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blissfullyecho · 1 year

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how to *actually* be more confident

one of the thousands of things i cannot stand in the personal development community is when someone’s advice is to “be confident”. like ok girl.. it’s not like i can instantly become more confident lol. let’s first debunk some myths straight away.

1) you having better posture makes you LOOK confident, but it doesn’t actually HELP you feeling confident. it’s uncomfortable and annoying.

2) you looking up instead of down again makes you LOOK confident, but it doesn’t make you FEEL confident. it makes you feel awkward because you don’t know what to look at.

3) making a list of the things you like about yourself is cutesy and all, but it doesn’t do anything for you to gain happiness. if anything, it’s temporary. and if there’s nothing you like about yourself, then this piece of advice does more harm than good. now look at you— even more sad

4) i read online when i googled “how to be more confident” and a common tip was “realize you’re not alone”. what the actual fuck does that have to do with gaining confidence? girl bye

5) recite affirmations. this one is so annoying. if you hate something about yourself and you’re saying “i am/love/have” affirmations about something you don’t believe is true, it’s a waste of time and makes you look crazy.

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if you actually want to gain confidence, you need to do exactly these things because it’s what worked for me:

1) you need to set goals, duh— but set goals like daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. when you cross your goals for the day/week/month/year, you begin to see yourself as someone who is hardworking and someone who knows how to get what they want. then guess what? your confidence increases. it’s impossible to accomplish the things you want to accomplish and feel insecure.

2) build trust with yourself. if you say you’re gonna do something, do it. that’s the most attractive thing anyone could do. if you’re used to telling yourself you’re going to workout 4 days a week but you keep only getting to 2 days, you’re going to have a hard time counting on yourself. if you can’t count on yourself to get the job done, you’ll never be confident.

3) you have to be attractive. sorry. anyone can be attractive though so you’ll be fine as long as you actually work on getting your look together.

4) amplify your current strengths. if you’re good at something, aim to get better at it. honestly, with everything in your life, you should always aim to be better than yesterday, last month, last year, etc.

5) do things that make you uncomfortable. if you don’t like going to the gym because you feel like everyone is looking at you and making fun of you, go anyway. when you get used to the feeling of being uncomfortable because you fear for how you come across to others, that’s the best opportunity to increase your confidence because more times than not, you were overthinking the things that once made you uncomfortable

6) be in shape. it’s attractive and you feel a lot better. no one better come for me on this tip. it’s not horrible to be healthy lol. relax.

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sanstropfremir · 3 years

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Okay, time for my weekly rant so buckle up. The vocal stages were okay-I cant really remember them well because I watched them only once so take what I say with a grain of salt. Well I watched the Spark one once and I only got through half of the other one because I can’t stand ballads especially when there’s no interesting movement on stage to keep me engaged. Like it’s no fault of the members themselves or the song (I actually think their singing was incredibly beautiful and Eunkwang always sings like his wife just left him with the kids which is how you know he’s good) but I physically could not pay attention. That’s why I liked the spark stage a bit better-there was enough movement that I was able to focus on it. I really liked the use of the fire and the way they were walking in and out of the frame trading off parts so there weren’t too many awkward moments where the other members where on stage but not doing anything. The opening was gorgeous with each members being lit by the spotlight as they harmonize. So stagewise, I prefer Spark but vocally I think the other group was stronger. I love Spark and Taeyon is such an incredible vocalist (I mean the song is great because of her) so I don’t get why their delivery was, I don’t want to say weak, but subdued might be a better word. The only one that really stood out was Junhoe (but also that man couldn’t not stand out even if he tried, not with that incredibly rasp) and even he seemed to be holding himself back a bit. Though it was a bit slow it built up well to the two last choruses but still the first half could have been stronger. I know they were trying to draw it out to a strong pay off but I don’t really know if it was enough. And yes the suits were *chef’s kiss*. I think at this point in their career the FNC stylist has put SF9 in so many suits they’ve got it down to a science. Also I’m a sucker for those shirts with the triangle cut out and we got not one but two of them here.

Okay moving on, I’m not sure which group was next but I’ll talk about the Ikon stage. It seems like they finally realized that they’re on a performance based competition show so they decided to pull out the big guns. Love the little skit at the beginning (making sure people don’t forget that they’re YG), it was cute and refreshing. I really appreciated how they leaned into the campy acting in this stage (Stray kids did it too-just adding to the similarities between their stages). The song was meh but I also don’t really like BP especially not their recent stuff so it’s not a big deal. I would have preferred if they had gone with another song maybe Whistle or As If It’s Your Last or if they’d done a 2NE1 song like Chanwoo mentioned some point in the episode. I also think the stage would have been way smoother if they’d let Ikon and Lisa interact. Like if the boys appeared in her set after her section and then they all moved back to the first jungle set and then the whole thing turns gold and they did a dramatic outfit change (but with better jackets because theirs look like they came out of Party City). I also get what you mean about the dancers outfits not being that great. I actually really liked the outfits of Lisa’s dancers in isolation but they didn’t match with her or the set so they threw me off a bit. At least with the ikon members they were going for a modern look so the dancers outfits didn’t look that strange in comparison. Do you think it would have been better if they were white? How would you have improved then? The best way I can describe this performance was that it was a stage, stuff happened, I enjoyed myself but I don’t plan to revisit it anytime soon. Oh and we also have to give points for them cursing on national television not once but twice (at this point Jinwan deserves to say fuck).

Now to Stray Kids. So I feel like I need to preface this with the fact that I am actually a stray kids fan (I won’t call myself a stay because I don’t associate with the fandom) and though I’ve been really critical of them and their stages tend to be my least favorite I still have a soft spot for them (I got into this show because of them after all). I loved, loved, loved the intro with Felix (and yes his biggest flaw is that he’s Australian but I forgive him for it) and the way it immediately transitions into the chorus of DDD-the abrupt transition does fit really well with the Deadpool theme and I guess it is the closest they’re going to get to the feeling of yeeting themselves into traffic like in the movie. Interesting choice to start with the chorus. Now that I’m rewatching it I do really wish they stuck with the comic theme. I think that’s my gripe with SKZ-they have a lot of good ideas but they move on too quickly from them. Just pick a handful of things and sprinkle them throughout instead of cycling through them at breakneck speed. Like okay they’re doing Deadpool and he’s a comic character so keep the comic styling (it would have been a good thing to put in the projection behind Seungmin’s scene), maybe in the subway they could have had some fight choreo so the guns coming in at Lee Knows part aren’t out of nowhere (also someone please tell me they were trying to recreate the meme with the cat and the knives, please I need to know). I absolutely agree that them having a goal or an antagonist would have really helped the story along. I mean they literally have a spoken intro so why couldn’t Felix just tell us who they were fighting (and I’m pretty sure in the movie Wade tells us he’s trying to kill Francis in that scene sooo). As always they put more focus on the rappers (please can we get less Changbin and more Seungmin, Jeongin, or Lee Know or at least give Felix more parts). Seungmin was the real mvp of this stage and he had the best outfit (I think it qualifies for Hanya’s best gay little outfit list). Personally I with they hadn’t gone with Gods Menu again. I’ve been hoping that they would perform My Pace (and maybe remix it with their B-side TA off their Go Live album) because that would be such a fun stage. Again, I enjoyed myself but I won’t revisit it anytime soon. At this point the only groups I actually look forward to are BTOB and SF9 (they’re doing fucking Move and I don’t know whether to be excited or terrified-there’s a clip of Taeyang covering Move from a variety show or interview and I think he does it really well so I know at least one of them can pull it off). Again thanks for creating space where I can info dump and I hope I said something of interest to you!

