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btsmosphere · 1 year

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2022 Writing Roundup

Tagged by @here4theheartbreak forever ago!! I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for a bit but only getting it up now because I just couldn’t come up with answers for some sections, but since I have some I wanted to post it anyway! It’s always nice to look back on the year😊

Fandom: bts

Total fics: 11

Total words: 43,143 note: I only included word counts of what I published because I am lazy :)) I have written some wips this year that have yet to see the light of day, but some of them have been going since 2021 and I cba to try and figure it all out

~Favourite Things~

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest. Why? This has got to be Still Waters Run Deep, written for the ghibli collab this year. It’s a only fic I really got my teeth into this year, while a lot of my other work was quite short. Not that that’s a bad thing, but Still Waters felt like much more a labour of love for the fact I pushed it longer than I intended, and it’s still something I enjoy reading!

Top 4 current WIPs - if anyone’s been paying attention to my blog, you’ll have heard a lot about certain wips, which still haven’t made it out and I’m sorry! Here they are:

Supercharged is the big one - and by big I mean it!! This is the longest thing I’ve ever written as it stands and it’s still not finished! Started in 2021 and still persevering, this is a Jungkook x reader enemies to lovers with superheroes, villains and all the trimmings! Highway to You drabbles (I’m grouping this into one here) - I have more in the works for my Highway to You universe (2 stories are already out), which I’m very excited for. It’s a Yoongi x reader mafia au, childhood friends to lovers and stuffed with my fave hurt/comfort Sunken Heart - another story that’s been kicking around since the dawn of time, demigod!Namjoon x royalty!reader mythology au set in atlantis. I promise I haven’t forgotten this one! Autumn drabbles - I had a great time writing 3 bullet fics for 3 hyungs this autumn, and I planned one for every member, so maybe you’ll see those this fall!

Favorite Line - I have a few lines that make me smile this year, but I’m gonna pick the most dramatic one haha: Lightning washed the nightmare in white. - from Still Waters Run Deep. I liked it when I wrote it, but I appreciated it even more when I was reading this part to my bf and he paused at that sentence to tell me how effective he thought it was!

~Question and Answer Time~

Top 2 Resolutions for 2023

Hmm, actually write? I’ve had big chunks away from writing in 2022 and while that’s okay, and breaks can be helpful, mostly these were not. I wanted to write, just never got down to it. When I took part in a november writing goal event, I loved it! just getting myself motivated without that is a challenge Start daydreaming again! In line with my first resolution, I think this is a way to get me motivated. I still daydream of course, but it has shifted to some other fandoms, and while I still love bts, I don’t have their stories on my mind all the time, even though they are stories I like. When I start dreaming up scenes, the need to write them follows, and it’s fun besides :)

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than, or about what was expected? Why? I can’t say I really had any expectations, but I have to say less than what I expected. I had been tailing off but I thought I might naturally swing back up again in terms of writing, but alas.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? How was it? I haven’t really done anything on this blog that I couldn’t have predicted.. maybe the bullet fic series? I usually am a bit of a completionist but I found the bullet fics gave me some freedom when working from just a concept/aesthetic, as I did in my autumn drabbles. It was a refreshing change to write! Oh, and they were all in present tense? took a while to get used to and a while to switch back, but it fit the ~vibe~ in terms of other differences, I’ve written a few things behind the scenes for new fandoms, but that’s just for my personal enjoyment at the moment :)

What’s your most popular story with readers?

Heaven’s Open - 534 Number 45 - 178 Won’t Tell - 170 Ride or Die - 139 Still Waters Run Deep - 124 The Web part 6 - 121 Say it with Flour - 94 Autumn with Namjoon - 78 Autumn with Hobi - 58 Autumn with Jin - 36 Trade my Life - 10 (at time of writing, notes are probably a bit different as of posting date)

The magic of Jungkook wins out this year with 534 notes on Heaven’s Open!

What was your most productive days/day of the week/month, etc in terms of writing? October and November! In October I got inspired again by the season and I was buzzing to create again, I started with the seasonal drabbles and then in November I took part in the BTS Writers’ Club’s wrimo challenge, where I wrote something every day! I only posted one fic off the back of that but I wrote over 10k words that month, mostly behind the scenes with longer wips :))

~ Fics Written in 2022~

In chronological order of posting

The Web (part 6) - Jimin x reader You made it out of the web, mostly whole. But will you be able to overcome the damage done to you and your family?

Say it with Flour - Namjoon x reader This had always been a bad idea. You, notorious for kitchen disasters, attending a cooking class. Maybe it could be what you needed to fix your terrible cooking skills - or maybe you could meet someone who makes it so much worse!

Won’t Tell - Jin x reader You aren’t the only one sneaking out at night at hogwarts. In fact, it appears to be a popular pastime - shame it also happens to be extremely banned. Oh well, he won’t tell if you won’t…

Number 45 - Namjoon x reader The man at number 45 becomes the highlight of your shift… Five times you delivered something to Namjoon, and one time he gave something back to you!

Still Waters Run Deep - Taehyung x reader down at the riverbank is a boy whose eyes hold each swell of the waves, whose hair ruffles like the reeds. but the peaceful magic of the river may become your only sanctuary when wilder forces come into play

Heaven’s Open - Jungkook x reader it’s never a good time for the heavens to open, trapping you to wait out the storm. but your own piece of heaven is stuck right there with you - maybe the rainclouds will shed some light on the cold front that has formed between you and Jungkook

autumn with: hobi - “are you cold?” - college au ft. apple picking, chasing leaves, wearing each other’s clothes

autumn with: namjoon - “you kept this?” - established relationship ft. a carnival, getting lost in a good book, a kiss for good luck

autumn with: jin - “I hate you - I love you too” - childhood friends au ft. a graveyard, a thunderstorm and seokjin’s sweater paws

Ride or Die - Yoongi x reader yoongi isn’t sure when he became so accustomed to your ineffably cheery presence. until he sees that innocence crack, he hadn’t realised how far he would go to keep it there.

Trade my Life - Jin x reader once, you were just two children giggling in the corner of the dojang, trading equally in punches and hugs, everything a game. but that was long ago, and now that man stands day after day outside the door which separates your two worlds. is the throne really worth leaving the barrier unbroken?

#new year #me #my writing #2022 #2022 roundup #tag game

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homosexuhauls · 3 years

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15 JUNE, 2021 by Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie

IT IS OBSCENE: A TRUE REFLECTION IN THREE PARTS

PART ONE

When you are a public figure, people will write and say false things about you. It comes with the territory. Many of those things you brush aside. Many you ignore. The people close to you advise you that silence is best. And it often is. Sometimes, though, silence makes a lie begin to take on the shimmer of truth.

In this age of social media, where a story travels the world in minutes, silence sometimes means that other people can hijack your story and soon, their false version becomes the defining story about you.

Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it, as Jonathan Swift wrote.

Take the case of a young woman who attended my Lagos writing workshop some years ago; she stood out because she was bright and interested in feminism.

After the workshop, I welcomed her into my life. I very rarely do this, because my past experiences with young Nigerians left me wary of people who are calculating and insincere and want to use me only as an opportunity. But she was a Bright Young Nigerian Feminist and I thought that was worth making an exception.

She spent time in my Lagos home. We had long conversations. I was support-giver, counsellor, comforter.

Then I gave an interview in March 2017 in which I said that a trans woman is a trans woman, (the larger point of which was to say that we should be able to acknowledge difference while being fully inclusive, that in fact the whole premise of inclusiveness is difference.)

I was told she went on social media and insulted me.

This woman knows me enough to know that I fully support the rights of trans people and all marginalized people. That I have always been fiercely supportive of difference, in general. And that I am a person who reads and thinks and forms my opinions in a carefully considered way.

Of course she could very well have had concerns with the interview. That is fair enough. But I had a personal relationship with her. She could have emailed or called or texted me. Instead she went on social media to put on a public performance.

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it. But I mostly held myself responsible. My spirit had been slightly stalled, from the beginning, by her. My first sense of unease with her came when she posted a photo taken in my house, at a time when I did not want any photos of my personal life on social media. I asked that she take it down. The second case of unease was her publicizing something I had told her in confidence about another member of the workshop. The most upsetting was when she, without telling me, used my name to apply for an American visa. Above all else was my lingering suspicion that she was a person who chose as friends only those from whom she could benefit. But she was a Bright Young Nigerian Feminist and I allowed that sentiment to over-ride my unease.

After she publicly insulted me, it was clear to me that this kind of noxious person had no business in my life, ever again.

A few months later, she sent this affected, self-regarding email which I ignored.

Friday September 15 2017 at 4.35 AM

Dearest Chimamanda,

Happy birthday. I mean this with all my heart, even though I know I have fallen (removed myself?) from your grace. It would be impossible for me to stop loving you; long before you gave me the possibility of being your friend you were the embodiment of my deepest hopes, and that will never change.

I think of you often, still – stating the obvious. I grieve the loss of our friendship; it is a complicated sadness. I’m sorry that I caused you pain, or to feel like you can no longer trust me. There’s so much that I wish could be said.

I pray this birthday is the happiest one yet. I wish you rest and quiet and abiding stability, and of course more of the kind of success that means the most to you.

I hope mothering X is everything you hoped and prayed for and more.

Have a wonderful day today.

Love always.

About a year later, she sent this email, which I also ignored.

Thursday November 29 2018 at 8.42 AM

Dear Chimamanda,

I realise this is long overdue and vastly insufficient, but I’m really sorry. I’ve spent so much time going back and forth in my head and my email drafts; wondering whether to write you, how to write you, what to say, all kinds of things. But in the end, this is the thing I realise I need to say.

I’m sorry I disappointed and hurt you by saying things publicly that were sharply critical, unkind and even disrespectful, especially in light of all the backlash and criticism you experience from people who don’t know you. I could have acted with more consideration towards you. I should have, especially given the privilege of intimacy that you had offered me. There are many reasons why I chose to behave the way I did, but none of them is an excuse. And I clearly realise now, after many, many months of needless sadness and angst and hurt and actual confusion, that I did not treat you as a friend would—certainly not as someone would to whom you had offered unprecedented access to yourself and your life.

You’ve meant the world to me since I was barely a teenager. It’s been very hard navigating the emotional fallout of the past several months, knowing you were displeased with me but truly not quite understanding why, then deciding I didn’t care, then realising that would never be true. I’ve always cared. But I was too mixed up about the situation to be able to make sense of it, or properly see past my own justifications. I’m sorry it took me so long to grasp how I let you down.

