

ANYWAY it’s just fantastic. I agree with the reviewer who said that the action scenes are cinematic — in particular I thought the dredwurm fight, with mushroom spores flying around, was particularly colorful. It’s also paced beautifully, pulling you from one adventure to another with curiosity about the magic system, this ginormous ship, and wtf is going on.

Isoka is also a fascinating character; she starts out kind of a terrible person, which is something that’s super rare for a female, first-person protagonist. But her ruthlessness is a tool that she uses to climb the hierarchy of Soliton, and that? That I looooved. (Also she is marginally less awful by the end of the book, in ways that totally make sense).

There was… kind of a love triangle? Although I felt that if you’ve read anything of Django’s, you knew exactly how it was going to end 😉 I was rooting for Zarun, either way. I like my charismatic assholes.

After I marked it as “read” on Goodreads, though, I made the mistake of reading some reviews of it and… man, there are some people willfully misreading the romance in that book. It left me with a combination of “did you read the same book as I did?” and “DING DONG YOU ARE WRONG.” Ultimately I think a lot of people don’t know what to do with a female protagonist like Isoka.

I’ve already preordered the next book, which comes out January 2020, so I think that tells you my ultimate opinion 😉

While I was in Stratford, I also read Jeannette Walls’ Half-Broke Horses, which she describes as a “true-life novel” about her grandmother, who was a homesteader, horse trainer, bootlegger, and teacher in New Mexico and Arizona in the early 20th century. I liked this way better than I did The Glass Castle, which was way too intense for me. It turns out, I just really like stories about people homesteading and being self-reliant! This was definitely a story I wanted to linger in.

Writing

I have been getting back to editing Lioness. Still on draft 3, as I have been for the past… year? Two years? (Too long!) Every time I’m away for any significant period of time, I have to do what I call “reuploading the manuscript into working memory,” which is basically just re-reading it. At 120k words, that takes a bit of time!

However, this reupload, I was pleased to make two discoveries: 1) there were bits that I didn’t remember writing that I found quite clever! and b) I was further along in my edits than I had thought. So that was heartening.

Still, editing continues to be painful. It feels like closing the doors on so many possibilities.

Mead chronicles: the meading continues!

Batch #1, the semisweet mead per Ken Schramm’s The Compleat Meadmaker, is still in secondary fermentation. It is supposed to remain there until it clears and all fermentation has stopped for two weeks. It has cleared, but fermentation is still going, verrrrrry slooooowly, so I’ve left it there.

I’ve picked up a few goodies for bottling it, namely some swing-top bottles, and some Saniclean/iodophor, because I’ve heard so many negatives about sanitizing with bleach.

Last week I put on a new batch of quick mead, cleverly called batch #2, using the recipe from the Elder Scrolls cookbook and a spice blend of my own imagining: cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, juniper berries, and grains of paradise. I have no idea how this will turn out! It may be utterly undrinkable! But at least I only have to wait another week or so to find out.

The mystery mead! How will it turn out??

iNaturalist, and a recent walk in the woods

I’ve become utterly obsessed with iNaturalist, an app and website which allows you to engage in citizen science out in the wild and get feedback on your observations. I started using it when I was up in Canada, and then went through MY ENTIRE CAMERA ROLL and uploaded every nature picture I had, getting identifications for most of them. I just started using it in mid August, and I’ve already logged 80 observations, most of them flowering plants, because that’s kind of my thing.

What I’m beginning to discover is that no matter how many times I tread a certain path, there is always something new to discover — even if it’s just opening my eyes to something I’ve overlooked a million times. For example, I went for a walk today at work, along the Cochituate Rail Trail — a path I probably walk at least a hundred times a year — and saw velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti), which was entirely new to me. (And, unfortunately, an invasive species). I’m also starting to branch out (haha) into tree identification, and suddenly I notice Eastern redbud and witch hazel and shagbark hickory when I pass them.

(P.S. I’m lisefrac on iNat, if you want to look me up there).

Anyway, this past weekend Matt and I went on a long ramble through the Hickory Hills woods and Lunenburg Town Forest, visiting some parts we’d never seen before. It’s kind of amazing how quickly it changes from a dense undergrowth of heath (mountain laurel, partridge berry, wintergreens, etc) to… well, almost nothing, in the parts to the north of the lake. Probably a sign to how recently different parts have been reforested, I would guess.

