Some Gregorian Stuff
Jan. 1st, 2019 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jhameiaI've been spending most of the holidays in a state of feeling lost and anxious, mostly over things I can't control, but some over things which I could but am not sure what to do about it and whether I can (not as in, can I do it, I'm sure I can, the question is one of sustainability and maintenance). And while I'm getting a kick out of being thoughtful and junk about my future since I should be worrying about that stuff like an adult anyway post-PhD, I'm going to acknowledge also being a bit of an ingrate and not really thinking about people who've made this whole year a good one for me.
My psychiatrist was very gentle with me all through the six months I had her before my medical insurance ran out and I had to move anyway. We tried a bunch of different meds, and out of all of them, Effexor was the best, but I can mostly still function without it. Would try again though.
I reconnected with Pan Jia Ling after 14 years of no contact, by some Twitter coincidence where Grace Fong retweeted a bunch of women artists introducing themselves and I just so happened to catch Jia Ling's in my timeline. She immediately had me come out to Oakland to stay with her and give a talk at her company.
That same week, I also got to attendoyceter's wedding! She and Randy have also been so, so, so good to me. They've let me stay over their place several times, even when I've misread my bus ticket and had to bunk over one more hour, one more night. Then, when I moved to the Bay Area, they let me stay with them for a week while I began working at Tachyon and hunted for a new place to live.
yeloson has also been Homie Extraordinaire™. Over the years he's let me bunk over at his place for days at a time, he's always inviting me to do martial arts training and food and storytelling stuff (I don't grok gaming but trading worldbuilding ideas is always a great time with him). These days I get to eat with him almost weekly. He let me stay over his place too, right before I moved into my new place.
My new roommates have been great and I'm so grateful that they offered the room to me despite the fact that I may not stay here very long. It's nice to live with people who share my sense of geek chic and who take just as much interest in the household as I do. I tend to hide from them a lot because my bedroom faces the dining room, but I do like them a lot!
Since moving to the Bay, I've also gotten to see more of the people I usually only ever see at events like WisCon! I'm pretty happy with that. I miss folks from Riverside, especially my Pokemon Go friends, so it was really exciting when my usual crew came up to visit me! We walked all over UC Berkeley one day, then San Francisco the next, did a ton of raids together.
If not for Emily Jiang talking to Jacob for me about my potentially interning for Tachyon, I wouldn't have been able to just ask Jacob about working there. I mean, I'm sure I would have eventually, but I would have taken longer at it, because it felt a lot like asking for a favour.
Jacob apparently pushed Jill to at least meet with me for an interview, and I think it was a good interview where clearly all our goals were aligned. I'm so grateful to them for giving me that chance! Learning at Tachyon has been so great, and watching how Jacob and Jill work gives me high hopes that this is a thing I could conceivably do in the future myself. I may only go in three days a week, but every day is a good day with good people. After years spent in a dysfunctional space where I had to soothe many fellow grad students, it's been a joy to just come into the office to be with people who love books just because they like books and not because of academic cred, who also like food (a lot of chocolate has been consumed this holiday season), and who also just like their work a lot.
*
I didn't manage to maintain my exercise regime despite my best efforts, but I did do about 50 good days non-stop of upper-body exercise with the resistance band. I'm hoping with the gym membership, I'll be able to work on that further.
I didn't manage to sew anything this year either, but I'm in a household full of crafty people, so I'm sure I'll be able to get to it at some point. I need a new bra.
I wrote some short story drafts, and I published THREE things! I thought it was just two, but apparently I can't count. I had publications in Mythic Delirium (in before it closed!!! and it was a dream market for me too), and Beneath Ceaseless Skies (another dream market, and not closing!!) and a solarpunk anthology, GLASS AND GARDENS. In 2019, I'll be in Fireside Fiction (I just got the print quarterly and it looks so great!) and in NEW SUNS. I'm a bit nervous about NEW SUNS because my story in it is incrdibly pornographic, and I meant to publish it under a different name, but Nisi liked it so there it goes.
Editing-wise, I'm still looking for freelance work, and feeling really dumb that I still don't know how to apply for them (I've been trying!). But luckily I've been doing stuff for Seven Seas, so that makes me feel better.
I did not read as many books as I wanted to! I did finally get around to reading the Broken Earth trilogy, and because I'm no longer writing a dissertation, I can get back to reading at a good clip. I should do more weekends where I set aside everything and spend hours reading.... I really can read a novel in a single day if I have nothing else going. I read a lot more romance novels this year than I have in previous years, mostly by women of color (actually maybe only by women of color), and I also started reading more non-fiction, particularly Chinese history and culture, to help me write my new novel series. I've been reading a particular kind of non-fiction for so long, I never realized how fulfilling it is to read a wider variety beyond critical theory. I didn't log my readings, but I did log in about 18 books on GoodReads, so that's pretty good... so I'd say I read about 22 books total this year. Getting a library card was a good idea.