i think you wrote more than me!! i love this, im gonna put my response under a cut im not being super obnoxious on the dash.

i get that the mayfly stage would be not as visually stimulating for people and usually i would count myself in with that crowd because i love a good spectacle but i think because i watched the spark stage first and my colour perception is sometimes weird so when there's a lot of movement with very little colour variation my tiny pea brain loses track of whats happening really quickly. especially with red. so it was kind of difficult for me to pay attention to the spark stage in the second half. also i absolutely HATE watching people flub on stage because it brings up such visceral secondhand feelings that i couldn't even watch the stage when i started the full episode today.

i love a good suit but you know what i would also love: sf9 in more costume variations. tbh im just getting nitpicky about it because im a costume designer down to the core and i got trained by a designer who specialized in doing avant garde costuming so i tend to skew more towards wild than reserved. it looks like the move stage wont be be suits so ill take it, but oh man to do i want to see some really crazy stuff. which i know they'll never do because idols have to be pretty at all times or the fans get mad but oh i want it so badly.

do you mean how i would improve ikon's backup dancers outfits or lisa's? here why dont i do both. for lisa's dancers i would have just done away with that harness shape all together, its almost exclusively a military style. the jackets by themselves would have been fine but really what they should have done was put them in something that matched the gold but contrasted enough to give them shape. by having at least her dancers in all black on a gold stage there was a lot of "haha look at me do a duck walk because lets throw in some voguing for spice." they could have gone with a mesh bodysuit idea similar to what she was wearing or even just different colour coats. as for ikon's backup dancers, firstly pants. not black. or even a longer skirt. genuinely a part of the reason why i dont watch girl group content is because i HATE the hem length of the shorts they make everyone wear. words cannot describe how much i hate that cut. kpop is so obsessed with showing off women's bodies and especially their legs but they do it in the LEAST flattering way possible because it "can't be too risqué," just shoot me now. i hate it. i hate it so fucking much. yea yea everybody was on cocaine in the 80s whatever but at least they were all wearing french cut bodysuits so their legs looked fantastic. stop interrupting the lines!! anyways. pants so the only section of skin showing is thigh to mid calf, especially because they weren't even doing any fun legwork! if they really wanted to keep the full sleeve bodysuits they shout have done them in a fabric with a texture or external embellishments, like a patent/vinyl or sequins/rhinestones. something to catch the stage lights so we can actually see the shape of the limb. but the easiest way to fix it is literally just cut the arms off the bodysuits. stages are lit to show off skin, sometimes the best way to have something be seen is just to have it bare.

i agreed skz cycles through ideas way too fast, they need to just pick a couple and stick them out through the stage instead of just adding more and more different ones throughout. also ok good someone else noticed that there is just...so much changbin. we don't need that much changbin. i know there's other boys in the group let them do something! also im pretty sure theyre not recreating the cat knife meme but actually the promo image from john wick chapter two, which i also could have sworn i saw a deadpool version of as an instagram ad back when movies were happening, but now that im looking for it it doesn't exist so i might be crazy.

im excited for the move stage but im also trepidatious because...its move. i have NO clue what the concept is from the previews so i just hope its weird enough to take it enough out of the taemin context for me to enjoy it.

#kingdom #youre very sweet im glad you like sending asks in!!#realistically im just trying to replace going out to the pub and talking about art with people #this is my virtual pub you are welcome to a have a pint at my table!!#theres some costume talk in this one for anyone who reads the tags first #as you can see do not get me started on the shorts issue because it is one of the few things that gets me irrationally angry #i can ignore it most of the time by willfully not thinking about it #kpop questions #text #kingdom asks

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theastrophilearchitect · 3 years

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I started writing a book.

And I’m mad about it, because I just started this post, brought up a new tab and lost it because I didn’t save my draft.

Anyway. That’s a thing I did. Wow.

As of this moment, this post won’t be going up until April 19th, but I’m starting writing this at 10.30pm on Sunday, February 21st, 2021. I’ve done a lot in the last couple weeks, and I want to have some record of all I’ve accomplished without just letting most of it fade over the next two months.

I’ve always wanted to be an author. From when I was reading under my covers with a torch past bedtime, through the years I wanted to be an artist, through the years I wanted to be a lawyer. It’s always been there - no matter what primary career path I went down, I wanted to be an author. The last few years, I’ve been invested in becoming a biologist, and that dream really took a backseat.

In the start of this lockdown, my mental health went downhill, and some advice my therapist gave me was just to prioritise myself. It sounds simple enough, but, even in my free time, I’d been focusing on schoolwork - revising constantly for exams I’m still not sure are actually happening. (Boris Johnson is apparently making an announcement tomorrow about beginning to ease lockdown, but we’ll see) So, on Saturday, February 6th, I started an attempt to coalesce the ideas I had floating in my head into something tangible.

I’ve tried to write books countless times (not technically countless - I have all the documents on my laptop, so I could if I wanted to), but mostly, I’ve never gotten further than a couple bare plot points and some characters, maybe some ideas for subplots, before I’ve stagnated and given up.

Three times, I’ve finished a skeletal outline. Twice, I’ve started to go back over those outlines only to realise they made no sense or just seemed week, and simply not cared enough to fix it. Until now, I guess.

February 6th, 7th, and fast-forward to my week off beginning the 15th, up until the 19th, I kept developing this concept I’d managed to form, but I was struggling to establish a coherent plot. I had up until and including a midpoint (which was later condensed into just a first act), but everything after that was just a void. I began searching for some skeletal structure I could apply to it, both to work on pacing and fill in the blanks. I tried several, and got a little further, but was about to give up hope.