I realise that I don’t have room to ask anything of you, but I would be grateful for a chance to say this in person. Still, even if I never get that, I really hope you believe me.

Congratulations on restarting the workshop, and on all the other amazing successes of the past several months. I think of you often; it would be impossible not to. You look so happy in your pictures. I really hope you are well.

All my love,

I hoped never to hear from her again. But she has recently gone on social media to write about how she “refused to kiss my ring,” as if I demanded some kind of obeisance from her. She also suggests that there is some dark, shadowy ‘more’ to tell that she won’t tell, with an undertone of “if only you knew the whole story.”

It is a manipulative way of lying. By suggesting there is ‘more’ when you know very well that there isn’t, you do sufficient reputational damage while also being able to plead deniability. Innuendo without fact is immoral.

No, there isn’t more to the story. It is a simple story – you got close to a famous person, you publicly insulted the famous person to aggrandize yourself, the famous person cut you off, you sent emails and texts that were ignored, and you then decided to go on social media to peddle falsehoods. It is obscene to tell the world that you refused to kiss a ring when in fact there isn’t any ring at all.

I cannot make much of the hostility of strangers who do not know me – fame taints our view of the humanity of famous people. But the truth is that the famous person remains irretrievably human. Fame does not inoculate the famous person from disappointment and depression, fame does not make you any less angered or hurt by the duplicitous nature of people. To be famous is to be assumed to have power, which is true, but in the analysis of fame, people often ignore the vulnerability that comes with fame, and they are unable to see how others who have nothing to lose can lie and connive in order to take advantage of that fame, while not giving a single thought to the feelings and humanity of the famous person.

And when you personally know a famous person, when you have experienced their humanity, when you have benefited from their kindness, and yet you are unable to extend to them the basic grace and respect that even a casual acquaintanceship deserves, then it says something fundamental about you.

And in a deluded way, you will convince yourself that your hypocritical, self-regarding, compassion-free behavior is in fact principled feminism. It isn’t. You will wrap your mediocre malice in the false gauziness of ideological purity. But it’s still malice. You will tell yourself that being able to parrot the latest American Feminist orthodoxy justifies your hacking at the spirit of a person who had shown you only kindness. You can call your opportunism by any name, but it doesn’t make it any less of the ugly opportunism that it is.

PART TWO

When I first read this person’s work, which was their application to my writing workshop, I thought the sentences were well-done. I accepted this person. At the workshop, I thought they could have been more respectful of the other participants, perhaps not kept typing dismissively as others’ stories were discussed, with an air of being among people below their level. After the workshop, I decided to select the best stories, edit them, pay the writers a fee, and publish them in an e-magazine. The first story I chose was this person’s. I wrote a glowing introduction, which the story truly deserved.

They sent this email.

Fri, Aug 7, 2015, 8:20 AM

Thank you so much for that introduction. It means so much to me and I’m going to keep reading it to get through the rest of my stay at Syracuse. I sent it to my mother and she got nervous about the piece because you said ‘it disturbs’, said she’s not sure how she’s going to feel when she reads it. But she’s also one of those ‘let’s leave the past in the past’ people. My sister approved, which meant a lot because our childhoods were each other’s.

All that to say, I’m so grateful you gave me the space to write the short version of this piece, the encouragement to write the longer piece, and now, a platform for it. I definitely have plans to write more about Aba.

Thank you, with all my heart.

PS- I wanted to sign off gratefully + gracefully in Igbo but I said let me not fall my own hand 🙂

About a year later, they sent another email to let me know that their novel would be published.

Wed, Jun 8, 2016, 8:20 AM

Greetings!

I hope all’s been well with you this past year. Belated congratulations on the baby’s arrival, I hope she’s being a delight (I’m sure she is), and on the Johns Hopkins honors.

I was thinking about how this time last year, I’d just received the email from you about Farafina and I wanted to reach out with a quick update. I’ve just accepted an offer for the novel I excerpted as my application and it feels like the workshop was a catalyst for the events that’ve led me here. So, thank you, for the workshop and your words and the Olisa TV series and listening to me babble on about my story at the hotel. I deeply appreciate all of it and you.

All my best,

Before the novel was published, I spoke of it to some people, to help it get attention. I had not been able to finish reading it. I found the writing beautiful, but the story false-hearted and burdened by bathos. When I spoke of the novel, however, it was the former sentiment that I expressed, never the latter.

After I gave the March 2017 interview in which I said that a trans woman is a trans woman, I was told that this person had insulted me on social media, calling me, among other things, a murderer. I was deeply upset, because while I did not really know them personally, I felt they knew what I stood for and that I fully supported the rights of trans people, and that I do not wish anybody dead.

Still, I took no action. I ignored the public insult.

When this person’s publishers sent me an early copy of their novel, I was surprised to see that my name was included in their cover biography. I had never seen that done in a book before. I didn’t like that I had not been asked for permission to use my name, but most of all I thought – why would a person who thinks I’m a murderer want my name so prominently displayed in their biography?

Then I learned that, because my name was in the cover biography, a journalist had called them my “protegee” and they then threw a Twitter tantrum about it, calling it clickbait, viciously disavowing having received any help from me.

I knew this person had called me a murderer, I knew they were actively campaigning to “cancel” me and tweeting about how I should no longer be invited to speak at events. But this I felt I could not ignore.

I sent an email to my representative:

From: Chimamanda Adichie

Date: Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 2:06 PM

I’m writing about X

She attended my Lagos workshop two years ago and I selected hers as one of a few pieces I published after the workshop.

Apparently I was referred to as her ‘mentor’ and/or she was referred to as my ‘protege,’ in some articles, which led to her tweeting about it. Her tweets were forwarded to me by friends. In them, she reacted quite viscerally to my being called her ‘mentor’ and her being my ‘protege.’ To be fair, she is not technically my ‘protege,’ and it is perfectly fine that she feels this way, but her ungracious tone and the ugliness of the energy spent on her tweets surprised me.

I recently received her book and noticed that my name was included in her official book bio. I was stunned. Surely if she is so strongly averse to my being considered a person who has been significant in her career, (which is my understanding of the loose use of protege/mentor) then it is unseemly to make the choice to include my name in her bio. I found it unusual, as I don’t think I’ve seen it done before in a book bio, but I also now find it unacceptably cynical.

It is only reasonable for a person who sees my name as it is used in her bio — ‘her work has been selected and edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’ — to assume some sort of mentor/protege relationship.

To publicly disavow this with a tone bordering on hostility and at the same time so baldly use my name to sell her book is utterly unacceptable to me.

I’d like you to please reach out to her publishers and ask that my name be removed from her official book bio. I refuse to be used in this way.

After contacting her publishers, my representative wrote:

They have asked whether your preference would be to remove the Acknowledgment to you in the back of the book also, in future reprints.

I replied:

I don’t think that is my decision to take, and so will not answer either way, although it would be ideal if she herself made the decision to do so.

On the subject of how to go about it, I was absolutely determined not to be used by this person, but I was also sensitive to the costs the publisher might incur, as this was not in any way the publisher’s fault. Instead of pulping the already printed copies, I asked that the jackets be stripped and rebound. To my representative I wrote:

I’m completely determined that I not be used in this opportunistic and hypocritical way. But I want to make sure to proceed reasonably.

I was assured that my name would be removed and I moved on.

But from time to time, I would be informed of yet another social media post in which this person had attacked me.

This person has created a space in which social media followers have – and this I find unforgiveable – trivialized my parents’ death, claiming that the sudden and devastating loss of my parents within months of each other during this pandemic, was ‘punishment’ for my ‘transphobia.’

This person has asked followers to pick up machetes and attack me.

This person began a narrative that I had sabotaged their career, a narrative that has been picked up and repeated by others.

The normal response would be to ignore it all, because this person is seeking attention and publicity to benefit themselves. Claiming that I have sabotaged their career is a lie and this person knows that it is a lie. But if something is repeated often enough, in this age in which people do not need proof or verification to run with a story, especially a story that has outrage potential, then it can easily begin to seem true.

My addressing this lie will indeed get this person some attention – may they bask in it.

Here is the truth: I was very supportive of this writer. I didn’t have to be. I wasn’t asked to be. I supported this writer because I believe we need a diverse range of African stories.

Sabotaging a young writer’s career is just not my style; I would get no benefit or satisfaction from it. Asking that my name be removed from your biography is not sabotaging your career. It is about protecting my boundaries of what I consider acceptable in civil human behavior.

You publicly call me a murderer AND still feel entitled to benefit from my name?

You use my name (without my permission) to sell your book AND then throw an ugly tantrum when someone makes a reference to it?

What kind of monstrous entitlement, what kind of perverse self-absorption, what utter lack of self-awareness, what unheeding heartlessness, what frightening immaturity makes a person act this way?

Besides, a person who genuinely believes me to be a murderer cannot possibly want my name on their book cover, unless of course that person is a rank opportunist.

PART THREE

In certain young people today like these two from my writing workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship.

I find it obscene.

There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class.

People who ask you to ‘educate’ yourself while not having actually read any books themselves, while not being able to intelligently defend their own ideological positions, because by ‘educate,’ they actually mean ‘parrot what I say, flatten all nuance, wish away complexity.’

People who do not recognize that what they call a sophisticated take is really a simplistic mix of abstraction and orthodoxy – sophistication in this case being a showing-off of how au fait they are on the current version of ideological orthodoxy.

People who wield the words ‘violence’ and ‘weaponize’ like tarnished pitchforks. People who depend on obfuscation, who have no compassion for anybody genuinely curious or confused. Ask them a question and you are told that the answer is to repeat a mantra. Ask again for clarity and be accused of violence. (How ironic, speaking of violence, that it is one of these two who encouraged Twitter followers to pick up machetes and attack me.)

And so we have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow.

I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.

#chimamanda ngozi adichie #femimism #nigerian feminism #radfem safe #gender critical #radical feminism #cancel culture #forgot the link oops

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fantasydaydreamers · 2 years

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✨ A New Years Message To My DayDreamers ✨

Hello my lovely Dreamers welcome to the new year!!!🥺💕🥂 I hope everyone had a wonderful 2021 and I hope an even better year finds you in 2022💕

In this post I want to address a few things, give a little 411, and address the probably the most asked:

"What happened to Behind Brothel Doors?!"

Please read if you can~😊

• First and foremost, not to get all TMI or anything but 2021 was not a great year for me😭 I had a health issue come up in May that lasted until pretty much November with no help from doctors. So, months of suffering/confusion on what could be going on...sucked to say the least🥲it took a heavy toll on my mental health. Thankfully, I found a doctor who suggested an answer and so far, I would say it's helping!