Through Instagram I've also made a couple of fandom friends! I'm not very good at being active in a fandom, but it's nice to have someone to talk fannishly with about specific things. I've been playing Samurai Love Ballad: Party pretty consistently for the last year or so and have been enjoying it still. I still want to write the review of 80 Days, too.
Anime-wise, I finally got a CrunchyRoll account! I watched and enjoyed Thunderbolt Fantasy, Jingai-san no Yome, Cells at Work, and Ikesai Izakaya, although it probably says something about me that the series I managed to finish mostly have like, 6 minute episodes.
I went on actual dates this year with actual people of varying quality and chemistry. And by dates I mean like 3. Which is still like more than in the previous 6 years!!! I'm still seeing one of them on a semi-regular basis, but it's less of a relationship and more hooking up. After all that bullshit Arley put me through, I'm pretty satisfied to have an honest arrangement where I get fed and fucked with zero emotional labour on my end.
*
Ongoing stuff:
My O-visa application is slow-going because my attorneys are a bit slow and not very urgent people, but to be fair, I'm not being very fussy about it either. I have most of everything together--I need a couple more letters of support, and I need to finish this employment contract. I am being cautiously optimistic and thinking of planning my exit in April just in case it doesn't pan out.
For similar reasons I'm holding off on renewing my California ID until I had a stronger sense of my visa application.
I've been floating around 133 - 137 lbs and trying to get down to the 120s, but this of course is getting difficult because winter is cold and makes me want to eat! I've been eating for pleasure a lot, and not moving around as much, hence the gym membership. I really don't want to get any higher than 135, because that entails not fitting into my clothes AGAIN. Replacing my wardrobe is a process I dislike having to go through again and again. I am very hopeful that I'll still get to eat my favourite foods and maintain a good weight for me, because if 2017 proved anything, it wasn't what I was eating, but HOW MUCH.
*
Events I did this year! In no particular order:
- Writers with Drinks: for the first time I was reading instead of being in the audience, yay! I think it went over well. Lots of people came up to me afterwards to talk about my story and reading. I read "The Last Cheng Beng Gift" and a couple of people said they preferred my reading to LeVar's :O
- WorldCon: I wasn't gonna go, was just gonna barcon, but Tachyon got me a Dealer pass, so I spent a lot of it in the Dealer room. I did help with Mary Robinette Kowal's triage too. I was on a panel, but mostly I spent a lot of it swanning around the Dealer room and hanging out with friends. It was so nice to see Yilun again!
- SF Tea Festival: I got a lot of tea withyeloson, ladyjax, tempestedbird, and some other folks. We did the early bird entry and it was worth it.
- AfroComicCon: This was a tiny one-day con and I got to meet some Twitter followers.
- ICFA: I did a reading, but mostly I wanted to hang out with people.
*
My mental health this year has not been the greatest. Finishing the PhD and not being able to find a job out the gate was a trying thing, and really did a number on my self-confidence. I guess I could have just gone home to Malaysia where I could live somewhere rent-free, but that would entail giving up an entire network of people and cause another blow that I'm not sure I could bounce back from easily. It would also have meant going home to live with my mother, which isn't really something I want to risk until I feel more secure in my future plans.
I have a lot of things to be happy about, really, but it's not piercing deeper inside, so I'm going through the motions of being happy while wondering how come I don't feel better about it. Luckily I'm not the kind to go through emotional deadness, so I'm still laughing and crying at stuff, just not as much as before. I'm good at self-soothing but that's a kind of effort I wish I could expend in different directions. The political climate isn't helping me: I feel really helpless about both American stuff AND Malaysian stuff. I can't vote in America and I worry that if I get too active I'll be noticed and drummed out of the country. I can't vote in Malaysia and I know too little of what the hell is going on there to say anything remotely intelligent. My Seasonal Affective Disorder is political.
Because of this, I'm phasing out of Facebook, and possibly Twitter, unless I'm at a computer. Facebook isn't great for archiving things anyway, even with the "X YEARS AGO" feature. I'm gonna focus more on chat-apps like Hangouts, Discord, and Slack. I'm still active on Instagram because it demands so little attention and still, I'm talking to people on there!