Then I remembered a video by Katytastic I’d watched years ago about the 3-act, 9-block, 27-chapter structure she used, and couldn’t see the harm in giving it a go. And something clicked.

You can find the video here - the structure’s detailed and easy to follow, plus she even gives an example of using it to generate a plot.

I started binge-watching her writing vlogs in the background, and even started using her same writing program, Scrivener, which just made every a thousand times easier by taking away the need to juggle a billion Word documents. It’s fairly pricey, but I’m currently using the 30-day free trial - it’s 30 days of use, not of ownership, too: if you use it every day, it lasts 30 days, but if you use it once a week, it lasts 30 weeks.

Where Kat used the 27 parts the structure broke down into as chapters, I chose to refer to them as beats, and separate chapters later.

On Saturday the 20th, I finished defining my scenes and started writing an actual draft. I wrote two scenes, putting me at a collective word count (not including notes, synopses, etc.) of 2,580 words.

This morning, Sunday the 21st, I started over. I hated my opening. I’m not going to go through the mess of today’s process, but I currently have around 80 one-line-outline scenes, split into 3 acts. I wrote a draft of my prologue and detailed-outlined (which I’m mentally referring to as zero-outlining because it’s similar to how Katytastic does what she calls a zero draft, but is very much outlining, not a draft) two and a half other chapters. Scriver also tells me how many words I wrote in total, across notes, character profiles, location lists, a document I’ve named ‘Train of Thought’ for my ramblings as I go etc.

Today, I wrote a grand total of 4,141 words, which, rather counterintuitively, puts me at a draft total of 2,598. That makes sense. Anyway.

There are a lot of unknowns in the world right now, and I have no idea how much time I’ll have in the next six months to invest in this project, but I’d like, at bare minimum, to have one complete draft by the start of the next school year in September, which gives me just over 6 months. Which is probably too much time to actually motivate myself, but that’s not the point.

A manuscript needs to have a minimum word count of 50K words to be considered a novel, so, even though my ultimate goal for this project is around 80K words, 50K is going to be my goal for this draft.

I’m being optimistic about sticking with this.

Tuesday 23/02/2021 - Word Count: 3,099 I wrote nothing yesterday; planning to focus writing solely on days off rather than work days, but last night, watching through the incredibly long queue of Alexa Donne writing videos, I came to the conclusion writing every day, even just a little, would be the best way to ensure I keep working on this, so I set myself a goal of just 500 words a day.

Wednesday 24/02/2021 - Word Count: 5,350 After doing a little bit of maths as to how long this outlining and draft would take me if I were to only write 500 words a day, I decided to boost that goal to 1,000. I got started around 1pm today, online school draining me so much I couldn’t face another two hours. I worked on and off until 6pm, and around 4.45pm, I finished outlining Act One!

Thursday 25/02/2021 - Word Count: 7,022 I continued my scene outlining into Act Two, but I hit a brick wall around the midpoint. I have to write chronologically - some people jump around, but I have to write linearly, or it feels like I’m trying to make something in a void. It just doesn’t work. I didn’t know how to get from one scene to the next - there were so many things I needed to establish to get there, but I didn’t want to backtrack. I decided to re-jig the whole thing, but, after dinner, I realised I didn’t have to, and instead, decided to just start a draft, conscious of the things I need to establish as I go.

Friday 26/02/2021 - Word Count: 8,208 Starting draft one, I rewrote the prologue I’d already written, technically putting me to my second draft of it, because I’d been thinking about it for days and just wanted to revisit it, and it was so much better. Then I moved on to chapter one, but decided I wanted to re-jig my chapters. While outlining, I’d split the whole book into only about twenty chapters, but decided to go for shorter ones for more effective divisions of the story. I got most of the way through the first scene of chapter one, but basically ran out of both time and motivation, since I hadn’t heavily outlined that scene. in total, I wrote over 2000 words today, but because I only increased the prologue word count by about 100 words, it didn’t do that much to the total count.

Saturday 27/02/2021 - Word Count: 11,050 I got some chores done Saturday morning and focused on finishing my book so I could include it in my February wrap-up, but I still had time to get some writing done around mid-day. My goal was just to hit 10K this weekend, but I though I could do it in one day. I wrote about 1,000 words before feeling a little word-drained, but took a break for lunch, got back to it and wrote 2,400 words. Though that only added a little over 2,000 to the word count, it took me to 10K! I’m 20% of the way to being able to call it a novel! We’re in quintuple digits!

And then eight hours later, I wrote another thousand words and got to 11K.

Sunday 28/02/2021 - Word Count: 13,722 I spent most of my Sunday morning writing, though it took me more than two hours to write about 1500 words, though it only added about 1100 to my count. I decided to set myself an overall and weekly deadlines to hold myself accountable. Due to the fact I don’t yet have a clue how many words this will work out as, I decided I wanted to have either a complete first draft or 100K words (which I doubt I’ll reach, but it seems like a good way to make myself finish the draft before my deadline) by the end of April. Which works out to a little under 1500 words a day, or just under 11K a week, which is perfectly doable. Bearing in mind my current word count is including outlines, but I still believe in myself.

I wrote another 1600 words later, which took me to 14K, until I deleted the 300 word outline I wrote for one scene, but I worked out my words per day for the next two months with the assumption of a 10K word count as of March 1st and a target of either a complete draft or 100K words by the end of April, so I’m nearly 4,000 words ahead of schedule. Which gives me 6,606 words to write this week, instead of 10,328. (If you couldn’t tell, I like numbers. They just make sense to me.

Monday 01/03/2021 - Word Count: 15,005 I didn’t quite hit my daily goal, but I was completely leached of motivation today, I’m ahead of schedule anyway and I was only under by less than 200 words. It’s alright. But, hey, we hit 15K! Two days after hitting 10K!

Tuesday 02/03/2021 - Word Count: 21,119 This was an insane writing day. My end-of-day target was only 16,480, and that was still ahead of schedule - if I was sticking to the 100K by April 30th, I’d only actually need to be at 12,950 today. This was the best writing day I’ve ever had. I wrote before school and during breaks, which kept both my writing and working momentum up.

I didn’t read a page of my current read, but I wrote a total of 7,681 words and increased my wordcount by 6,114 words, or literally an additional 40.75%. I hit 20K three days after hitting 10K, and am 42.238% of the way to being able to say I wrote a novel, be it a shitty first draft that won’t be complete at 50K words.