→ It might be too soon to tell because it's only my second month since I've seen the doctor, but I would say I noticed a difference and I hope it stays that way!

• Secondly, I owe every single one of your guys an apology. My activity on this blog decreased drastically as well as my interaction from you guys. I'm going to be honest and say because of everything I went through in 2021, my priorities for writing were pretty much non-existent. I was not motivated and was depressed because I had no idea what was going on with my body. Even so, I take responsibility for this. I miss interacting with you guys😭 it's hurts to see how I haven't had that in a while.

Bouncing off of this, and because I think I've found a solution to my problem, I want to make an effort to write more this year and get the requests (that some of you sent in at the beginning of 2021!!) finished. When I made the posts saying "I have so many ideas/drafts I don't know where to begin-" are completely true. I still have plenty of unfinished drafts and projects I need to finish including:

• The Real Thing - Kirishima x Reader Side Story

• Streamer Shinsou - this idea I believe we agreed to change to Streamer (Y/n) with pro-hero watchers

Now...for the big question...

"What happened to Behind Brothel Doors?"

I can't even begin to tell you guys how many asks I have in my inbox asking this question that I avoided the whole year just because I genuinely didn't have an answer, but here's what I do know:

I DO plan on continuing this series.

I DO plan on moving it to Ao3

I DO plan on going back and revising the chapters I had already made

I DO plan on updating it every week WHEN it gets moved to Ao3

However, I DO NOT have a definitive plot for it yet.

Seeing the positive feedback and genuine love for BBD made me so unbelievably happy and I felt like it would be even bigger and better than my The Real Thing series. I WANTED to make it bigger and better.

I hand-made the Dabi and Bakugou images from the Brothel Book and had asked you guys if you wanted me to continue (I think the answer was yes). Overall, I want to focus on this series this year and bring it back to life.

• Last but not least, with everything else being said, I'm also trying to figure out a career to pursue. I finished all of my basic classes in college and now I have no idea what to do next. I also had left my job in May/June of 2021 because of management issues (I hate retail and I never wanna work in that field ever again😭). So basically, while managing everything that's been going on, I'm also trying to work on what I want to do with my life.

All I know is that my new years resolution for this blog includes BBD, being more consistent + active. For my IRL resolutions...well...I hope I figure out what I want to do 😅

✨ If you made it this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read this I want every single one of you to know that I love you very much and every day I think about my blog and the stuff I WANT to write. Every. Day. At some point it did seem more like a 'need' than a 'want' but that just made me not want to write even more.

I hope everyone has a WONDERFUL 2022 and I hope to have something out for you guys soon and I can start working on BBD ✨

#thank you for reading #fantasy update

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alleiradayne · 2 years

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A 2021 Writing Review

I wrote in 2021. A lot. Did I finish much in 2021? No, but that's hardly important. What matters most is that I worked on my craft. And I'm proud of that. So here's a little review.

Works Posted in 2021

Innuendo - For Fic-Facer$ 2021, I wrote this story at the request of my winning bidder, @minxyone93. This story... I have no words. I think it kicked my love for Destiel into high gear. I've never been so motivated to write a ship. And it created a whole universe for me, a post-15x18-Cas-burned-out-his-grace-and-became-human-to-save-them world. No spoilers, but I highly recommend reading this for what's about to come in 2022.

Works In Progress in 2021

A Touch of Evil - I cannot talk about this piece much except for the fact that it is a continuation of the Innuendo universe. It'll be released in April/May of next year.

The Flight of Icarus - I had been writing this story constantly in 2021 up until about October/November when I signed up for the event that spawned A Touch of Evil. Act I is highly polished and only needs one more read-through from a fresh set of eyes. Act II needs editing and lots of beta'ing. Act III is finished in the first draft phase, but needs tons of editing and reworking. And Act IV is about halfway through the first draft. Then there's Act V. As soon as I finish a few events at the beginning of the year, I anticipate beginning to post this story 2-3 times a week by the end of 2022 at the latest. The frequency with which I post this story will highly depend on reception, but because there are 88 fucking chapters (prologue and epilogue included), I may have to post more than once a week out of necessity.

Homemade - A Flight of Icarus universe one-shot, much porn, much smut, next to no plot. Dean finds Elizabeth's porn account where she had posted some fairly tame porn prior to their relationship (mostly tit-drops and cute underwear masturbation) and he brings it to her. When she expects him to be angry, he instead begins recording their own porn (Castiel included for polyamory love).

Three's A Crowd - An extremely smutty one-shot, again in the Flight of Icarus universe. This is the first time Castiel joins Dean and Elizabeth. Needs a lot of rework because it's highly out of character at this time.

Lazarus Excita - A random plot bunny the night that Dean returns from Hell in Lazarus Rising. While taking a shower, Dean finds all his scars have been healed and he can't stop thinking about that damned angel, Castiel...

Teacher's Assistant - For some reason (I know the reason) I reread Hot for Teacher this year and was inspired to write a follow-up. Sam is a tenured professor at Stanford and Natalie Murphy has been teaching there for about a year. They've had a loose friends-with-benefits relationship for a month or so by this time. At the end of a long day, Sam approaches her in a lecture hall, and as things are heating up, the Dean of Students, Professor Gabriel, walks in.

My Favorite Things - Alone but for the two of them in the Bunker, Castiel seizes the opportunity to explore more of his humanness with Dean in the kitchen. A smutty one-shot in the Innuendo universe.

These WIPs all have words in them to some degree.

In total, I wrote 153,377 words this year!

And for me, that's a lot of words!

I have two more plot bunnies in mind that will require substantial plotting before I get to them (not to mention finishing other prerequisite works). But here's where I'm...

Announcing

Theseus and the Minotaur - A prequel to The Flight of Icarus that will focus on the events leading up to Hell's revolt. This alternate ending to Season 14 sets the stage for the alternate Season 15 that is The Flight of Icarus and since so much needed to change, I figured it would be worth writing a prequel. There will be some focus on Natalie, Elizabeth, and Ali, but we'll primarily be seeing Sam, Dean, Castiel, Jack, Mary, and Rowena as they stop Hell's revolution. There might be a wedding at the end...

The Anatomy of the Human Heart- A prequel to Innuendo focusing on Castiel's guilt over his deal with The Shadow, the lead up to 15x18, and 15x18. I think I plan on writing multiple povs, Dean, Sam, and Castiel primarily. But I'll take specific scenes from Season 15 and rework them to fit a narrative wherein Castiel sacrifices his grace and becomes human (well 99% human, no spoilers though) to save them in 15x18. This piece will most likely end after that on a bit of a cliffhanger for Dean and Castiel specifically. 15x19 will occur to wrap up the Chuck-Plot but will not be featured in this story. 15x20 does not happen. You could jump right to Innuendo after this even though that story starts a year after 15x18.

That's everything! While I posted little, I'm proud of what I accomplished. I am so excited for everything coming up in 2022 and cannot wait to get things finished. I wish I had a consistent tag list of people to tag here so I'm only going to call out a few folks.

@minxyone93 @peridottea91 @princessmisery666 @redbarn1995 @slytherkins @starlightoffandoms @atc74 @amanda-teaches @bluishorange @stunudo @truecolours412 @dustyl @sinshine71 @afterspaced @judithandronicus @haus-seeblick @lastoryx

And to my og's, my first mutuals: @kateywumpus @oblivionscribe @sabriel @felan-daris I love you all so much. We might not talk much or at all anymore, but you're still important to me. And while I've abandoned the BioWare fanfic scene, know that I still see you and your posts and your likes and your reblogs.

I know I've forgotten people, but if you're seeing things, it's because Tumblr's algorithm managed to not suck for five seconds, and I love you.

Happy New Year!

#year in review #2021 in review #what tags am I allowed to use now?#spn fanfic #destiel fanfic

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thunder-of-dragons · 2 years

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Fandom Goals Wishes for 2022

Thank you for thinking of me, @andithiel. There aren’t many ways 2021 could have gone worse for me, so like @andithiel and @etalice, I’m setting wishes for 2022 instead of goals with the hope but not the expectation that this year will be better than the last.

1. Be gentle with myself. I’ve been avoiding dealing with admitting it with the stresses of moving and new job and a million other things, but I ended up having a huge breakdown on Thanksgiving over the fact that my brain just isn’t doing things that it could a year ago (and it may never be able to). From what I can tell, my long-term memory is basically shot. Despite knitting an entire pair of socks for the first time in 2020, I found a few weeks ago that I’ve forgotten how to knit. I guess that’s life now… and I need to stop beating myself up over things that I can’t do. Maybe it’s okay if I don’t write that fic. Maybe it’s okay if I don’t claim that fest prompt. Maybe it’s okay if I say that another mod needs to handle an issue. Really, it’s not okay, but it’s not okay to beat myself up for it either.

2. Write microfics. This has really been on my to-do list since @drarrymicrofic started posting prompts ages ago, but I still haven’t done it. Now seems like a perfect time to actually sit down and go through the backlog of prompts and write them since it seems that I can’t write a fic now unless I can get the entire first draft out in one sitting. Even if I have an outline to look at, it’s become difficult for me to figure out where I left off and how I wanted to continue. It took me 2 months to write my 300-word strip tease fic for @gameofdrarry’s Drarropoly, and it was torturous. As much as I love writing and have much longer plot bunnies and WIPs sitting in a folder, and as much as my therapist would love it if I wrote a book, I think I need to embrace my fandom wish number 1, be gentle with myself, and dive into the realm of microfics for a while. There’s a lot that can be done in only 50 words.

3. Leave more comments. I’ve been reading a lot more lately, both traditional printed books and fanfic on AO3. I’ve just always been really bad about leaving comments. There’s an odd vulnerability in putting what you like and love out into the world, which I admittedly struggle with, but that’s also a way we build community in fandom. I enjoyed writing recs for @gameofdrarry’s Exploding Snap, and I’m hoping that participating in Wizards Hearts again will help motivate me to build a habit of leaving more comments on things that I love.

4. Collaborate more. I enjoyed co-writing and co-podficcing with others for @gameofdrarry’s Exploding Snap, and though I don’t see podficcing in my future for a long while at least, I would like to write more with other people. Writing longer, plottier fics wasn’t quite as difficult for me, and there’s something liberating about bringing out the best parts of each other’s writing styles to create something new. Is there a fest for that?