Journalling on DW is going to be a priority this year for keeping myself accountable and present in the world. Now that I'm back on here more often, I find myself reflecting more on what's been happening, and thus feel more grounded as a result. So here's to keeping it up. I hope that DW will see more people coming back to it this year too.
My psychiatrist was very gentle with me all through the six months I had her before my medical insurance ran out and I had to move anyway. We tried a bunch of different meds, and out of all of them, Effexor was the best, but I can mostly still function without it. Would try again though.
I reconnected with Pan Jia Ling after 14 years of no contact, by some Twitter coincidence where Grace Fong retweeted a bunch of women artists introducing themselves and I just so happened to catch Jia Ling's in my timeline. She immediately had me come out to Oakland to stay with her and give a talk at her company.
That same week, I also got to attend
oyceter's wedding! She and Randy have also been so, so, so good to me. They've let me stay over their place several times, even when I've misread my bus ticket and had to bunk over one more hour, one more night. Then, when I moved to the Bay Area, they let me stay with them for a week while I began working at Tachyon and hunted for a new place to live.yeloson has also been Homie Extraordinaire™. Over the years he's let me bunk over at his place for days at a time, he's always inviting me to do martial arts training and food and storytelling stuff (I don't grok gaming but trading worldbuilding ideas is always a great time with him). These days I get to eat with him almost weekly. He let me stay over his place too, right before I moved into my new place.My new roommates have been great and I'm so grateful that they offered the room to me despite the fact that I may not stay here very long. It's nice to live with people who share my sense of geek chic and who take just as much interest in the household as I do. I tend to hide from them a lot because my bedroom faces the dining room, but I do like them a lot!
Since moving to the Bay, I've also gotten to see more of the people I usually only ever see at events like WisCon! I'm pretty happy with that. I miss folks from Riverside, especially my Pokemon Go friends, so it was really exciting when my usual crew came up to visit me! We walked all over UC Berkeley one day, then San Francisco the next, did a ton of raids together.
If not for Emily Jiang talking to Jacob for me about my potentially interning for Tachyon, I wouldn't have been able to just ask Jacob about working there. I mean, I'm sure I would have eventually, but I would have taken longer at it, because it felt a lot like asking for a favour.
Jacob apparently pushed Jill to at least meet with me for an interview, and I think it was a good interview where clearly all our goals were aligned. I'm so grateful to them for giving me that chance! Learning at Tachyon has been so great, and watching how Jacob and Jill work gives me high hopes that this is a thing I could conceivably do in the future myself. I may only go in three days a week, but every day is a good day with good people. After years spent in a dysfunctional space where I had to soothe many fellow grad students, it's been a joy to just come into the office to be with people who love books just because they like books and not because of academic cred, who also like food (a lot of chocolate has been consumed this holiday season), and who also just like their work a lot.
*
I didn't manage to maintain my exercise regime despite my best efforts, but I did do about 50 good days non-stop of upper-body exercise with the resistance band. I'm hoping with the gym membership, I'll be able to work on that further.
I didn't manage to sew anything this year either, but I'm in a household full of crafty people, so I'm sure I'll be able to get to it at some point. I need a new bra.
I wrote some short story drafts, and I published THREE things! I thought it was just two, but apparently I can't count. I had publications in Mythic Delirium (in before it closed!!! and it was a dream market for me too), and Beneath Ceaseless Skies (another dream market, and not closing!!) and a solarpunk anthology, GLASS AND GARDENS. In 2019, I'll be in Fireside Fiction (I just got the print quarterly and it looks so great!) and in NEW SUNS. I'm a bit nervous about NEW SUNS because my story in it is incrdibly pornographic, and I meant to publish it under a different name, but Nisi liked it so there it goes.
Editing-wise, I'm still looking for freelance work, and feeling really dumb that I still don't know how to apply for them (I've been trying!). But luckily I've been doing stuff for Seven Seas, so that makes me feel better.
I did not read as many books as I wanted to! I did finally get around to reading the Broken Earth trilogy, and because I'm no longer writing a dissertation, I can get back to reading at a good clip. I should do more weekends where I set aside everything and spend hours reading.... I really can read a novel in a single day if I have nothing else going. I read a lot more romance novels this year than I have in previous years, mostly by women of color (actually maybe only by women of color), and I also started reading more non-fiction, particularly Chinese history and culture, to help me write my new novel series. I've been reading a particular kind of non-fiction for so long, I never realized how fulfilling it is to read a wider variety beyond critical theory. I didn't log my readings, but I did log in about 18 books on GoodReads, so that's pretty good... so I'd say I read about 22 books total this year. Getting a library card was a good idea.