I also finished chapter three, which I’ve been working on for three days and came out ~5,000 words, and wrote chapters four and five in their entirety.

Note to self: this is day 10 of vaguely outline-drafting this project.

Wednesday 03/03/2021 - Word Count: 23,364 I've only written 490 words today, as of writing this update, but I just wanted to make note of the fact I've done some calculations, and can reasonably finish my draft this month. I'm still not completely sure how long it'll work out to be, so I can't quite work out my daily words to finish on the 31st, but if I stick to my current 1,475 words a day, I'll hit 63,894 words by the end of the month, which is a little less than I imagine this draft will be, but if I stick to that as a minimum, my first draft won't have to go into April.

I'd like to post this later this week, but I already have a post for this Friday, so God only knows how long this will be by the time it goes up. So far, I've written 1,900 words today, and I don't think I'm out of fuel yet, but I'm stopping because I need to read today, and I'd rather not burn out. I'm over my goal, anyway.

Oh, also, I'm nearly at 25K, which is halfway to a novel, but I haven't broken into Act Two yet, which means this book will be 75K minimum. I'm going to do some maths and work out how many words a day to hit 80K by March 31st. 2,030. That's doable. So I haven't read, but back to writing for like ten minutes.

I've now hit an additional 2,245 words for the day, though I wrote a total of 2,663

Thursday 04/03/2021 - Word Count: 25,415 I've decided to work out how many words I need to write each day to hit 80K by March 31st, and watch the fluctuations. (I like statistics). It should steadily go down throughout the month if I surpass it each day. Today's minimum word count is 2,023, already seven words less than yesterday's. How exciting.

The last scene of Act One was very heavy on world-building I haven't yet figured out, so I stuck what was meant to happen in brackets and just moved on, meaning I have now broken into Act Two!

I think, during the week, I'm going to focus on just meeting my minimum word count rather than exceeding it, just to save fuel for the weekends, when I can write so many more words.

And, we hit 25K! I'm halfway to a novel!

Friday 05/03/2021 - Word Count: 26,693 In complete honesty, I'm beginning to lose momentum. Maybe it's just today, but I don't really want to write and feel like I need a break, but I'm going to make myself write anyway. I'm going to make myself keep writing until this draft is done, however shitty it may end up. I really hate first drafts.

When you say 2,000 words is only 7-8 pages, it doesn't sound like that much to write per day but my god. Luckily, most of the stuff I've had to save to a Pinterest board called 'Writing Motivation' says if you write when you don't want to, it should pass instead of worsening. I wanted to hit 35K this weekend, but I'm not sure I'll have the momentum. I'll at least hit 31,270, though, which is my minimum goal for this week. I'm still over 700 words off my goal for today, but I'm taking a break because my head is foggy and there's still eight hours left in the day. Besides, 700 after dinner is easy. She says, realising she's probably jinxing it. Oh, well. 80K by March 31st would be difficult, even if I weren't going back to school soon, but that's a stretch goal. 100K by April 31st is my minimum, and I'm 9,000 ahead of where I need to be for that.

I think I’m stagnating because I’ve hit the ‘Fun and Games’ section, which I find really boring. I’m going to try to keep going with it, but I may just skip it and come back later.

Saturday 06/03/2021 - Word Count: 28,150 So, I did not get the extra 700 words in. Before dinner, some stuff I had to deal with came up, and by the time it was done, I just wanted to go to bed, so I did. Today, I'm going to try to make up for it, which I think is reasonable because it is now the weekend. I'm still kinda exhausted this morning, but I'm going to do my best, and my wrist hurts, but I'm not sure why. You'd think it would be from all the typing, but only one wrist hurts - you know what? Never mind. They do both hurt. I'm just not sure why, but it doesn't hurt typing this, so that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, to hit my word count for the day, I need to write 2,555 words, which doesn't sound like too much, but it kinda is because I'm primarily writing Act Two at the minute, and for every thousand words I write, I lose like 400 from my outline. You'd think I'd just not include my scene outlines in the word count, but it's too late for that now.

I'm thinking this over, and I really don't think trying to write 80K by the end of the month is going to be good for either my motivation, mental health, or ability to function back at school, so I'm going to stick to 100K or a finished draft by April 30th, and re-work out my goals from there, based on yesterday's word count, so I'm not making myself do catch-up today.

So, to hit 100K by April 30th, I only need to write 1,309 words each day (which will decrease over time because if that's my minimum now, I'll probably surpass it, decreasing the amount of words left etc.). That's so much less pressure.

God, I really don't want to write today. I just want to watch YouTube and Netflix and read.

Okay, so here's the thing. I've been working on this story straight for three weeks and I'm kinda exhausted of it. I'm not done with it, not at all, and I want to keep working on it because it exists, which makes it workable.

I watched a writing vlog by ShaelinWrites yesterday, and she said she writes different projects at once, alternating in week- or multi-week-long blocks. I think I might try that.

My plan with this post and the following updates was to keep updating it until the day it goes up, the day after which is when I begin drafting the next, but, since I may be switching projects for a while and this is really about the project I've decided to dub 'Bay Tree' (which is just, I guess, a pseudonym for here because while I have no idea what it would eventually be called, I know that's nothing like the title I'd want to give it) so I'd want to start a new post for a new project.

I'm now doing a little outlining instead of actually continuing writing, but I think this will help me, though I'm still not certain about whether or not I'm going to directly continue with this specific project for the minute. Instead of setting daily goals based on a target, I'm also just going to say 1,000 words a day, and see where that takes me.

I've just been outlining into Act Three, and I've met a major plot stumble, but I'm going to work that out and explain what I'm doing in my next writing update.

So, go drink some water, eat if you haven't eaten in the last few hours, stand in front of the mirror and tell yourself how wonderful you are and how much happiness you deserve, and, if you want to write a book, stop thinking about it, and go write.

#blog #blogging #blogger #blogpost #blog post #writing #books #book #reading #read #write #writer #author #draft #first draft #story #writing blog #writerblr #bookblr #novel #debut

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hawksonfire · 4 years

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2019: Year In Review

Seeing as how this is the first year that I’ve really written a lot (or anything at all), I thought I’d try out this ‘year in review’ thing.

This year was the first year (ever) that I’d really put my words out into the world. I was honestly terrified to post my first work on Ao3 - what if no one liked it? What if I got hate for it? And worst of all, what if it was terrible?