Since my phone died in November, I haven’t really been on Tumblr at all. I have no idea if there’s anyone left who hasn’t done this yet, so… if you’re reading this and haven’t done it, consider yourself tagged 💚

May we all have a 2022 with many unexpected pleasantries.

#drarry squad #tag game #2022goals #fandom #thunder rambles #musingsofadragon

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dallonm-archive · 3 years

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[image description: a cropped image of a pink sky. on the right hand side is a bunch of darker pink clouds. Just left of the centre is a full moon. In the centre, in a white serif font reads "writing update" /end id]

july writing update

Hi friends! This writing update is me pretending I did Camp Nano and didn't kinda give up a week in! I had a proper goal and everything, but a lot of things got in the way that I'm not gonna talk about here because I already ranted about it in another update I'm drafting rn. Lets just say it's Disability Pride Month and being not neurotypical or able bodied in writing communities and their inherent focus on productivity is Hard.

But I did get some writing done and wanted to do a little Camp wrap up post regardless. And I'm doing it now because I'm cancelling the last week of July for some rest/self care and I do not want to think about writing for that time and if I write a tumblr post about July Nano being over my brain will think it's actually over <3 I will probably do updates like these for most months tho! Depends on how much I write lol! This one is not too long (by my standards) and has some Revelations, Revelations, Life Cycle of Massive Stars, Nocturne for the Holy and a new wip idea 👁️

excerpts under the cut!

general taglist ; ask to be + or - ; i only have one! ; @childhoodlovers @svpphicwrites @abiandwriting @kowlazovdi @avi-why @ryns-ramblings @kitblogsthings @bijouxs @bookphobe @moonhungers @alicewestwater @bookpacking @shaelinwrites @onlyganymede @theelectricfactory @write-like-babs @oceancold @sidhewrites @wolf-oak @oasis-of-you @coffeeandcalligraphy @cecilsstorycorner @howdywrites @keira-is-writing @flip-phones @piyawrites @avakrahn @goose-books @finch-goes-write @ziyin @aphaimaniis @isherwoodj @laughtracksonata

I'm also editing this in to say I only just realised that July is my writeblr birthday month and that is very weird to me! A year and a couple days ago I impulsively turned an old blog into a place to document writing for me and ended up meeting people who now mean the world to me and my writing blossoming in a way I never thought it would. And the funny part is it doesn't feel like it's been a year, ever since I joined it's just felt like life has Always been this way and I cannot fathom that it hasn't. I'm sappy bc it's 4am lol but ultimately the friends I made (you know who you are) and the community I found is what retaught me the value of writing and helped me unlearn toxic ideas and whilst the last year was tough I wish I could tell July 2020 Dallon (who did not realise he was Dallon yet </3) what July 2021 would look like.

revelations, revelations ;

Oh the absolute state of affairs with this book rn. Nothing bad but I don't know when I'm gonna update y'all because sometimes I do not know where to start when talking about this wip lol! Currently on a break with it (but also my thesis work is on late 20th century queer lit/history rn so am ever really free of RR? <3) but had a lot of fun with it at the end of June/start of July. Anyway here's Dorothy finally revealing more of herself to me after a year. Dorothy as a character is like, I truly believe she is capable of killing a man but the story she is in just does not allow that so I am trying to grow her unhinged side a little bit in other ways bc I know she has it in her but I also really cannot deal with the plot repercussions of her actually killing a man! I'm sorry Dotty but this'll have to do!

(cw for groping/a man being creepy as hell, death/funeral mention, drug mention, drowning imagery kinda)

There’s too much to tell Felix. That his sister lives on the fringe of Castro and has attended three funerals since September; that it’s January 11th and she’s already attended one this year. That his sister drives through sunsets and imagines parties: the amber dusk, warm mosaic tiles, platters of Greek salad skewers and shrimp tostadas, and sometimes Jolie joins her and they share a blunt on the hill. That his sister bought an aquamarine body-length dress for six bucks in a thrift store sale bin, so when her and Jolie broke up for the second time, she waltzed into a sunset party, locked arms with a CEO’s son and gave him a fake number and plucked strawberries out of champagne and blended so well nobody noticed when she left. That during the summer of ’83, his sister walked a neighbour’s Golden Retriever on Wednesdays, and on the sixth Wednesday he gave her a wad of tens with one hand and palmed the back of her neck with the other, so she walked his dog to the beach and stole another hundred from his wallet. That his sister bombed an interview for a Nursing school and didn’t get home until night and missed their monthly call, and Jolie heard the phone ring and didn’t take a message, so his sister snuck into the CEO’s son’s villa and floated in the centre of their heated pool like a cloud. A pause, a breath, an Opheliean threat.

life cycle of massive stars ;

Switched to LCOMS this month because I was burnt out with RR and it made such the difference! I really love working on two novels at once because it keeps me consistently creative but also both of these books are so different so its always refreshing to bounce back into one from another. I have a whole update in the drafts rn for this so keeping this part brief but still love this book, still the best thing that has ever happened to me, me and this book will have a glorious summer wedding etc etc. These excerpts are from chapters that summarise the first semester of each character's first year and have to say it. has been Very Fun to get into the mindset of Freshers Melodrama. Here's Junie having a crisis and an unhealthy relationship with her hetero flatmate :( (alcohol cw for both excerpts)

In October you are drinking double espresso and trying to breathe normally in lectures and you are trying to figure out your favourite colour because Fleur asked and you stumbled out an answer (Purple, I think. Violet? Lavender? Indigo?) and it didn’t match hers (I like yellow. I like sunlight). You buy mugs from IKEA to paint you paint cats and fireworks and constellations and moon phases and daisies. You try to scratch paint stains off your desk. You do laundry at 2am. In October you colour code your notes with pastel highlighters. You go to the library at 3am. You paint your nails sunlight and hate it. You finish an essay that’s due in December. You knock on Fleur’s door at 8am so she makes her 9am. You wear off the shoulder tops and you let a girl dab glitter on your collarbones and you are watching Fleur kiss a boy from the neighbouring hall. You bite your sunlight nails. You break the handle off your IKEA constellation mug. You leave your keys in a lecture hall and stand at the reception for forty minutes waiting for them to realise that the keys on the desk have the moon chain you mentioned - or, you are waiting to say it yourself. You are watching the rain trail down your window. In October you get a halo headband tangled in your hair you are sipping a vampire themed cocktail that tastes like acetone you rip your heels off and you go home early and do laundry at 2am and you are waiting for the courage to tell Fleur you don’t like clubbing - or, you are waiting for her to ask where you are. In October you are many things / a good student a dancer a painter an angel a big sister an alarm clock you are nocturnal and a lucid dreamer and confused about your sexuality / and it’s still October but it’s not because it’s November now and you are still Junie but not because you don’t know who Junie is. It’s November, it’s September October November December. It’s 2016 2017 2018 2019. You are fragments and you don’t know if you are a kaleidoscope or shattered glass.

And here's first year Tomas being like I Moved Countries For University And All I Got Was Homesickness And A Crush On My Flatmate And Resurging Autistic Symptoms And This Lousy T Shirt (cw: vomit mention, injection mention, parental death mention)

Kristen is seven months younger and five inches taller than you. He’s the last flatmate you met and the only one you talk to beyond kitchen greetings and passive aggressive texts about dirty dishes. He is too quiet and too loud and not the type of person you befriend. The first night, he lost Ring of Fire and downed the concoction of Echo Falls, Dark Fruits, Jack Daniels and coke, vodka and lemonade alongside a cigarette and said he’d let God figure out the rest. He held your hair back when you threw up amaretto and held onto your knee when you first self-injected testosterone. He taught you Yorkshire dialect and you pretended to understand the Yorkshire dialect. He told you he got diagnosed at four and you told him you didn’t get past the first assessment but sometimes you flick the bathroom light on and it’s fire: the orange on the orange towel is louder, the white on the white tiles are louder, the colours and light and sink and showerhead are prickly and all you can do is blink and breathe until it fizzles out. You reminded him to take his meds and asked if you were weak for wanting to drop out and hop on the first Eurostar to Rotterdam. He reminded you to take off your binder and asked if he was robotic for not grieving his mother. You spent inky nights on the kitchen floor, counting the dead flies in the lights and scooping crumbly coconut ice cream out of a maker you got for half price in TK Maxx. You spent dusk-dusted afternoons at the global street food markets, at the vegan markets. Spent student loans on raspberry lemonade in recycled cups, veggie burgers in beetroot buns, got him hooked on poffertjes and advocaat and could’ve cried when the vendor spoke to you in Dutch. Sometimes you didn’t buy anything. Just liked hovering at stalls ambered with fairy lights, writing down Etsy stores on your notes app; just liked Kristen’s impulse to trek forty minutes into the city for a market he didn’t know existed until five minutes before; just liked how he always invited only you, cancelling your other plans last minute, the feeling of being ambushed; just liked how he stopped to take photos of dogs and the sunset; just liked how he looked haloed under lampposts waiting for Ubers, golden on golden.

This is also nearing creative nonfiction because Sheffield truly is a haven for just. vegan markets and cafes lol! I experimented with veganism there and never struggled to find something and at this point I call myself a fake vegan because it's too easy to be vegan in Sheffield and too difficult to be vegan in my actual hometown. And the global street food markets!!! SO GOOD! I miss pre pandemic days

nocturne for the holy ;

Giving her a little shout out because she does exist actually! I've figured out a really good system for working on two novels at a time, so my plan is maybe to start properly on this after I finish either RR or LCOMS. Idk I got 3 novels to pick from haha oops! I did do some free drafting back in April though and found it recently and I Like It! And I edited it so it counts as Something I Did This Month :) Also have decided that I loathe this working title <3 Okay see you with an update for this novel in like a year, sorry for the absolute zero context for this excerpt hehe

The morning I was due back, I hadn’t yet decided that this would be my last visit. I wandered between rooms like an overstayed guest, like I didn’t know which crockery lived in which cabinet and which bedroom had the best view of the overlapped hills. Dad would wake for his run in an hour, plastered to his twenty-year-old routine. Mum would pretend to be asleep until breakfast. Until then, it was myself and the house, hazed by sleepy sunrise. Downstairs. The peeling paisley wallpaper in the lounge, the lilies in the middle of the kitchen table, the vases of candy floss pink peonies wilting on every windowsill, the desolate double swing-set in the garden. The mist-clogged mornings. I stood outside in my dressing-gown until my fingertips felt numb. Upstairs. The sage coloured bathroom. The bathtub I’d laze in with my clothes on and no water because it was the quietest room in the house. The dusty dance trophies on the top of my wardrobe. Wine-flushed Jeanette in my teenage bedroom. The stale grey mum painted my teenage bedroom after I moved out. Minus their room, I stalked the layout of the house three times before settling back into bed - teenage Nora’s bed. Nora who cared for peonies and pushed her brother on the swing set and flung her ceramic ballerina at the wall and jogged with her father and collected wine bottles and acorns and kisses from girls who were supposed to visit for dance practice. Before I left, I’d have cycled each room another three times. And in every room he was there, hovered in the corner like black mould.

love this update bc it's like i've got my third person, my second person, my first person! collecting all the POVs like chaos emeralds :)

eulogy for our burnings ;

-looks away-

girl help I did it AGAIN!!!! Apparently Camp Nano is just the perfect time for me to get novel ideas. I made this post specifically to talk a bit about this because I have no idea when I'll draft it but it's certainly not soon. This is not me trying to doubt my own skill but I feel like I am not in the place I'd like to be as a writer to tackle this project with the zest it needs, however I am v excited by the prospect of it! Don't know how I feel about the working title bc I'm like "that doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about this wip to dispute it" but the only purpose my working titles serve is to sound pretty lol! But here's the tea:

1991, UK.

