half-real worlds of paper and ink

There's a scrawl in my notebook, in my hand, written when I was only half-awake: It's not writer's block, it's just laziness.

--

My problem these days is this strange, overwhelming feeling of disconnect I have with everything. I find it increasingly harder to care about things, even those things I used to love. Perhaps especially the things I used to love. This makes me sad.

I can't write, reading has been something of a chore, and I just don't seem to have the energy to do the things I used to enjoy. I keep blaming work, but, despite it being more stressful than before, I actually have more time to myself these days. (Except when we get stuck in traffic jams. God, traffic jams. Why do they even exist. Where are the time machines? The teleportation devices? The Floo Network?)

I've not been very happy lately (but I've never been a particularly happy person) but I don't think I'm terribly unhappy either. I feel mostly apathetic about everything. A general lack of purpose? I don't know. Maybe.

So. Uh. This is me trying to be better.

March
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
Mothstorm by Philip Reeve
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell


February
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Un Lun Dun by China Miéville
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald


January
Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge
The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida

Someone asked whether I'll be doing Nanowrimo this year. I said, "It's only in November."
The reply: "Yes, that's two weeks away!"
Me: ". . . Oh."

OctoberNovemberDecember has somehow melded into one long stretch in my mind these last few years. Too busy, no time for myself. Too much work. Too unhappy, perhaps.

Nanowrimo has never been one of those things that I get into, thinking, "oh, I'll definitely hit the target this year!" I'm not really sure why I seem to think it's insurmountable. Fifty thousand words, you hack at it bit by bit, you'll get there eventually, right? Though perhaps that's the problem. I'm too stuck on the idea of 1,700 words a day to see the bigger picture.

I should give it a real go, one of these years. Maybe next year is the year. Or perhaps it was last year.

So! There have been things happening, and I keep meaning to post stuff but I never do. I feel like I'm composing entries in my head all the time. They just never make it to the keyboard.

But the most exciting thing is that the trip in September is confirmed! Actually it was confirmed ages ago; I can never remember who I've told about it. Now the itinerary is Edinburgh-London-Paris, though we're actually kinda stumped about Paris. I think we had the vague idea about going up the Eiffel Tower and going to a museum or two and then sitting on a terrace outside a café while drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, though only two of us drink coffee and I don't think anyone actually smokes. (There are only three of us. We'll be there for four days.)

London's mostly sorted, I think. Edinburgh is some vague plans that involve looking at castles and possibly hills (and I fear there may be reenactments of scenes of Jon Snow's angst on the Wall) and even more vague plans of visiting Lymond-related sites (yeah, yeah, I know). Suggestions of places to visit are most welcomed!

--

Where I disappear to when I am not here: work, mostly. I still can't quite tell whether I'm extraordinarily busy or I just like complaining more than other people. Maybe they're just as busy but not saying anything? But yeah, lots of work.

The London trip is now a bit more real -- I have finally renewed my passport! It expired in 2001. 2001. This trip has morphed, somewhere along the way, into the UK trip, and in the last few hours Paris and Rome sneaked into the picture. More like Paris or Rome, not both cities; I still can't choose.

I was reading Connie Willis's All Clear in the bus this morning (time travelling historians trapped in London during the blitz) and realised with a start that I could be seeing the places in this book soon and I was so filled with glee that I couldn't concentrate on the book very well. (I'm glad the book is here, though. I was fretting for the characters at the end of Blackout.)


Also a short trip to Langkawi is also confirmed at the end of March, because arianur is a superhero and could juggle 2,231,594 things at once while I struggle to get one thing done. We have flight tickets and accommodation and a few days by the beach (and maybe shopping).

This weekend will be spent with arianur, perhaps by buying buttons and watching tv and eating sotong goreng tepung even though I am somewhat allergic to squid.

So. So, so, so. If there's anything I can say about the first month of this year, it would be about how I barely managed to keep any promises I made to myself. (There was something about writing more often -- that was pretty failtastic.)

One of the resolutions is to stop letting work bug me all the time, but that hasn't been going all that well. I find myself thinking about work even when I'm not at work, and that kinda sucks. I'm beginning to resent this job, and that's not a good thing. I'm very good at what I do, but lately that they've been demanding impossible things from us and I think I'm getting exhausted from listening to people complaining (all valid complaints, and I join in most of the time, too) than the actual problems.

But never mind work. At the end of last year bought myself a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus (what is with these devices and horribly long names?) and I think it's awesome. One of the reasons for getting it was so I could use it to read on the bus, but I've been using it to stalk people on Twitter and reading fanfic instead. Best laid plans, etc. I did finish Northanger Abbey amidst all the stalking and fic reading, though, so I guess that worked out well enough! I don't get as much reading done in the bus as I used to. Partly it's because of work -- at one point I kept going home when it was too dark to read, and I spent the journey worrying about things in my head and thinking about the posts I could've written had I been better at using a touchscreen. Isn't it strange how all those things you compose in your head just disappear when you seat yourself in front of the keyboard?

So. No posts from me. Have some links instead. Here is a YouTube playlist featuring the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, who are hilarious. This one about period dramas left me snorting with laughter.