The bugs were pretty awful — and I was covered up pretty well, due to the high risk of EEE in Massachusetts right now — so it was not the most pleasant or comfortable walk in the woods I’ve ever had. However! I did see some species I’d only read about before, like downy rattlesnake plantain, or cardinal flower.

(When I saw the cardinal flowers, I was, no lie, about 100 feet away, and this flash of brilliant red caught my eye. I had a brief moment of hope — because this was the right season for it, if nothing else — but then almost brushed it off as “nah, it’s probably just foliage of some sort.” But as I got a little closer, it seemed more floral in shape, so I went bounding, literally into a marsh, to take a picture of it).

  • Witch hazel - Hamamelis virginiana
    Witch hazel – Hamamelis virginiana
  • Slender False Foxglove - Agalinis tenuifolia
    Slender False Foxglove – Agalinis tenuifolia
  • Downy Rattlesnake Plaintain - Goodyera pubescens
    Downy Rattlesnake Plaintain – Goodyera pubescens
  • Cardinal flower - Lobelia cardinalis
    Cardinal flower – Lobelia cardinalis

The Year of Habitat: the detailed plan

As I wrote about in my 2018 resolution post, I have declared this the year of habitat — the year of making my home and surroundings more comfortable and habitable, instead of living like an itinerant college student.

I had an intention in that post, but I never talked about what my plan is. I do in fact have one! I’ve been refining it during the month of January, and I thought I’d share it here, for personal accountability.

Rooms and projects

I started by making a list of all the projects and tasks I wanted to get done in each room. This list is aspirational; I’m realistic that I’m not going to achieve everything on the list. This was mostly to give me a sense of how long to devote to each space; I allocated a star rating of difficulty to each room based on the number and size of tasks.

I also wanted to take seasons into account — I don’t want to be working in my unheated basement in winter; nor do I want to be working in the computer room/library in the heat of the summer (i.e. the room that gets so warm, even with central air, that we put an auxiliary A/C unit in there).

There are also some question marks in here. Do I need a new dishwasher? No; the one we have works okay, but it’s older than our tenure in the house, starting to break down, and probably not very energy-efficient. Likewise, I don’t need a new couch or end tables, but our couch is ratty and cat-clawed and our end tables are black-matte-painted monstrosities. (I was gratified when Matt told me, completely on his own, “We might need to consider replacing the sectional in the near future”).

There are a couple of big projects that span the whole house that aren’t always explicitly mentioned here:

One, the previous owners looooooved cellular shades, and installed them in every single room in very… bold colors. (Pink, wine red, baby blue, etc). I really do not like cellular shades. They look cheap, and they break easily — many of them already have. And I do not need pink anything in my dining room, thank you.

Two, the upstairs bathroom needs an entire remodel. On top of fixtures which are BABY BLUE, the bathtub leaks and has been patched numerous times. (We haven’t used it in years, because of this). About the only thing I like about it is the wooden cabinets. We are planning to get some professional help to address this room this year.

The downstairs bathroom isn’t much better. Water has leaked into it from the upstairs tub, damaging the ceiling. The counters and walls are a peach color, and the tile is vintage 1980s. (Matt argues this room needs a full remodel, too. But I’m not as keen to tackle it this year).

Three, skylights. Hey, skylights are great. But in a house with central air… why do they need to open? In my experience with skylights, having ones that open is just asking for double the amount of leaks. And gosh, do these things leak. It will sometimes pour rain in our sunroom, depending on conditions. Replacing them may need to be a thing that happens.