2nd person present + past. Very flexible form. I can't decipher how yet but I'm feeling interviews, newspaper articles, receipts, grocery store lists weaved with actual narrative, that kinda vibe.

Best summary is we follow our nameless narrator, a stealth trans man, as he becomes unhealthily obsessed with a man who "hires" him to photograph the buildings he burns

Very,,, isolated? Minimal settings, minimal characters, minimal prose etc. Almost claustrophobic

There's basically only two characters and they are probably the most morally deplorable, indefensible characters I've created which just means most of you are gonna LOVE this /lh I do too I do too

Only comp title I can give is it has the vibes/tone of Boy Parts by Eliza Clark (just with none of the nsfw content lol if you've read the book you know what I'm talking about) (also that book is great for morally deplorable women protagonists but omg look up the content warnings because it caught me off guard! enjoyed it tho gave it 4 stars)

The pinterest board is the best visualisation of the Vibes also follow me on pinterest lol

And that's all I've got today! A bigger Life Cycle of Massive Stars update coming in the next few weeks. Might do a proper intro post for Eulogy For Our Burnings but idk!!! It's a surprise :) Thank you for reading this far!

#also i have LOTS to catch up on so if u tagged me in anything im gonna do a big queue of rb's soon!#promise im not ignoring anybody!#just barely functioning <3 #atlastracking #writing update #revelations revelations #life cycle of massive stars #nocturne for the holy #eulogy for our burnings

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lululawrence · 3 years

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2021 Writing/Creative Goals

IT’S STILL JANUARY I’M STILL GOOD TO DO THIS RIGHT good cause i am lmaooooo okay so i was tagged byyyyy @reminiscingintherain, @cupcakentea, @haztobegood, @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed, @bearmustard, @heriz, and oh i think that’s it, yay! okay so my goals for the year, creatively speaking....

finish one of my cardigans - like hot damn please let me finish one of them. hopefully the harry one. finish that and then i can get back to my eternal wip brown cardigan, which has finally gotten knitted up to the sleeve separation! i’m NEARING THE END OF THE BODY!

(does helping mod big bang count as a creative goal???)

play piano more - i finally found my sheet music that had been packed in boxes in the basement for 6 years in the fall, so i would love to get back into playing regularly again. i’m gonna say my first goal is just playing once a week, even if it’s just for fifteen minutes. gotta start somewhere!

bake more - i’ve been doing a bit better with this, but i still only bake like once every three or four months, and that’s just... not enough for me tbh haha i’m gonna try baking something that i wanna bake once a month

finish my big bang - this will defo happen haha but it’s one of those things where with the world as it is, i don’t get much time to myself to focus on shit and writing is hard to do when you can’t focus, so i’m only writing once a week guaranteed right now when i used to write almost every day, so... the finishing my big bang is kinda. a big ask atm.

write for @harryandmenfest - it’s gonna be garry! and that’s all i know right now but i’m EXCITED cause it’s a pairing that, as far as i know, still only has my previous fic with them as the main pairing, so a second fic for them will be fun hehe

write the girl payneshaw fic - I HAVE THE DAMN THING FIGURED OUT AND READY TO BE WRITTEN I JUST NEED TIIIIIIME

write my a!louis/b!greg/o!harry and a!niall/b!lewis/o!shawn fic - it’s gonna be crack-y and entirely kicking off thanks to greg’s deciding that since shawn texted him and called him they’re now best friends and asking him for advice and hair tips. niall and lewis both commented publicly about it on twitter, and dammit i just know what his mates, louis and harry, were thinking about his behavior at home. lololol

figure out and write a fic for the @1daboficfest - or should i do the aforementioned louis/greg/harry fic for that??? hmmmm.... hehe

run @wordplayfics again - that’s assuming people are interested haha survey coming in a couple months!

make my christmas cards in october - this way i can just make the post in november and write them out/address them as the requests come in! a novel idea, not sure why i didn’t think of it before?? lmaoooo

write my advent fic in october - basically october is gonna be my prepping for the holidays time so i’m ready for....

actually write my big bang fic during nanowrimo - i’ve been trying various things the past couple years and while it’s very helpful and good, i DO NOT LIKE THE STRESS OF NOT HAVING MY BIG BANG WRITTEN BEFORE ARTIST CLAIMS. i also do not like the stress of writing into february. i want my fic done and ready to hand over to the artist, unbetaed but you know, rough draft done, by the time collaborations are announced. so yeah. lol

just write what i wanna write when i wanna write it basically - but try really hard to get into writing on the days the kids are in school, even if it’s only for 30-60 minutes on those days. that way at least i’m writing 3-4 times a week, which will feel MUCH better than once.

so yeah. no word count goals or anything, cause there’s no way in hell i can predict that shit. and i don’t ever really set goals for number of fics. i just wanna keep on writing for me and enjoying myself, even if i only have like 5 readers for my rare pairs hahaha bless all of you who follow me there, btw.

so yeah anyway those are my creative goals lmao welcome to the mess that is my head haha

#mine #2021 goals #goals #creative goals #i dunno how to tag this

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earthtonesandcaffeine · 2 years

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First Post

This first post has been stuck in my drafts since, at the earliest, July of 2019. At that time, I wanted to start this post with a quote straight from Blood Orange’s song Hope from the album Negro Swan, to serve as an example of one of the things I thought I wanted to write about. There’s no harm in still quoting that here:

You know, what is it going to take for me not to be afraid

To be loved the way, like, I really wanna be loved?

But that I know how I really wanna be loved

But I'm, but I'm, like, scared to really, really feel that

You know, it's like you want something

But you don't know if you can handle it?

At that time, I was still learning to live with accepting my newfound queerness as queerness, accepting that the way I view men extends beyond the vocabulary of “they’re fashionable” or “they have a nice jaw”; learning not to evade pangs of skipped heartbeats when the person I found incredibly attractive wasn’t a woman.

I do think, at the moment that I write this sentence (a year later), I still want to write about that experience of learning to live with, and to love, that type of experience.

I’ve also been trying to figure out what other things I would like to write about, and how I would go about communicating that to anyone reading this. I am obsessed with the idea of structure.

Or at least, from the date that I initially wrote the above sentence, somewhere between July 2019, and, well, before now, where ‘now’ encapsulates a world that has been through a supposedly once-in-a-lifetime event for a seemingly endless amount of my life, I thought that. I think it’s more accurate to say that I’m obsessed with the idea that I can only live with a set structure - a day fully time-blocked, each hour trying to be meticulously accounted for (which always leads to an inevitable failure when I don’t can’t hold myself to account) - but I’ve learned to live more comfortably with flexibility. The world might feel like it’s ending, and a previous version of me might have been accustomed to near-meltdown when the 30 minutes I set aside for reading a book I think I’m enjoying doesn’t pan out, but, now it’s just a matter of telling myself that “I can do this later tonight”, or, ”It’s alright, we can try again tomorrow”.

I feel like I should break the paragraph so I can get to my actual point - so much of the delay in writing this first post, in starting this blog (whatever it’s purpose is), and sharing with you, a random reader, something interesting, has been down to my obsession with trying to make this post perfect. I want to write something that makes me proud to say that it’s my first blog post, and that I feel like it’s good writing. But I don’t even know for myself how good writing can be achieved. So I kept delaying posting this piece to agonise over whether or not you’d like what I had to say, to spend time meticulously looking over my word-choice, and to try and come up with something creative, something useful, something that my brain can perceive as good, when I have no fucking clue what the hell that meant.

At least with all the essays I wrote for college, asking me to analyse a philosophical argument or an economic policy, had a rubric I could figure out, and from there, I could enjoy writing about something I gave a shit about around that rubric. Here, I am dealing with a criteria that I’ve constructed for myself, one which I’m seemingly never happy with, one that I try to keep myself to account to whenever possible. You can probably see where the obsession with structure comes from.

And that wasn’t really the point of me wanting to start writing in the first place anyway - I wanted to start writing so I could get better at writing about the things I care about. As I write this now, in November 2021, I’ve realised that’s all that matters to me.

So I know this first post is a rambling mess, and it’s not entirely clear why you should read this blog. However, if you’ve gotten this far, first of all - thank you for staying along! Secondly, if you’re still asking what I’m going to write about, I answered that already, but to be clear, it’s probably going to be about any of the following (a non-exhaustive list):

Fashion. Mainly my thoughts on fashion because it’s always something that I’ve felt can be expressed better through writing and visual imagery, rather than speaking about it in real life.

Something about being bisexual, and being perceived as anything other than straight since early youth, and living on the tightrope of not showing myself in some places (home) and showing enough of myself in others (outside home)

Vulnerability, and self-compassion

The life I live through the eyes I have, because I think that’s incredibly interesting, apparently.

Maybe there will be more. I don’t really know. But when you see more posts written - you will know.

#writing #fashion #blog

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thoughtfulmindings · 3 years

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Highschool Retrospective

August 2021

Ten years ago, I chronicled my feelings about my last year of high school and my experiences. Every month, starting from August, I wrote a paragraph about how I felt and what I was doing. Like most things in my life, I did not complete this retrospective. I stopped chronicling in February, around 4 months before graduation. However, I kept my draft saved. Now that my education has stopped in its entirety, and 10 years have passed since I first started the retrospective, I figured now was as good of a time as any to post it in all of its (mostly) unedited glory.