I’m glad to say that none of that even came close to happening. I’m so lucky to have fumbled my way into the Marvel fandom, specifically the Winterhawk portion of it, because it’s just such a welcoming place. Everyone I’ve met has been so welcoming and uplifting, and I can honestly say that there are a few people (everyone) that come to mind who I hope will be with me for years to come.

Back to fic - At the beginning of this year, I had one fic on Ao3 - a 2018 Kinktober fic. At this very moment, I have 100+ fics with over 380k words between them. I’ve written fic for people, gotten fic from people, and posted stuff just for the hell of it. 2019 was a good year for my wording progress, and I can only hope that 2020 beats it.

Accomplishments under the cut! :)

Stats

Word Count: 380,035

Fic Count: 130

Fics

Captain Cockblock - a Winterhawk fic in which Steve is constantly cockblocking Bucky and Clint. It was the very first thing I posted in 2019, and I can genuinely say that I was terrified.

Revenge Against Captain Cockblock - the sequel to Captain Cockblock, in which Clint and Bucky (and Sam) get revenge on Steve for the way he kept cockblocking them. First sequel!! I was excited about this one.

Aggressively Progressive - a Stucky fic where Steve tells the press (and other assorted people) exactly what he thinks about the not vaccinating your children (among other things).

How It Should Have Gone - This fic. God, this fic. This was really the first multi-chapter long fic that I had attempted, and I had no idea how it was going to be accepted. It’s set before, during, and after the first Avengers, and in it, Steve attends university, falls in love with Clint and Natasha, and saves the world. It’s canon-adjacent, and I swear this is probably the fic I am most proud of to date.

Steve Rogers: Unapologetic Slut - A 5+1 fic I did as part of the BDBD slutty!Steve challenge. It was definitely a ton of fun to write and as a bonus, it introduced me to the 5+1 trope which I can now say is a favourite of mine.

there is a house in new orleans (they call the rising sun) - A birthday fic for the amazing @kangofu-cb (even though it was late) because she deserves all the nice things, dammit.

i need something to believe in (throw my hands up to the ceiling) - I realized one day, that my best bro @flowerparrish has literally written so much fic for me (check out zir Ameriwinterhawk series, aka, the ‘pornathon verse’ and this Amerihawk sex pollen fic) and yet, somehow, I had not written zir a single thing? This could not stand. So I made my amazing friend choose a whole bunch of prompts from a list, then slammed together a bunch of them into one 68-chapter long fic to be updated as needed.

Events

MCU Kink Bingo Round 3 - Somehow, I am unsurprised that the very first event I joined this year was a kink bingo. A series of 16 works of various ships and kinks.

Clint Barton Bingo - Clint has always been one of my favourite Marvel characters, so as soon as I saw that this bingo was accepting sign-ups, I had to do it. And I did! It resulted in 19 works from the first round (and more to come from the second round) with Clint being paired with various Marvel characters (but mostly Bucky).

Mandatory Fun Day - At this point in the year, I was fully inside the Winterhawk dumpster. The lovely mods over at @mandatoryfunday provide weekly prompts for us Winterhawklings to enjoy, and although I haven’t made a fill for this in a while, I definitely enjoyed the ones I did make and hope to make more in 2020.

Star Spangled Bingo - Yes, another bingo. I think this was my third one, but there were plenty more to come. I had a lot of fun participating in this one!

Bucky Barnes Bingo - Bucky, next to Clint, is another favourite character of mine, and I am so glad that the mods over at @buckybarnesbingo decided to do a second round in 2020. They can count on my sign-up, for sure.

Stucky Bingo - While it’s only got one fic so far, I’m definitely planning on writing more for it. XD

Captain America Reverse Big Bang: A Tail of Two Idiots - This!! This was my first RBB and I was incredibly lucky to be paired with the amazing @astaraiches-oisinn. She created some gorgeous art of Steve and Bucky at a dog park, and somehow I managed to write nearly 31.5k and post it on time! But I could not have done it without her, love you bb <333333

Winterhawk Reverse Big Bang: Main Attraction - holy fuck, y’all. I’d been a massive fan of @kangofu-cb and her words and art for a while at this point, and when I found out that we’d been paired together for the RBB? I’m pretty sure my screech broke windows. She was an absolute joy to work with and I’m glad to say that we’re now friends (we’re friends, right CB? Please let me have this) and she brightens up my day whenever I talk to her.

MCU Rarepairs Bingo - Again, there’s only one fic here but I’ve definitely got some fics planned for it.

Winterhawk Bingo - Alright, look. While I am well aware that I join too many events (no one can stop me) I am also aware that I like to run things. Thus, Winterhawk Bingo was born. It’s been a joy to run and a joy to participate in, and I’ve made even more friends for me to love with this event.

Kinktober 2019 - This was my second year in a row doing Kinktober, but I had way more fun this year because I opened up the prompt list to a bunch of my friends and followers and offered to write them a kink of their choice (or five). Definitely going to be doing it again that way in 2020.

Marvel Bingo: oh, the good ol’ days - This series is absolutely one of my all-time favourite things that I have ever written. It starts off with Clint/Steve, but as the stories progress, Bucky joins the squad for eventual Steve/Bucky/Clint, or my all-time OT3: Ameriwinterhawk. This series has 24 planned fics, with 20 so far completed. I was aiming to blackout my Marvel Bingo card, so let’s see if we can’t hit that goal, shall we?

Winterhawk Wonderland: noticeable - Hawkie’s first gift exchange! I had a super great time participating in this event (run by the lovely mods over at @winterhawkwonderland) and I can’t wait to do it again next year (if they choose to run it again)!

Marvel Trumps Hate - I signed up for my first charity auction! Look forward to those fics in 2020!

Marvel Reverse Big Bang - Technically, posting is in 2020, but the majority of this event took place in 2019, so I’m counting it.

Fics for Events (that I’m particularly proud of)

Lime Blossoms - While technically a fill for Bucky Barnes Bingo, Clint Barton Bingo, MCU Kink Bingo, and Star Spangled Bingo, this fic holds a special place in my heart. It’s very soft, and it also happens to be the fic that I jammed four different bingo squares into.

Whatever You Want - A fill for the Soulbond square of my Bucky Barnes Bingo card. Winterhawk, of course, but with a twist. Clint has two soulmarks, and they end up being Bucky and the Winter Soldier.

Safe - This fic holds is very special to me because in it, Clint is asexual. He has a crush on Bucky but doesn’t know how to go about doing something about it while making his boundaries clear. As an ace person myself who hasn’t always had the best luck with that, this fic was basically me holding up a flashing neon sign going “THIS! THIS IS WHAT I WANT!”