Through Instagram I've also made a couple of fandom friends! I'm not very good at being active in a fandom, but it's nice to have someone to talk fannishly with about specific things. I've been playing Samurai Love Ballad: Party pretty consistently for the last year or so and have been enjoying it still. I still want to write the review of 80 Days, too.
Anime-wise, I finally got a CrunchyRoll account! I watched and enjoyed Thunderbolt Fantasy, Jingai-san no Yome, Cells at Work, and Ikesai Izakaya, although it probably says something about me that the series I managed to finish mostly have like, 6 minute episodes.
I went on actual dates this year with actual people of varying quality and chemistry. And by dates I mean like 3. Which is still like more than in the previous 6 years!!! I'm still seeing one of them on a semi-regular basis, but it's less of a relationship and more hooking up. After all that bullshit Arley put me through, I'm pretty satisfied to have an honest arrangement where I get fed and fucked with zero emotional labour on my end.
*
Ongoing stuff:
My O-visa application is slow-going because my attorneys are a bit slow and not very urgent people, but to be fair, I'm not being very fussy about it either. I have most of everything together--I need a couple more letters of support, and I need to finish this employment contract. I am being cautiously optimistic and thinking of planning my exit in April just in case it doesn't pan out.
For similar reasons I'm holding off on renewing my California ID until I had a stronger sense of my visa application.
I've been floating around 133 - 137 lbs and trying to get down to the 120s, but this of course is getting difficult because winter is cold and makes me want to eat! I've been eating for pleasure a lot, and not moving around as much, hence the gym membership. I really don't want to get any higher than 135, because that entails not fitting into my clothes AGAIN. Replacing my wardrobe is a process I dislike having to go through again and again. I am very hopeful that I'll still get to eat my favourite foods and maintain a good weight for me, because if 2017 proved anything, it wasn't what I was eating, but HOW MUCH.
*
Events I did this year! In no particular order:
- Writers with Drinks: for the first time I was reading instead of being in the audience, yay! I think it went over well. Lots of people came up to me afterwards to talk about my story and reading. I read "The Last Cheng Beng Gift" and a couple of people said they preferred my reading to LeVar's :O
- WorldCon: I wasn't gonna go, was just gonna barcon, but Tachyon got me a Dealer pass, so I spent a lot of it in the Dealer room. I did help with Mary Robinette Kowal's triage too. I was on a panel, but mostly I spent a lot of it swanning around the Dealer room and hanging out with friends. It was so nice to see Yilun again!
- SF Tea Festival: I got a lot of tea with
yeloson, ladyjax, tempestedbird, and some other folks. We did the early bird entry and it was worth it. - AfroComicCon: This was a tiny one-day con and I got to meet some Twitter followers.
- ICFA: I did a reading, but mostly I wanted to hang out with people.
*
My mental health this year has not been the greatest. Finishing the PhD and not being able to find a job out the gate was a trying thing, and really did a number on my self-confidence. I guess I could have just gone home to Malaysia where I could live somewhere rent-free, but that would entail giving up an entire network of people and cause another blow that I'm not sure I could bounce back from easily. It would also have meant going home to live with my mother, which isn't really something I want to risk until I feel more secure in my future plans.
I have a lot of things to be happy about, really, but it's not piercing deeper inside, so I'm going through the motions of being happy while wondering how come I don't feel better about it. Luckily I'm not the kind to go through emotional deadness, so I'm still laughing and crying at stuff, just not as much as before. I'm good at self-soothing but that's a kind of effort I wish I could expend in different directions. The political climate isn't helping me: I feel really helpless about both American stuff AND Malaysian stuff. I can't vote in America and I worry that if I get too active I'll be noticed and drummed out of the country. I can't vote in Malaysia and I know too little of what the hell is going on there to say anything remotely intelligent. My Seasonal Affective Disorder is political.
Because of this, I'm phasing out of Facebook, and possibly Twitter, unless I'm at a computer. Facebook isn't great for archiving things anyway, even with the "X YEARS AGO" feature. I'm gonna focus more on chat-apps like Hangouts, Discord, and Slack. I'm still active on Instagram because it demands so little attention and still, I'm talking to people on there!
Journalling on DW is going to be a priority this year for keeping myself accountable and present in the world. Now that I'm back on here more often, I find myself reflecting more on what's been happening, and thus feel more grounded as a result. So here's to keeping it up. I hope that DW will see more people coming back to it this year too.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-02 08:01 am (UTC)Hoping your 2019 has more of the good and less of the bad, that the uncertainties in your life resolve in positive ways, and that your PoGo eggs hatch some really good stuff.