August 2011

So in a couple of days, I am about to start my last year of highschool. It’s looking like a bittersweet moment. Part of me is super excited because well its my last year! I've been wanting to experience grade 12 for a long time and now I'm so close! Also, I'm so ready to stop going to my high school and facing the same drama over and over again. I'm ready to embrace the world and start working toward my dreams. But then a part of me recoils at the thought of being out there, in the "real world" as youngster's so eloquently put it. I don't want to leave my friends. I want to continue spending time with them just laughing and growing, not worrying about the future. I don't want to leave them and lose our closeness. I don't want to leave the safe place I've created with my school and all of them.

September 2011

So a month has gone by since school started. We got some new students, but on the whole, it seems like nothing else has changed. Everyone is still the same person with the same quirks and habits. First month has been a little challenging as there is a lot more homework this year and it’s ridiculous how I find myself with so little time. I'm also class president which means that I'm constantly thinking of ways to improve our grad class legacy and make everyone bond closer. As well as thinking for long periods of times, I'm also devoting myself to my studies as I'm aiming for class valedictorian. Life is definitely a tad bit more stressful than I'm used to but its not a panicky stress, its more of a motivated stress. As its very early into the year, I'm saved from the panic of applying to universities and working on my grad portfolio like crazy. As things go, its been a good first month, let's wait and see what the other months bring.

October 2011

So this month has definitely been a mixed bag of emotions. I feel like I've been really moody these past few weeks. Also, weirdly enough, it feels like this month went by so fast but dragged on at the same time. Lol I can't even explain it. Anyways, the homework load has remained the same, but the responsibility load has gone up in more ways than one. As president I find myself so ridiculously busy with bookings for events, making plans, making decisions, its crazy. And as a graduating student I find myself stressing over ways of improving my chances of getting into university and looking for volunteer opportunities. And as the potential valedictorian I find myself working furiously to maintain my average and keep it high. I definitely feel like I've been working overtime. Just hope I can continue working like this without breaking down/ overworking myself. I'm sorta glad that this month has gone by but apprehensive because with every passing month, I'm getting closer to applying for universities and graduating, which brings up its own personal stress issues.

November 2011

This month has been really tiring, simply put. Mentally, it feels like this month has gone by fast and it was hardly even here, but my aching body agrees to differ. I've been so tired this entire month, its crazy. November was enveloped by the annual class trip that happened. In fact, the first week of November was spent furiously working hard to plan the trip and make sure it went without a hitch. The second week was the actual trip and that too was quite exhausting as it messed with our normal body clock and was quite hassling when it came to all the events attended. The third week was filled up by hastily perfecting and finishing assignments and all missed homework as report cards were due. The fourth week was marred by all the arguing going on in class. Seriously, this month has definitely been challenging; it really pushed me to the limit when it came for my duties as class president. I've been so tired keeping my grades up because my system is still messed up from the class trip. Soon enough I have to focus my energies on keeping fit, staying healthy, finding volunteer opportunities, working on university applications, among other things. I'm really hoping the next month will be better, mentally and physically.

December 2011

Honestly, it’s sorta hard to remember this month; it’s gone by so fast. When I think of December, the only thing that comes to mind is the Christmas concert. My school hosts a christmas performance every year, and this year, as a part of the drama class, I was in it. My drama teacher was crazy during this time. Honestly, everything was put on hold except for the performance. During other classes, my fellow students and I would be practising our lines for the performance or getting the props ready. It wasn't really that stressful, well not for me anyways, but it was definitely a busy time. Anyways, school ended pretty quietly and winter vacation started. Vacation is always a great thing, but this time, it felt God-sent. Everyone had been in need of time away from the school and each other. Personally, my vacation has been pretty relaxed and fun. However, I have been working on graduating and applying for universities too. Everything has honestly been wonderful. The only thing that sucks is that this vacation is ending soon, and that means its time to go back to the vortex that's called school.

January 2012

The beginning of this year kicked off with a somber start. The death of a family member really put a damper on things and subsequently, our new year was not welcomed with pomp and circumstance. That said, January wasn't bad the entire time. It had its good times like the class party, winter carnival, and school lockdown lol, which unfortunately also happened to be the day one of our fellow classmates moved towns. Reflecting back, January was a pretty busy month. University applications were completed, new projects were conceived, and the school term finally ended. Honestly, January entered and passed quietly. Although it was a little odd to start off the new year and month so quietly, it was also sort of nice to have a quiet month. It was definitely stressful, but it was still quite quiet. A nice quaint little month surprisingly. Alas, with the ending of every month, I'm coming closer to graduating, waiting for university acceptances, and working on my graduation transitions.

February 2012

I feel like February went by very fast. I'm mean, sure I was stressed about a lot of things, especially yearbook and film-making, but at the same time, it feels like it was a chilled out month. Everything was the same as usual. I guess I slacked off a little bit during this month. I don't know, its probably because of all the interesting events too. This month, I went skiing, had a couple days off from school, volunteered at places, and went to parties. I'm assuming that these events gave everyone breaks to recuperate from school, despite not being super long. I don't know, I'm rambling. This month has been a pleasant surprise, which is odd because I don't remember February every being nice lol. Anyways, too bad the next month is stressful. I just hope I don't lose all motivation by the end of the year.

#personal #school #retrospective #feelings #graduation

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irishurbanplanner · 4 years

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An analysis of the National Planning Framework 2040;

Population projections for Eastern Midlands Regional Assembly.

A Spatial Planner lives in the past present and future. We learn from the past mistakes and achievements, we work with the present day issues and we plan for the future. When we plan for the future, we call this forward planning. Through very carefully gathered data we can make population projections and this is one of the first steps involved in making a plan for the future of an area. When one understands the process of how to gather population projections, you can be assured of minimising your chances of under or indeed over shooting your projections. Now, if you bring in another independent body, to do the same projections in alignment with yours, you would think you might reduce those chances even further. Well unfortunately this didn’t happen in Ireland with the National Planning Framework 2040, which is the plan for development of the State over the next 20 year cycle, with every other governmental plan taking its guidance from it, i.e. reaching set targets of population growth along with many other targets. The sole theme of the National Planning Framework is compact growth, with the aim of growing in every major city and region. It’s a very important document. This post will look at these figures and reveal findings that point towards a grouse miss calculation of population projections, which will ultimately lead to further problems down the road in societal, infrastructural and civil development.

Having studied Spatial Planning in Ireland, Bolton Street Dublin, a great emphasis was put on the National Planning Framework 2040 (NPF); its importance was not lost on us, the students. It was after all, the forward plan for the country, quite possibly with climate change happening at an ever approaching speed, the most important of any forward plan the State has ever undertaken. Its predecessor, the National Spatial Strategy (NSS) had big plans also, but it- never really achieved its goals of connecting ‘Gateways and Hubs’ as it targeted. Specifically, the plan which was first published on November 28th 2002 and would go until 2020, wanted to spread the developments throughout the country. With Dublin, Cork, Limerick/Shannon, Galway and Waterford being existing gateways and hubs, the plan’s focus would be on creating new ones from the large towns, such as Dundalk and Sligo and the linked gateways of Letterkenny/(Derry) and the Midland towns of Athlone/Tullamore/Mullingar. However, the plan didn’t work, as van Egeraat from the Department of Geography and National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, NUI Maynooth discusses in the article ‘Revisiting the National Spatial Strategy ten years on’. In fact all the growth seamed to happen in the already developed gateways and hubs of Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick.

The NPF 2040 has also drawn up plans, given that its almost 20 years after the last National plan, they too look to the future in an attempt to predict the growth and in so doing, (in theory at least), be much better prepared to develop key parts of the country, reducing time resources and money, but most importantly in so doing increases the quality of life for its citizens. Well having studied the NPF, I have an understanding of its plan and projections after having read the NPF and the Construction Industry Federations (CIF) draft report on the NPF to the Eastern Midlands Regional Assembly (EMRA) for consideration. However, this post will only be dealing with the EMRAs area.

The concerns I have, relate to the population projections, similar to what van Egeraat et al. found in their paper ‘Revisiting the National Spatial Strategy ten years on’ getting the population projections wrong leads to many problems, least of all in infrastructure and transport, but more importantly, as I’ll go on to discuss, on the societal level regards housing and job opportunities. The following is a quotation taken from ‘Revisiting the National Spatial Strategy ten years on’,

“van Egeraat et al. evaluate whether ten years on from the introduction of the NSS, any progress has been made in concentrating more employment in the regional gateways and hubs and fostering the development of specialised industrial clusters. Overall, they find that, though two regional gateways experienced a rise of their share of national employment, the NSS has had limited discernible impact on the distribution of economic activities. Nor has there been much progress in terms of the cultivation of regional specialisations”.

(van Egeraat et al.)

This post will look to analyse the NPF 2040 population projections, are they accurate, how were they arrived at and what affect this could have going forward (into quite possibly the most important 20 year cycle this world has ever known given the rise of climate change and our utter failure in tackling it through both education and policies from on high). Understanding the Irish planning system is paramount to this post, so the following image (figure 1) explains how the system operates through a planning hierarchy.

As can be seen, the NPF 2040 is at the top of this system, with every other plan taken lead from it. Just down below the NPF are the Three Regional Plans, the Eastern Midlands Regional Assembly, the Southern Regional Assembly (SRA) and the Northern & Western Regional Assembly (NWRA) (with their Regional Spatial & Economic Strategies (RSES) for each) and then the Local Development Plans (LDPs). LDPs are the plans we see on the ground and are published every 5 to 6 years depending on the County Councils. The problem with this is, the targets supposed to be met by the County Councils, are taken directly from the projections made in the NPF, which this post hopes to raise concerns about.

(The following figure 2 shows how these regions have developed over time, with the first being in 1994 with 8 regions, only to be revised in 1999 into 2 regions and now we have what would be considered the optimum amount of 3 regions).

When one looks at the net inward migration projections of the NPF, it assumes a dramatically lower level than that which has been both historically and very recently achieved according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The CSO have been keeping records of our migration and emigration since they began. So why was the Economic Social Research Institute (ESRI) the only body to do the projections for the NPF? These projections are in direct conflict with that of the Future Analytics Consultants (FACs) and CSO aligned scenario in the third quarter of 2018. “Assuming no change, the baseline incorporates a net inward migration figure of just 8,000 per annum to 2021, rising to 12,500 thereafter. This is in stark contrast to the published migration data available showing a +19,800 net surplus in 2017 and a +34,000 net surplus in 2018 (Migration Estimates, CSO August 2018).”