And this here is a post by Ana and Jodie in ladybusiness which discusses the first episode of the second season of Sherlock, "A Scandal in Belgravia", and I agree with a lot of it, and it's still open in that tab group of stuff that I've labelled in my head as "things I should respond to with an intelligent comment but I'm still flailing around being incoherent about the whole series". I will probably never be coherent enough to discuss the series. I like it a lot. I have issues with it, but I like it a lot.

Speaking of Sherlock, I found that a friend at the office is also in the same fandoms as I am (and quite possibly reading this post, and I find that mildly terrifying for reasons I can't quite articulate). There was a slightly strange conversation about fanfic during lunch once (it was, unfortunately, about Downton Abbey (or is it fortunately? since I didn't know much about it then I couldn't stick my foot in my mouth) and yes, yes, I'll get to finishing the whole thing eventually) and another one in the car about horrible things you wrote when you were seventeen. I can't even remember what horrible things I wrote when I was seventeen, but I'm confident that they were horrible. And me stammering out some sort of explanation about the OTW and AO3; I can't remember what it was I said.

(The answer to "Do you write fanfiction?" was me looking studiously at the side mirror, trying to determine whether it was safe to change lanes. I determined that it was probably safe to answer "yes", so I did. It isn't that there isn't anyone else who knows me in real life who read this journal and my fanfic; it was more of suddenly finding someone who is actually interested in fandom, and . . . I'm still not sure what I think. A real-life fandom person!)

Happy new year!

Yeah, yeah. I never call, I never write. I might as well have disappeared into a black hole for all the response I've been giving to things going on around here. (Though I am on Twitter enough (yatii) for you to ascertain I'm still alive if you are so inclined!)

There will a post. Someday.


(Hello, people from LJ!)

A woman across the street is chasing after a bus. It doesn't look like she will make it. I start narrating her chase, and halfway through I notice that the colleague who's waiting for the bus with me (the bus is late again; it always is) is looking at me with a smile.

"You should try writing," she says, and I suddenly don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

What do I say? I used to try once, but I've given up now?

The woman manages to board the bus. She lives happily ever after.

Things I have meant to do for the last three months:

• post something.


Yeaaaaaah, I kind of failed at that. I kept thinking, "oh, I should post about that!" and never got to it. It's been a mixture of things, but it's been mostly apathy and lack of time. And procrastination. Let's not forget procrastination. In the past, even if I didn't post, I tend to note things down, but this time there's nothing.

So. Let's see what we missed:

• I had a birthday. It was a nice birthday, all things considered. arianur made me a cake. There should be pictures of the cake, but now it feels like it was too long ago to post it! (But it was a marvellous cake, nonetheless.) I also have an Amazon gift voucher thanks to my sister. I still have it, despite my birthday being in May, because I still can't figure out what I want to buy with it. As far as I can tell there's no expiry date but I seriously should start thinking about what I want to buy with it.

• I also have a cat now. A CAT. He's called Charley -- that's what his previous owners called him -- and quite possibly the most antisocial cat in the universe. He only likes me, as far as I can tell. He actually hides and refuses to come out when I have guests, which frustrates me (and my guests) because I can't show him off.

• I'm now also on tumblr, partly because of Charley. I just wanted somewhere to post photos of him. I'm yatii on tumblr, and this tag is all about Charley.

• I have a Google+ account as well, which I am still eyeing warily. I'm not certain what I'm going to do with it. It's connected to my real name (which technically is not my legal name) though some fandom people are on it.

• Work has been . . . work. I accepted a new post, which is a combination of things I used to do and some extra responsibilities. It's not really a promotion, but there's a raise, and four years doing the same thing warranted a change, and well. Why not have a go. Currently it involves being busy and not panicking, because having to listen to other people panicking is enough to send me into a temper.

• I have hit a reading slump! (Again.) Which sort of explains the unused Amazon voucher -- I can't figure out what I want to read next.

• I seem to be compensating the not reading bit with watching old television series. Right now it's Stargate SG-1. I'm somewhere around ten episodes into season one. /o\ I know, I am like totally behind. I used to watch it, here and there, but not religiously. Most of what I know of the series came from osmosis -- fandom is quite an awesome place.


So. Hello again! I am (probably) back, and will try not to be too horrible with replying to comments, etc. (Please excuse the replies to things months old -- I swear I read stuff, I just am terrible at being timely in replying to things.)

The Doink! Final Fantasy Exchange Collection 2011 and the Moogle Fluff Collection 2011 are open! \o/

I received three gifts! Three! One is a gorgeous piece of art by cumuluscastle: Mods de Chocobo, FFVIII. It's of Selphie and Irvine riding a chocobo and is very, very lovely; you should take a look even if you don't know the fandom.

The other two are fic:

The first one is by Icicle_streams, This is our world now, FFX/X-2, about Yuna after the Eternal Calm, and how the changes are wonderful but not quite enough for her. I liked the wistful tone of the whole piece.

The second is by lescafenix, All Work and No Play Makes Life a Beach, a delightful piece about Gippal sneakily tricking Baralai to a beach vacation in Besaid. I had fun reading this one!


I wrote one fic, for darthneko: More Than Enough, FFVIII, Squall/Laguna slice-of-life . . . thingy.


And there are lots more of fic and art posted in both collections! \o/