Those are the overarching concerns. Let’s go room by room now:

Kitchen (**)
– new dishwasher?
– finally replace microwave over range
– clean out, replace, or get rid of old coffee pot
– clean out gap between window and screen
– clean behind fridge
– have well water tested (do after a heavy rainstorm)
– glue foot back on cutting board
– Replace bulb above sink

Dining room (*)
– replace, or at least remove, old broken blinds
– get rid of cookbooks we don’t use (which is most of them)
– replace bulbs in chandelier
– Hang/find a place for family photos

Living room (**)
– clean/purge/organize media collection
– new end tables?
– new couch/seating?
– new media console?
– Wash drapes
– Consolidate/digitize my music collection
– Lighting for my ruby flash souvenir glass collection
– Make a sleeve for and hang decorative quilt
– Organize cat files/paperwork

Downstairs bathroom (*)
– Replace light/fan fixture
– Paint walls
– Replace/cover damaged bit of ceiling from water leak

Sunroom (*)
– Replace skylights with ones that don’t open?
– window treatments
– clean/purge/organize board games/rpgs

Mudroom (**)
– cover cat door (with something more permanent than cardboard & duct tape)
– stain step
– clean behind washer/dryer

Basement – sewing room (***)
– better storage for fabric and yarn
– get rid of desk?
– shampoo carpet

Basement – costume storage (*) and workshop (*) – these mostly just need cleaning/purging/organizing

Upstairs bathroom (***)
– (short term) rehang mirror
– (short term) reattach towel bar
– (long term) full renovation – new bath, toilet, sink, counters – want a heated towel rack – better ventilation/fan
– replace skylight window with one that doesn’t open?

Master bedroom (**)
✅ See if curtains I bought work
✅ Set up reading nook
✅ Acquire carpet
✅ move one of the cat posts out
– new lamps (or just new lamp harps/shades)
– Purge unwanted clothes – I’ll give myself half a checkmark for this; I did get rid of a lot of stuff, but could probably do more
✅ Clean/purge/organize loft
– Put up mirror that came with bedroom set? (Requires cleaning stickers off it first)

Computer room(*)
– Consolidate my collection of digital photos
– Remove blinds by the foot of my desk?
– Scan box of mementos/nostalgia
– Select 10 favorite postcards from European postcard collection, frame them, and hang them in my writing space

Guest room (**)
– Paint walls
– Hang three-panel screen
– Remove and sort clothes from loft
– purge/organize larp memorabilia

Deck (**)
– Stain portion of the deck we replaced
– Re-stain the rest of the deck

Garden (***)
– Build a bridge for the stream
– Remove old garden gate

Screenhouse (**)
– Acquire outdoor dining set
– Patch holes in screen
– Better solution than crappy tiles for floor

Schedule

Basically I plan to focus on a difference space each month. Some spaces are more work than others, and some months are busier than others — and I don’t have exactly twelve spaces — but I’ve tried to break it down relatively equitably.

January: bedroom
February: living room/downstairs bathroom
March: kitchen
April: upstairs bathroom
May: guest room
June: garden/screenhouse
July: deck/garden
August: basement
September: mudroom
October: sun room
November: dining room
December: computer room

Upkeep/maintenance

As part of this project, I’d like to become more regular about keeping my house ordered and clean. I have very much found that (to quote Gretchen Rubin) “outer order contributes to inner calm.” Keeping a neat house keeps my anxiety at bay and helps me to be more energetic and productive.

… which honestly sucks, because I hate cleaning.

I’ve seen some pretty ridiculous cleaning calendars going around on FB — something that someone like me, who works full time and has a number of active hobbies, who could not maintain.


Incidentally, this is about all I am qualified to do in Photoshop.

The closest I’ve found to a cleaning and maintenance schedule that works for me is Unfuck Your Habitat’s cleaning lists. Even then, I find them a bit… ambitious, and I have to modify them to keep with the “do what you can; no marathons” ethos of the site. (Which is really great, btw, and aimed at people who have physical limitations, like chronic illness, that keep them from doing as much as they would like). The actual number of items on the UFYH list is greater, but each one seems smaller. No MOPPING YOUR KITCHEN EVERY DAY.

So here’s my modification of the UFYH lists. It’s evolved over the course of January-February, and is continuing to evolve.