Flags - Another ace fic, but this time with ace!Bucky! Clint helps him as Bucky tries to figure stuff out. It’s basically pure, self-indulgent fluff.

All Bark, All Bite - Ah, yes. Werewolf!Clint and Vampire!Bucky. This is absolutely what kickstarted my obsession with supernatural AU’s, no doubt about it.

i walked with you (once upon a dream) - Another birthday fic! This one was for a friend of mine who isn’t on Tumblr, but she absolutely loves marine life. SO! Of course, I wrote her a 5+1 fic with mer!Bucky and pirate!Clint that somehow turned into 16k words of basically pure fluff.

topsy turvy and upside down - This was a fill for the Mandatory Fun Day prompt “Clint as the Winter Soldier”. God, I had so much fun with this fic and I wrote all 7k of it in like, a day or something, because the words would just not stop flowing.

anything, anything - This. This was written for @flowerparrish as a part of Kinktober, and I honestly have no idea how it became an ace!Steve sex pollen fic, except that it did. I definitely plan to write more ace fics, and more sex pollen fics, and more ace sex pollen fics.

i ain’t proud of my address (in this torn up town) - Affectionately referred to by me as Demon!Clint, this fic will absolutely be updated and completed. At some point. But I give you my word.

That’s all, folks! That sums up my 2019! Well, the fic portion of it anyway. I made so many new friends that I hope stick with me for a long while, I got so many new ideas for fics I plan to write in 2020, and! I learned a few things about myself along the way!

Things to expect from me in 2020:

- Events. So many events. All of the events.

- Fics. SO many. A few for events, a few not.

- I guess you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?

#hawkie writes #year in review #ohhhh goddddd so many events #fuck #and more to come this year #why do i do this to myself

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thejourneymaninn · 6 years

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Year of Review - Writing 2017

I was tagged by the lovely and doubly talented (awesome fics and awesome art, and so much of it, how do you do it?) @timesorceror (and it only took me three weeks to finally get to it…sorry)

Total number of completed stories:

Total word count:

Also counting wips that haven’t been posted yet, 207482

Fandoms written in:

Dragon Age

Looking back, did you expect to write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected?:

I wrote more one shots than I thought I would and less chapters for my wips than planned. All in all, I’d say less than I hoped for but about as much as I expected.

What’s your own favorite story of the year?:

I have several stories that are my favourites for different reasons, and it also changes depending on what mood I’m in. To narrow it down a little, I think Why are you looking at me like that and Dear Justice might be my absolute favourites. Maybe. I feel the urge to name at least five more coming up, so let’s move on to the next one quickly.

Did you take any writing risks this year?:

Not really. I posted several fics without much (or any) editing/proofing/rewriting (which I normally tend to do quite a lot of) because I wanted to meet a deadline; that was a first for me. Dates and cakes was probably the biggest risk for me in that regard. It has several chapters, all of which were outlined, written, edited and posted in less than 24 hours as I wanted to finish it in time for a special occasion, and while I would have loved to add one or two more chapters, I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Do you have any fanfic or profit goals for the new year?:

I have a couple of prompts in my inbox that I still need to finish, as well as a few short gift fics and my Christmas fic (yes, it’s gonna be super late but you will read it anyway…like…pleaaase?). When those are done, I want to finish my wips on ao3 (Truce or date, the Stepping stones series and (W)hole lotta love and then finally get back to working on a few half-finished wips that have been lying around for almost two years now (in particular my mermaid au fenders, a justice-centric drunk sex fenders, a fenhawke longfic, and a one shot detailing what happened in the tent between chapters one and two in Ten times you kissed me). But most importantly, I want to take a few weeks to take a break from writing and finally read all the awesome fics on my ever growing “to read” list. I’ve been so focused on writing this year, I think I need to step back for a while.

Best story of the year?:

I have honestly no idea how to answer this. There are so many different aspect you could judge them on, and you’d probably get different “winners” depending on which you pick. But well, I have to pick one so… given the amount of thought, planning and structuring that went into it and the fact that I feel it brings across the points I was trying to make/the feelings I was trying to evoke, I guess Ten times you kissed me is the most likely candidate.

Most popular story of the year?:

I wasn’t sure which criteria to base this one, but it turns out Ten times you kissed me is the most popular one regardless of whether you look at kudos, comments, hits or bookmarks. It’s a chaptered story that was posted over the course of several weeks, so it had more time to gather readers than one shots, of which Oh let me how at the moon in your pants is the most popular one by far (also for all of the above). (Technically, Truce or Date is still number one in all categories, but while I did post several chapters this year, I’m pretty sure most of the feedback is from 2016.)

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

Fics for pairings I don’t usually write tend to get very little response. Why are you looking at me like that, Until we are free (both Kanders) and Things we lost (Fenhawke) in particular are some of my personal favourites but hardly got any readers at all.

Most fun story to write:

There are several candidates for this one: Superstition – I just wanted to have fun with Anders talking his way out of trouble, and wrote the whole thing in under an hour. One of the most relaxed and enjoyable times I ever had writing Mounds of marble – I got to give Anders a statue and then have him (and Hawke and Fenris) fuck said statue…need I say more? Oh let me howl at the moon in your pants - Again, the goal was to simply have fun. I’d been sick for several days, and just wanted write something silly (and sexy)…So when I saw a fun prompt, I wrote a lot of stuff about mage ass… What he deserves was a different kind of fun. Less puns and silly jokes, but writing handers with a supportive Hawke after the Chantry Boom was just really satisfying.

Story with the single sexiest moment:

I think my personal favourite is (W)hole lotta love (which is still ongoing). And the throne room scene in Truce or date was also pretty popular… If we’re talking completed stories, probably Heatwave.

Most sweet story:

There’s fluff in most of them, but And Pounce makes three probably wins this category as it is nothing but high fructose newlyweds fluff. That said, Dates and cakes is also very sweet (also literally, because…well, cakes. Lots of cakes.)

“Holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you!” story:

The statue fucking in Mounds of marble is probably the closest thing to weird stuff I’ve written posted this year, so not much to offer here I’m afraid.

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:

There are two stories that are more Justice-centric than most of what I’ve written so far, with a more in-depth look at/a slightly different take on Anders’ and Justice’s merger. Dear Justice focuses on the friendship between Fenris and Justice in a pre-fenders setting, which I’d never explored before but really enjoyed. Fading into you has Fenris and Justice interacting physically (yes, they’re banging), which I’d never really given much thought to before either.

Most unintentionally telling story:

I guess all of them are telling in some way or other, but so far, I’ve remained blissfully ignorant as to how (I mean, aside from the obvious stuff). I guess Setting sail would be the most likely candidate, as it’s by far the most personal one.