According to the findings in the CSOs aligned scenario with FACs, ESRI’s projections for the NPF are a conservative scenario at best and are significantly outdated. The damage this could cause to settlements both small and large could be substantial, urban areas would be of particular risk to even further traffic congestion problems going forward and with that, health problems of course.

The NPF transitional figures projected up to 2031 show a difference of 17.7% on 2016 figures, a difference of 68,100 at best and 164,900 at worst. This divergence is illustrated in figure 3 below, with the light blue shading representing the ESRI projections.

Assuming a continuation of existing and prevailing growth trends across the EMRA area, even until 2026, would lead to a furthering of problems, with a marked impact on any future requirements if planning has adapted to cater for a lower than expected increase.

Is the NPF deliberately capping population growth in the Eastern and Midland Region in favour of redistribution elsewhere? Well yes. According to the above graph, (fig 3) the NPF is making totally unrealistic assumptions in relation to a re-balancing of growth, Dublin’s infrastructural capacity is vital to any kind of growth in population or employment.

According to FACs, (and the aligned) CSO in comparison to the ESRI Baseline projections (headroom not included), by 2031 an additional population of +168,700 nationally is to be expected (note, ‘headroom is applied to land zoning at a rate of 50% over and above the planned six year land requirement).

FACs aligned scenario compared to the NPF Roadmap (FAC adjusted using the NPFs 50% headroom approach), will have by 2031, an additional population of +319,200 nationally.

Conclusion.

The consequences of getting these projections wrong remains to be seen, but one can expect knock on effects on everything from employment, to infrastructure to transport and finally the ever increasing crisis of the supply and demand for both Social and private affordable housing. To have an additional 319,000 people in just under ten years from now is quite stark. But like the NSS before it, this NPF seams doomed to fail in my opinion. How will this affect job opportunities, if more people live in an area than is planned for, does this mean more people with less job opportunities?

Recent governments have under delivered on infrastructural needs, so with even less infrastructure to cater for an even bigger population, one can assume to have even further traffic congestion, with the knock on effect on people’s lives, in respect of the quality of that life and even the direct effect of inhaling extensive amounts of carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas, which has proven to be lethal in many studies (see https://www.epa.gov ).

References;

1. Future Analytics, A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF AN ‘AS IS’ SCENARIO WITH RESPECT TO THE NPF IMPLIMENTATION ROADMAP, SUMMARY REPORT. Research undertaken on behalf of Construction Industry Federation, September 2018.

2. National Planning Framework 2040, https://www.housing.gov.ie

3. National Spatial Strategy, https://www.housing.gov.ie

4. Meredith, D & Dr van Egeraat, C. (2013) ‘Revisiting the National Spatial Strategy ten years on’. Institute of Public Administration of Ireland: vol. 60, no. 3, pp 3-9.

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burning-up-ao3 · 5 years

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20 Penguins Thoughts: Mad about Erik Gudbranson? Blame the Flyers.February 26, 2019 8:06 AMBy Jason Mackey / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There are two ways of viewing the Penguins’ trade Monday for defenseman Erik Gudbranson.

On one hand, there’s a large group of fans who like the deal. They think the Penguins could use someone with Gudbranson’s toughness and presence in the dressing room and figured what the heck, Tanner Pearson wasn’t doing much anyway.

The second sect haaaaaates the deal. Like in a steal-kids’-Christmas-presents sort of way.

Here, though, are two things I think we can agree on:

It’s all the Flyers’ fault.

And this surely will be a fun experiment to see play out.

I figured we’d work through these two items and more from Monday in this week’s 20 Thoughts.

2. An important starting date here is Feb. 11. In a game at Wells Fargo Center, Olli Maatta separated his shoulder in an awkward collision with Flyers winger Phil Varone.

According to an industry source, Maatta is expected to miss at least a month while his shoulder heals, and the Penguins remain hopeful that Maatta can avoid surgery.

But given Maatta’s history of shoulder issues and the uncertainty surrounding the possibility of re-injury once he does get back, getting a depth defenseman remained a possibility for Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford.

Then Saturday happened.

3. That’s when Brian Dumoulin was concussed, the result of Wayne Simmonds’ hit along the boards — for which he was not disciplined. Kris Letang was injured by Shayne Gostisbehere in a wrestling match while sticking up for Dumoulin.

Watching from above, Rutherford clearly was not happy.

During the 2016-17 Stanley Cup run, Rutherford sounded off to Ken Campbell of the Hockey News on the mistreatment of his star players — saying the NHL had devolved into a “[expletive] show” — and backed up his words that summer by acquiring Ryan Reaves.

Since trading Jamie Oleksiak to make room for Justin Schultz, Rutherford had been missing an element of the game he really likes and feels the Penguins need, even though there’s many who disagree with that approach.

“In Erik’s case, he’s a real heart-and-soul guy,” Rutherford said Monday. “He’s a good dressing room guy. He’s got good character. He can protect our players, and puts us in a stronger position to push back when we get into more physical games.”

4. This, though, isn’t about so much about Gudbranson as it is about how we got here, and I think that much is fascinating.

A key question to ask is this: Does Rutherford do this deal if neither the Feb. 11 injury to Maatta nor the Stadium Series shenanigans happen?

I don’t think so.

Rutherford can talk about team toughness all he wants, and I do see the value in what Gudbranson could potentially bring (more on that shortly). But I’m sorry, I just don’t see how Rutherford would’ve done this with a full complement of defensemen, and that could be scary given Gudbranson’s contract ($4 million per season through 2021).

5. What happens when everyone gets healthy?

Let’s say, for instance, that Dumoulin and Letang return soon as Rutherford indicated Monday; he said the team wanted to avoid putting them on injured reserve and expressed optimism they could be back this weekend.

By March 11, the Penguins’ blue line could consist of Dumoulin, Letang, Maatta, Schultz, Jack Johnson, Marcus Pettersson, Chad Ruhwedel, Juuso Riikola and Erik Gudbranson.

Two things there. One, that’s nine, a number that, before Schultz returned, was untenable. Either Rutherford doesn’t care because it’ll be mid-March, or two, they’re not nearly as optimistic on Maatta’s injury as they once were.

It’s also worth mentioning that everybody but Ruhwedel is either under contract or a restricted free agent whom the Penguins plan on re-signing (Riikola and Pettersson) for 2019-20.

6. Leave that for another day, though. What’s important this season is whether Gudbranson can add anything of value or whether things go the way they did in Vancouver, which is really bad.

Traditional or advanced, the numbers stink:

• League-worst minus-27.

• Last among defensemen who’ve played at least 600 minutes in five-on-five goals-for percentage (34.4) and scoring-chance percentage (38.6).

Try to make any sort of case that Gudbranson’s defense, at least on paper, represents an upgrade, and it’s tough sledding.

7. But games aren’t played on paper. We can predict a lot of outcomes, just not all of them. I’ll be curious to see how this plays out for that reason.

One, the Penguins deserve the benefit of the doubt based on what they’ve done with other defensemen who’ve struggled elsewhere: Ian Cole, Schultz, Oleksiak, etc.

The problem with Gudbranson, however, is that he’s played 448 NHL games. He is who he is at this point, and that’s a big body who hits and fights and doesn’t really skate all that well. Can he help their transition game? Maybe, but I certainly understand why people have questions.

8. The second part of this is the human element, the stuff people who’ve crushed the deal on social media don’t see.

Far too often this season, the Penguins dressing room has been quiet. There are no issues, as far as I can tell, and it’s full of some very good people. But you need a mix of personalities, the sort of thing the Penguins had while winning back-to-back Stanley Cups.

Earlier this season, I was watching a morning skate with a former Penguins player who couldn’t believe how stoic everyone was, stunned at the lack of chatter. “They need someone to stir the [expletive],” the player said.

Gudbranson should bring that.

9. I remember a couple years ago a game I covered in Vancouver. Believe it was the first time Derrick Pouliot played against his former team post-trade.

We were all waiting in the dressing room for Pouliot, and Gudbranson came bounding in the room, chiding a few of teammates. His personality and voice were unmistakable. They should really stand out at PPG Paints Arena or UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex.

Does this mean Gudbranson should stay in the lineup because he’s funny, even if he stinks? Of course not. And $4 million is a lot to pay for a character guy.

All I’m saying is the guy hasn’t played a game here yet. There are some elements the Penguins could use, if they can somehow figure out how to make the hockey part better — which, admittedly, is a steep hill to climb.

10. But one of the things that worries me about the deal involves the Flyers. Because of what the Penguins’ cross-state rival did, they made a trade out of need rather than want. That’s not always a great thing, although it has worked before.

Given the divide on this, it should be nothing short of fascinating to see it play out.

Especially given the heightened stakes, as Gudbranson was technically acquired for Carl Hagelin ... and has two more years left at a high cap hit for someone who does what he does.

11. Moving on …

Good on Rutherford keeping his first-round pick. If this trade turns out to be terrible, or if the Penguins can’t figure it out and ultimately either exit the playoffs early or miss them entirely, at least he has that.

It’s been far too long since Rutherford has stepped tp the podium on the first night of the NHL Draft … which ironically will take place in Vancouver this summer.

“This is a year that we’re on the bubble to get in. I did not want to risk that,” Rutherford said of potentially trading his first-round pick. “Also it’s a very good draft. It was important this year to keep that pick.”

12. It’s too bad for Pearson.

One, his wife is pregnant, and he’s on his third team — and second time criss-crossing coasts — since November. That can’t be easy.

Two, I got the sense he was beating himself up pretty good over how little he did here.

13. It started the summer after the second Cup with the Matt Hunwick and Antti Niemi signings, but at some point Rutherford needs to stop having to redo things.

I think it's one of his strengths as a general manager, his willingness to admit mistakes and correct them. Many in his position won't, whether it's because of ego or whatever.

But a couple years ago, the Penguins pushed this thing forward because Rutherford kept hitting on deals. They've been spinning their wheels lately, at least in part, because he has missed more often than he or anyone else would like.

14. Willing to bet Jean-Sebastien Dea is thrilled to be done with the Penguins.

They released Dea at the start of the season after deciding against using him in their bottom-six, then reclaimed him from the Devils and again stashed him in the minors.

On Monday, Dea went to Florida for another depth defenseman, Chris Wideman, who could potentially help the Penguins down the road.