Daily list:
– Make bed (if someone’s not in it, i.e. mostly on weekends)
– Wipe down one surface
– Wash dishes
– Put clothes and shoes away
– Deal with incoming mail
– Clean litterbox
– One 20/10 on an area that needs it
– Prepare for tomorrow, if going into the office (pick out outfit, pack up laptop and gym bag, optionally make lunch)

Weekly:
– Vacuum upstairs or downstairs (alternate)
– Wash, dry, and put away laundry
– Wipe down stovetop/oven door
– Take trash out
– Put away everything on bedroom floor

Bi-weekly (every two weeks, not twice a week!):
– Wash sheets
– Wash towels and rags
– Break down cardboard and recycle
– Clean toilets

Monthly:
– Dust all surfaces
– Wipe down baseboards
– Clean out refrigerator
– Wipe down bathroom walls
– Clean light switches and door handles
– Shred or file old bills and mail
– Clean shower
– Mop upstairs or downstairs floors (alternate)
– Do full litter replacement

Seasonally:
– Wash curtains/clean vertical blinds
– Go through closet and sort through clothes
– Vacuum/clean upholstered furniture
– Clean oven
– Vacuum and rotate mattress
– Clean out bathroom drawers and cabinets
– Change water pitcher filter
– Change HVAC filter
– Clean out and organize pantry

Do I do all of this every day/week/month/season? Gods, no. It’s hard to go from mopping your floor once a year to mopping monthly. But it gives me a framework, if nothing else. I always know what I could be doing to maintain the house. So while being somewhat aspirational, it still does spur me to do stuff.

For me the most important daily tasks are washing dishes and doing the litterboxes, and being sure to pack my gym bag on Sunday night, to set the tone for the week. Making the bed only rarely happens, because there’s usually someone in it when I get up — my husband, 1-3 cats, or all of the above. And that’s okay. It’s nice to get into a made bed, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. (Ha).

Weekly, vacuuming takes the highest priority; everything else happens automatically (i.e. I clean the stovetop when I’m wiping down the counters, or Matt does the laundry).

Also note that all I care is that this stuff is done; it doesn’t matter who in our house does it. Fundamentally, things like doing the laundry or cleaning the litterboxes usually fall to Matt; he also cooks all the food. So a lot of these tasks are “do them unless Matt has already done them.”

So far?

January was devoted to the bedroom, and folks, it is so much more comfortable than it was a month or so ago. I have a comfortable space to read in, with a neatly folded blanket on a (relatively) clean chair under good lighting with a stack of books beside it. My closets and drawers are emptier. The contents of my bedroom loft have reduced by half, and I no longer am tripping over Christmas ornaments. I HAVE CURTAINS!!! AND A RUG!! Here is a photo of my progress on the room — alas, I didn’t prepare any dramatic before/after shots.

Is it magazine-worthy? Hell no. Is it a sight better than it was in 2017? HELLZ YES. I felt such a sense of peace and calm sitting in that room last weekend, reading and drinking coffee.

This month — February — I am tackling the living room and the downstairs bathroom. (Short term stuff for the downstairs bathroom, if Matt really wants to do a full remodel). It’s tougher because I’m away several weekends in February (Mad3, Intercon coming up) and it’s a shorter month, but I’m hoping to go furniture shopping this weekend and replace some of our beat-up living room pieces. I like having an area rug in the bedroom so much that I might just put one in the living room, too.

I’m cautiously optimistic.

2017 Retrospective/2018 Resolutions

This is a year that sucked for a lot of people. In many ways, for me, too, the world is a darker, scarier place–

Oh crap, that’s how I began last year’s post. Um. Well. Still true?

This was also a year for some personal achievements, so I can’t condemn all of 2017 to the trash heap. Here’s where I’ve been and what I did.

Last Year’s Resolutions

For 2017 I wanted to complete edits on Lioness and query agents. This was a partial success. I felt a lot of resistance to editing, and I’m embarrassed to admit I avoided it for much of the year. But in the last days of 2017, I “finished” structural edits and send the story to my beta readers. I use the scare-quotes because editing feels like something that’s never finished; Lioness wasn’t so much released to my beta readers as allowed to escape. But: progress.

Write four new short stories. Partial success. I wrote three flash-length stories as part of the Codex flash contest, and started work on two (theoretically short) pieces. Two of those (“The Mirrors of Her Eyes” and “Granny Hubbard vs. the Giant Slime”) have been edited and sent out to a few markets.

Participate in one of the Codex flash fiction challenges. Success! I participated in Flash, Savior of the Universe (FSOTU) 2017, the winter flash contest on Codex, and wrote a story for all three rounds. And my scores weren’t totally shitty!