Hardest story to write:

Both my fenhawke stories Reckoning and Things we lost took disproportionally long to finish considering they are relatively short pieces. The core parts were jotted down pretty quickly, but it took forever to tweak the details and hit the tone I was aiming for. And while coming up with the chapter titles and general outline for I spy…ruffled feathers and unlaced leathers was some of the most fun I ever had, putting the whole thing together afterwards ended up being an extremely slow and exhausting process.

Biggest disappointment:

Not finishing Truce or date. I’d planned to use December to finally finish first drafts of the remaining chapters (all of which are already half-written and have been lying around for months), so I’d be able to get back to a regular weekly editing/posting rhythm in January. But then things happened and I didn’t have time, so now I’m going to have to devote February to this project.

Biggest surprise:

There were a couple of surprises, but I think the biggest one was how well Dear Justice was received. It was posted in early December and after just three weeks, it was already my third most kudosed fic of the year. It also received quite a few lovely comments. It was one of the stories that were written in only a day and didn’t really get any editing/rewriting, and I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested in this approach to Fenders at all, so that was a really lovely surprise.

Tagging (if they haven’t done it yet/want to do it) @protect-him @dovabunny @hollyand-writes @andrastesknickerweasel @emotionalmorphine

#year in review #my fics #fenders

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theamberfang · 5 years

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Journal 208: A Good Day

Laughs

I’m just coming off a good time spent watching a Drawfee livestream on Twitch. It was the hardest I’ve laughed in a long time: one of those laughs that just keeps going and it becomes hard to breathe and you feel like you’re dying. I intentionally worded things that way because it was caused by Jacob, one of the main Drawfee cast members, drawing something absolutely horrendous. It was very much a “Thanks, I hate it” situation, but that’s part of the appeal of Drawfee. Sometimes they draw these things and it is as hilarious as it is horrifying.

Actually, now that I’m trying to journal, that stream was such an all-encompassing distraction that I’m having difficulty coming up with things to write at the moment. Well, I guess I can always run down the tasks I had for the day.

Today’s Tasks

I rarely mention it since nothing really new ever happens with it, but since I’m running down the list I had set, I’ll just say that I didn’t really get into dancing today. I did do it, but it didn’t built up momentum into a genuine full-body exercise. It could in part be to my Pandora station not being well tuned to things that will get me dancing yet, but that’s slowly improving I think.

The big thing I had for today was the Extended Outlook, which went nicely. It was somewhat late due to me eating brunch, but that’s fine; everything was still mostly on schedule. I don’t have much to say about it since everything I needed to say is over on that post. In short though, I’m willing to share this blog around now.

The only thing I have left for grammar in Khan Academy is the final unit test. I thought about getting it done today, but I was actually apprehensive about ending my time with the course. It’s something I’ve worked on every day—just a little bit at a time—for the past 44 days. I’ve been used to hearing David and co every day with their positive energy, so I’m actually pretty sad to be moving on from it.

I guess I could try moving US history up to take its place. It does feel like I might do better with History earlier in the day anyway; I did end up skipping it again today. I was just too distracted by other thoughts to effectively read anything. Admittedly, I could have committed to staying on the article for longer, so I might try that in the future—something similar to what I tried when attempting to get back into Ouroboros, in which I commit to sitting in that tab for five minutes.

As for the programming stuff, I’m still slowly chipping away at it. I have a better vision of what I want to do at this point, and it’s just a matter of drawing all of the bits out.

I technically didn’t do anything for habit-free time, but I did spend a lot of time today continuing to watch more intellectually stimulating videos on YouTube, so I think that sort of counts? I mean, I did share one such video at least.

Though I floated the idea yesterday, I didn’t end up playing any Night in the Woods. I’m currently hung up on whether I want to write dedicated posts for it. If I do, I may end up playing it far less than daily. I might even make it more of a weekly endeavor; I do have everything pretty open from Thursday to Saturday afterall. I like the thought of having a “media review segment” somewhere in there.

I don’t really have much to say about tomorrow since there isn’t a support group, so I guess I’ll just wrap things up now.

Tomorrow Goals:

Dance for exercise; 1000

KA: Grammar; 1100

KA: US History; 1300

Habit-free time; 1400

KA: Programming; 1500

Journal; 2000

#daily journal #personal

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strungup-strungout · 7 years

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#1 | My Czech Republic Trip

First Blog Post..

I can hear you saying “this is the year 2017, who even creates or writes a blog”… well hello! I love expressing my opinions and since I do not use Twitter anymore, I needed an outlet where I can talk/vent about things. I thought of blogging, obviously. What will be on this blog? My life. Without further ado, I want to get my first post going. Today(tonight) I will be talking about Bee, my trip to the Czech Republic, meeting Bee, sightseeing, the tournament, your questions, my doubts, the good, the bad… Let’s go!

We all have our dreams and goals. When you put my dream job and the places I want to see, and the dream of becoming the person I want to be aside, my biggest dream was meeting Bee. I think it’s the kind of dream most people would mock having, by most people I mean the people who never lived the fangirl/boy life. First of all, I want to talk about the costs, because I know money is the only thing stopping some of us from going to these kinds of trips weekly. To give brief information, I’m a third year university student, I work part-time at a library, and receive no help from my parents (personal choice.) So I am assuring you, I am not going to 10 tournaments every year and visiting a new country every month. This was such a new experience for me. I had been to Istanbul Cup and the WTA Finals in Istanbul previously, but going to another country for tennis is a completely new experience. I paid 80 euros for Schengen Visa (you might not need a visa for your trip), I paid 920 liras (230 euros) for the round-trip flights from Turkish Airlines. There were cheaper flights (for 138 euros round trip) which I completely accidentally ignored so that was pure stupidity. The tournament was for free, so luckily I didn’t pay for tickets. For accommodation, I was extremely lucky to have one of the bestest people in the world hosting me, I really felt home and welcomed. For the other expenses like transportation and food, if you don’t do shopping and buy things you don’t actually need, 150 euros should be enough for 10 days. I’m assuming you’ll have fancy food for a day or two. So there’s that.