Yes, the Penguins are Wideman’s fourth team this season, which isn't a great sign. But he's a decent puck-mover who isn't too far removed from being an NHL regular.

"In Wideman’s case, he gives us depth at defense," Rutherford said. "He’s a smaller guy, a puck-moving guy. He’s played some games in the league. He’s got some experience. He could see some time here at some point, too."

15. I think a lot of you were surprised that Ethan Prow didn't get a shot for Tuesday's game in Columbus with Gudbranson sorting out some immigration stuff.

My sense on Prow is that they'd rather see him push and win a job out of camp instead of the Penguins having to drop him into the lineup and pray that things went OK.

Zach Trotman is a much safer bet for something like that. Now, that being said, with the contract situation I outlined up top, I do wonder if there's going to be a spot available for Prow in 2019-20.

16. Some Stadium Series stuff ...

There's ample reason to dismiss outdoor hockey. Sightlines stink. Sometimes the weather, too. The NHL has had approximately 4,596 outdoor games since 2008, with 90 percent of them involving the Chicago Blackhawks. I get it.

But after walking through the parking lots Saturday, and seeing how that translated into a packed and raucous Lincoln Financial Field, I see why the league keeps pushing these.

They put butts in seats, and honestly, they're fun. That was a really good atmosphere Saturday.

17. And also, from what several players have said, the ice was actually pretty good.

It wasn't until the third period, when the rain really picked up, that things started to get ugly. All in all, I have yet to hear anyone say it was a huge issue.

18. Before the Stadium Series, I did a story about Jared McCann and the backyard rink his dad built him.

Something McCann mentioned made me laugh. He said his dad would even go so far as to put up protective netting. I was a little dumfounded when McCann said that.

"I missed the net a lot as a kid," McCann said. "At first we didn’t have the mesh, so I was losing a lot of pucks. The lawn cutters was getting [ticked] off at me because he kept running over the pucks. Put the mesh up. Started to hit the net a bit more."

Ironically, Gudbranson and McCann were actually traded for each other (plus draft picks on both sides) back in 2016.

19. I couldn't not share this. Might be one of the funniest things I've ever seen on social media:

After a lot of deep thought I think I finally figured out a lineup that the Pittsburgh Penguins Twitter and Facebook crowds would approve of #LetsGoPens

344 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

20. A couple quick thoughts on deadline day around the league ...

I kinda love what Columbus did. The same old thing wasn't working, clearly, so give Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen this: He's certainly taking a different approach. With Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky potentially/likely leaving, talk about loading up for a run.

I like Colorado as a fit for Derick Brassard, although I couldn’t believe the minimal return he netted; along with a conditional sixth-round pick in 2020, the Panthers sent Brassard to the Avalanche for a third-round draft choice in 2020.

But Brassard will get top-six minutes, as he should represent an upgrade over Carl Soderberg.

Here's a random one: Last year the Penguins acquired Tobias Lindberg in the Ryan Reaves deal, although he stayed with the Chicago Wolves because of an AHL agreement the teams worked out.

Lindberg re-signed with the Penguins this summer, but they traded him to Ottawa, the team that drafted him, on Dec. 5. On Monday, the Senators included Lindberg in the deal that sent Mark Stone to Vegas.

So, I guess, what, next year the Penguins get Lindberg back?

I liked what Nashville did a lot, maybe more than Columbus, bringing in Simmonds and Mikael Granlund.

Jason Mackey: [email protected] and Twitter @JMackeyPG.

First Published February 26, 2019 8:00 AM

#pittsburgh penguins #Jason Mackey #Pittsburgh Post Gazette

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frommainetospain2020 · 4 years

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Will 2020 be the best year of my life?

To preface this first blog post, this has been gradually added to over the course of about 9 months. The beginning of this post predates the COVID pandemic, so keep that in mind.

If you’re reading this, you probably know at this point that I’m planning to participate in CIEE’s Teach in Spain program for the 2020-2021 school year. And if you’re reading this, I hope that something else has happened with 2020. I’ve planned to get bariatric surgery at some point between April-July 2020. I speak in the future tense because this is past Steven speaking to you now. December 29, 2019 past Steven to be exact.

I’ve been known to have an overly ambitious mind, and when something gets stuck in there, it doesn’t just “go away”. I’ve proven this time and time again with my first study abroad experience in Italy, my themed recital “The Tantalizing Tale of the Timid and Tactful Toreador”, among others.

I guess my discovery of the CIEE program is a twist of fate. In mid-November, I was researching ways of teaching abroad in Europe. I found CIEE and their Teach Abroad programs. The kicker was that the company was actually stationed in Portland, ME. I chose Spain because I wanted something similar to my first experience, but still different enough to challenge me.

The bariatric surgery was something different altogether. I’ve always been a fat guy. There’s really no beating around the bush, I’ve been fat since I was four years old. I’ve tried a number of fad diets, from a juice cleanse, to a potato diet, to a “Nutritarian diet” among others, but obviously nothing stuck. In the summer of 2019, I got into a binge of the show “My 600 LB Life” where extremely morbidly obese people, (like twice the size of me) get bariatric surgery. I began to look into the concept for myself.

Now, it’s gonna get a little bit sketchy for a second. I looked into two possible scenarios. The first one being that I get approved from my insurance company, and then I have the surgery performed at Northern Light Medical Center in Bangor. Ba da bing, problem solved. But I also had a backup plan. I was genuinely considering going the “travel tourism” route, and going to Tijuana, Mexico. I’ve watched a number of reviews, and honestly, if the insurance doesn’t go through, it’s not fully off the table. But you, reading this in the future, will know better than I would as to the outcome of this endeavor.

So, thus will begin the wonders of the roaring twenties. Will 2020 be the year of a new me? A thinner me? A trilingual me? I guess we’ll find out.

6/28/2020 update- So.... what can I say? This has been a hell of a year. Never in my life would I have predicted that a worldwide pandemic would basically shut everything down. Yes, as you probably know, whenever you get to reading this, COVID 19 basically made everybody need to shelter in place and made the end of the school year be virtual for basically everybody worldwide.

That being said, the weight loss surgery was also very much affected. I met with the psychologist, dietician, and my surgeon at the beginning of March. And yes, this is from a memory perspective, because it’s been a while since I wrote the first part of this blog post. Anyway, when I weighed in then, I weighed 370 lbs. For me at that point, it was pretty standard. I had been roughly that for a long time, and it was nothing shocking to me. After the visit with my surgeon, I was surprised to find out that they were scheduling my surgery date. I chose April 23, 2020 as the day my life would ultimately change. Buuuuuuuuut, because COVID shut everything down a few weeks after that, it didn’t quite work out that way. My date got pushed from 4/23 to 5/28. From 5/28 to 6/25, and then luckily got bumped up from 6/25 to 6/11.

I’m happy to say that the 6/11 date actually stuck. I had an endoscopy done and they found some acid inflammation in my stomach, so my surgeon recommended a bypass instead of a sleeve. My ultimate question was “Can it still happen at the time it’s currently scheduled?” to which she responded yes. I then basically said “You’re the doc, Doc...” and that’s how it ended up working.

For those of you that have never gone through the weight loss surgery process, there’s a liquid diet that you have to do for 2 weeks before surgery, and two weeks after it. And it is ROUGH! It was easily the hardest thing I think I’ve ever pushed myself to do in my life. But I didn’t cheat once, and I recently upgraded to soft foods.

When I ended up having my surgery, I was basically conked out most of surgery day. The anesthesia knocked me out and I could barely stay awake from when I was in recovery (around 10 o clock I think...) until about 6 PM. I was in and out of consciousness.

I was an ideal patient though, from what I could tell. I had very little pain. The only real pain I had was from the gas that they used to expand my abdomen. But I was used to this after having my appendix out. Apparently patients aren’t as keen to walk the halls as I was, seeing as I had about a dozen nurses comment on how frequently and how quickly I walked.

I was discharged at around 12:30 on the third day in the hospital. I was then dismayed to find that my parents proceeded to get themselves Wendys on the ride home, which smelled nauseating. I literally wore my COVID mask upside down the whole time so I didn’t have to smell it.

Recovery was normal for the most part, except it took me a bit to figure out the whole hydration thing. There was a point after a few days at home that I had worked all of the IV fluid out of me and my fluid/electrolytes were low. Because of this, I got extremely dizzy and lightheaded whenever I stood. I eventually figured it out by drinking more and incorporating Gatorade Zero with my liquid intake.

Like I said, I’ve recently gotten approved to move to soft foods, and can I just say, it’s heavenly. After 30 days of a full liquid diet, I was living for that first scrambled egg, and I gotta say, even though it was pretty mediocre because I suck at cooking eggs, it was still heaven.

So yeah, goal 1 of 2 checked off of the list. The second goal is obviously going to be increasingly difficult because of the current state of the world. The EU is threatening to not let any US citizens in because the US is full of idiots politicizing the coronavirus and refusing to wear masks, causing massive spikes and making the US’s number of cases ungodly high. So hopefully that will sort out in time for me to.... you know..... go...

I did attempt a few back up plans, but none of them came to fruition. I interviewed for music teacher positions in Hermon, Lisbon, and Winthrop. The latter being the furthest I got, since I was the runner up. One could assume that operating under the assumption of “everything happens for a reason” could come to mean that Spain will work out as initially intended, which I truly hope it does. But if it doesn’t, I’m gonna have to scramble to get a job, which is ultimately gonna suck, but it’s necessary.

Now, as I write this, CIEE seems to think it will work out as planned. They say that in the next two days, they’ll be sending out placements for where I’m slated to go. Most people opt for very urban areas close to the city center, but I wanted somewhere more quiet, so I’m assuming I was probably easy to place.

In the visa process, the consulates have been closed and not accepting visa appointments for a few months. Recently, the Boston consulate made an email that you’d have to email to get an appointment, which I emailed, but I haven’t gotten a response yet.

The hardest document to get in the process is a background check. I initially tried to get a Federal FBI background check, but I needed a physical fingerprint card, which was difficult to get. I attempted to get fingerprinted at the Millinocket Police Station, but the FBI rejected those fingerprints. I tried two different things to get a state background check instead, but the results of that remain to be seen.

So, ultimately, will I be able to go abroad again? Will COVID buzz off in time to not ruin the second half of 2020? The world may never know.... At least for a couple months... I’m writing this as a draft so by the time anyone other than me reads this, those months will have passed and the result will be abundantly clear, so you have that advantage over me. So... I guess we’ll see...

Since I have other topics to write about, I’m going to stop this first blog post here.

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