Read 50 new-to-me short stories. Success! Even though I read the last one on December 31st 🙂 Sam J. Miller’s “Bodies Stacked Like Firewood,” “The Dauphin’s Metaphysics,” by Eric Schwitzgebel, and “Scattered Along the River of Heaven,” by Aliette de Bodard, were among some of my favorites.

Conclusion: In my Year of the Short Story, I discovered… I don’t enjoy short stories as much as I enjoy novels. It has something to do with immersion — I value spending time in a beautifully crafted SFF world, but by the time I get into a short story, it dumps me out into the real world again. Given all this, maybe I shouldn’t spend my limited writing/reading time focusing on them? A fine thing to discover halfway through the year, but there you go.

Other Cool Stuff Wot I Did in 2017

  • Read 25 books
  • Wrote 12 substantive blog posts (i.e. not the accomplishments posts)
  • Visited England and attended Kaleidoscopic Consequences
  • Attended the Stratford Festival with my mom
  • Got my druid Wodehouse to 110 in WoW
  • Completed Nighthold (normal and heroic), Tomb of Sargeras (normal and heroic), and Antorus (normal) with my guild in WoW
  • Did a road trip through Western Massachusetts with EB
  • Did a road trip (with a stay at a theme hotel) in New Hampshire with EB
  • Finally framed the 10-year anniversary gift I made for Matt
  • Completed season one of Zombies Run!
  • Ran my first 5k race
  • Completed two developer self-directed days: one on CSS Shapes and clipping/masking, and a second on CSS Grid layout
  • Visited ten places on Atlas Obscura I hadn’t been before
  • Replaced the lamp globes in my upstairs bathroom
  • Started playing a new boffer larp campaign, Shadowvale
  • Finished PCing my first boffer larp campaign, Fifth Gate (Silverfire)
  • Staffed three Tales from the Cotting House events
  • NPCed five Madrigal 3 events
  • Played in four theater-style larps

What I Want to Do in 2017

As I wrote about in “Moving into my own life”, my theme for 2018 is going to be habitat. As I wrote there:

So, starting in 2018, I am moving — into my own life. I am going to do the things you do when you move: go through my crap and getting rid of what no longer suits, make our house into a comfortable place to live, and keep it that way through regular maintenance. I am going to make it the sort of place I love to spend time, instead of the kind of place I dread to come home to.

I’m still working out a concrete plan on how I will tackle these goals, going through each room of my house. And of course, I have the “Habitat” section of my 101 goals in 1001 days list to refer to.

What else? By itself, that could keep me busy for a year! But I feel remiss if I don’t hit on some other aspects of my life.

Writing: There are more edits ahead first, but by the end of 2018, I’d like to have queried a non-zero number of agents. I would also like to do Pitch Wars or another pitch contest.I will continue to submit my short pieces to markets, until hell won’t have ’em, etc.

Reading: My Goodreads Challenge for 2018 is 30 books. I really admire those folks who read 100+ books per year, but I, dear reader, am not one of them.

Health: I intend to continue to run and mostly stick with a healthy, low-GI diet. I’ll try to take my vitamin D and use my sunlamp more regularly.

Family: I will spend time with my mom, who has a terminal lung disease. I’m already planning to go to the Stratford Festival with her in 2018, her health permitting.

And that’s about it. But most importantly:


The last photo of 2017. I did, in fact, pet more kitties this year.

A much-belated 2016 resolutions post

Said I to myself, at the end of December/beginning of January: “Who needs goals and resolutions? I just want to have fun in 2016! ANARCHY WOOOO.”

And thus commenced some of the worst depression in my life.

Perhaps this attitude is not terribly helpful for my well-being. Perhaps I am not good at undirected fun-having.

Look. I’m having significant issues with self-esteem, internal validation, poor body image, etc. I see how I am constantly looking for external validation, even though I know it’s not going to make me happy. Even as I realize that my self-worth is an empty pit into which compliments and reassurances fall with a thud.

I have to fill that pit myself.

I… have no idea how.

How do you shovel shit into a hole?

It seems like some people do this* by setting realistic goals and achieving them. A sense of mastery, it turns out, contributes to a sense of self-esteem.

Sidebar: Is that it? Setting goals and meeting them? I don’t think so. At the end of the day it’s dangerous to tie our well-being entirely to abilities we may lose. To use a trite phrasing, we are human beings, not human doings. But it’s a start. Suggestions on other ways to fill the pit of self-worth are certainly appreciated.

So I did a tarot reading around the theme of–

–I know that sounds ridiculous, but bear with me. I could write a whole post on my attitude towards “fortune-telling” devices like tarot. Executive summary: I don’t believe they’re supernatural, or have any real oracular ability. But I do believe in the divine trickery of stories, i.e. the message I send to myself in interpreting the cards.

ANYWAY. I asked what will help me in my search for self-esteem, and the response I got was the Ace of Pentacles, which has to do with things like NEW BEGINNINGS and MANIFESTATION OF GOALS.

ace_pentacles
Isn’t this a happy-looking card?

Message received. Set some fucking resolutions, lady.

The towering inferno of last year’s plans

First, let’s talk about last year’s goals: to write 50% of the days and read 50 books.

I did neither of these things exactly. I wrote about 34% of the days, and I read 32 books (counting one I abandoned because it deeply displeased me).

I love writing, but the demoralizing hell of submitting my work and having it continually rejected took a toll on me this year, and I don’t feel I’ve had traction in this area for a couple of months. (This doesn’t seem reflected in the number of submissions I put out there, but my brain is really good at concocting catastrophes).

Reading-wise, I feel like I’ve tackled a goodly number of “tough” but rewarding books this year (like Our Mutual Friend), so the actual number concerns me less.

Overall, these are non-zero numbers, and I’m happy with what I did. Hell, I wrote 51,000 words this year on Lioness, which is nothing to sniff at.

Other cool stuff wot I did in 2015

  • Wrote a couple of new short stories, “Remember to Die” and “Handedness.” The latter I probably won’t do anything with, but I’ve been shopping the former around (see below).
  • Wrote a few new poems
  • Wrote a terribad piece of smut for a local burlesque group
  • Wrote some Fifth Gate fanfic – “Unending Circle” and “The Eyrie Goes to the Beach”
  • Submitted “Powder of Sympathy” to seven places — notably, this was my first time ever submitting to a short fiction market.
  • Submitted “Remember to Die” to a few places
  • Queried three different agents with Gods and Fathers. I think I’m trunking it/backburnering it at this point in time.
  • Started PCing my first boffer larp (Fifth Gate – Silverfire)
  • Made costuming for said boffer larp (an invocation circle, underdress, and overdress)
  • Tried two foods off the Omnivore’s 100 that I hadn’t tried before — curried goat and snail
  • Completed a 21-day habit streak for writing
  • Relaunched this site (as a slightly-more-professional bit of branding. Except for the part where I still swear like a sailor).
  • Attended my first (and so far only) SCA event
  • Played in seven new-to-me theater-style larps
  • Visited Ireland and England
  • PAID OFF THE SECOND MORTGAGE WOOHOO
  • Got a significant raise and promotion at work (to Senior Front-end Developer)
  • Raised my 401k contribution to $80/pay period

The past is boring! What am I doing this year?

Well, first up: I want to finish Lioness (it’s at 91k words), edit it, and begin querying agents. Everything after that is out of my control, and is the sort of external validation I need to stop thinking so hard about.

In the interest of not continuing to go through life like a brain in a jar, I need to get more in touch with my squishy meat body. This, I think, will help with my body image issues. I think my exercise-related goals in my 101 goals list are pretty good, starting with a 21-day habit streak and the introductory fitness ladder.

Oh, an entirely fun and trivial thing — I want to get a tattoo. I’ve had several ideas rolling around in my brain for YEARS (a post about that maybe forthcoming?), and I’d like to finally see ink put to flesh. In particular, I’ll probably opt for the Nerevarine Moon-and-Star from TES III: Morrowind first, which is perfect in its “this is exceptionally geeky but looks mainstream to anyone who doesn’t know better”-ness.

And that should be enough to keep me busy — and, hopefully, happy.

Final note

I have a TON of posts I have been neglecting while the energy-sucking flu has been particularly bad. You may see a greater volume from me in the next few days. Given how infrequently I’ve been posting, I doubt this will be an issue.