The sightseeing… As I said, I was very lucky to have my friend Jana hosting me. She took me to amazing places. We drove to Bee’s hometown Plzen, which was something I was looking forward to. Even though I sounded like I didn’t like Plzen when Bee asked me about it, I have to say this city is beautiful. We tasted beer at the Brewery, went to the main square, climbed the worst tower but luckily it had an amazing view of the city, then we went to a cute café which we randomly found on our way back to the car. We went to the Hluboka Castle, I have to say it is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen in my life. The town is also very small and beautiful. Coming from a city that is more populated than the entire Czech Republic, even Prague felt like a small town to me, but I have to say I deeply fell in love with every single place we went to. In Prague we went to all of the main touristic attractions I think. I found the Astronomical Clock very boring but other than that I enjoyed this city too much and I am afraid I am now in love with this country.

The tournament. I think it was a very well organised, neat tournament with a great venue. The tickets were for free so that is obviously a huge plus. It is very easy to meet players, or to have a conversation with them (as long as they are willing to lol.) The main stadium is great, I also loved watching matches at the outer courts. The food is also OK, personally I struggled a lot because I am not used to the local cuisine and I don’t eat pork. So I had to eat Lays and drink Pepsi on the first day, and for the rest of the week I had the official tournament cocktail (which was absolutely amazing), and counted hours so we could leave and I could get food haha. The problem with free tickets is that the stadium fills up quickly, especially for the matches of the Czech players. You can’t leave the stadium before Bee plays for example, because if you leave, you face the extremely long queue of people waiting to be admitted inside the stadium where there are zero empty seats left. If I had to pee, I had to to wait for Bee’s match to be over. And we had to arrive at 10am to snatch front row seats, for a match that starts at 1pm for example. That is hours of sitting under the sun (Well sun only shows up for 2 minutes here so it wasn’t such a big problem. It was just very, very tiring.) But to sum up, it is an amazing tournament, and if you like the entry list you should definitely visit.

The Bee. First of all, I have a huge thank you for her and I think it would mean much more if it was directed at her, so here it goes. Bára, thank you. Lol that was such a lame start. I am thinking of more things to say but only thank you comes to my mind. I guess now I can relate to you thanking me five thousand times since day 1 because sometimes there really isn’t anything else to say. Thank you. Thank you for accepting the support I try to give you. Thank you for always taking the time to read what I have to say, even when they are footlong paragraphs. Thank you for letting me pick you up after a bad loss, thank you for picking me up after a bad day. Thank you for making me feel loved as a person and not only as a fan. Thank you for sharing your happiness with me. Thank you for being excited to finally meet me. Thank you for the hug. I know that is a lot to ask from a Czech person. Thank you for the hearts. Thank you for feeling bad when you don’t respond to me. I feel bad too. *snort* Thank you. The support, you know..continues. Always. I know I said it a million times before. It is an honour to be your fan. Thank you for having me in your journey. Thank you for telling me it would be a much harder one without me. Thank you for the fast reply when I told you I couldn’t sleep. Thank you for our DM conversation which sometimes looks like I am sending sentimental messages to myself. Thank you for realising that you have to respond sometimes. Thank you for always writing me long, thought-out messages. Thank you for always taking my support first. You are loved, and supported. Even if you get broken while serving for the set/match every single time, lose tiebreaks from 5-0 at 6:40am and basically kill me, and always miss the volley at break point.

The questions… I think so far I answered all of them. The meeting was beautiful. Bee was practicing with JJ which killed me because I was having so many feelings about it. I also got a selfie with JJ and my eyes are closed on it. That’s why I ended up taking 4 selfies with Bee actually in my first try. Imagine if my eyes were closed on them I would have stabbed myself. Did we talk? Yes we talked. Well she talked and I gave stupid responses because I was simultaneously dying. At some point I blurted out something like “sdfjdjferwer??” and she was like ????. *snort again* She was so attentive and it made my heart burst from happiness. At some point she was talking about how sad Plzen is as a city I mean that is so cute and so random. TBH I never imagined we would talk about that you know. Which reminds me that I wasn’t the only nervous person and she seemed like she was slightly nervous too. It was very cute. I think a moment I can never forget in my life was when she walked directly towards me after her practice as if we were friends that hadn’t seen each other for a while. I hope she will never read this post this is embarrassing lmao. I won’t go into every single detail because that is actually creepy, guys. But I know that’s what everyone really wants to read. The bee glasses are a different story. I saw them at a store and pointed them to Jana and we both fell in love. I’m shy for these kinds of things so she bought for herself and I didn’t. I couldn’t wear them at Bee’s match for example. I am introverted and weird. But then I turned back to buy a pair for Bára, without a doubt. The next day, I forgot the glasses at home. Bára saw Jana’s glasses and complimented them from afar, I was like fffssss I am so stupid. That day we didn’t end up meeting Bára, which was totally fine I think back to back would have killed what’s left of me. The next day, Jana dragged me to Bára’s post match practice. “Dragged” because I didn’t think I could handle meeting her again :D Anyways I gave her the glasses and her eyes shined like a little kid eating ice cream. Making her happy really makes me happy. It was such a beautiful moment. She screamed BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. <3

The doubts, the good, the bad… It was a tough week for me on a personal level. I constantly felt like the worst daughter ever because of the money I spent (even though I was spending my own money) and I felt like I couldn’t care enough for my father who had a heart attack. He doesn’t live with us in Istanbul, and I couldn’t make the time to go all the way down south to visit him with this trip upcoming. Then I had to call him for money because I spent more than I planned to and I was out of funds. I am not embarrassed to say that day involved some tears, with Bára’s contribution because she did a really, really stupid thing I won’t say here. I am sure from her POV it is not as stupid as it is, but really, it was such bad decision-making from her. It’s all fine now. <3

The end….I want to thank Jana. I told her I would write two pages to thank her actually but she will just have to do with a paragraph for now. I am the luckiest person in the world because I genuinely think I am surrounded by the best friends possible, and she is one of them. Thank you for hosting me. Thank you for loving me as a person. For defending me. Protecting me even from the people I don’t need protecting. Thank you for the McDonald’s’. Thank you for sharing everything you have with me. Thank you for 10/10 crisis management, thank you for always making sure I was well fed. Thank you for being the grown up (well, you are older.) Thank you for not hating me even though I constantly dragged you. Thank you for pushing me when I was too shy to do half of the things we did. Thank you for never judging me. Thank you for accepting me as the biggest sneaky bitch you’ve ever met. Thank you for telling me I have a huge heart. Thank you for this trip. It was a pleasure. I cannot wait to see you again. Thank you for your lifetime friendship and constant support.

Sorry for this long post and let’s hope I won’t forget the fact that I have a blog! Until next time.

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rueur · 4 years

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Morning Pages No. 64

Thursday 28th August - 10:09am

Yeah, I know I missed the #64 on the 27th that I was so excited for on Wednesday, but I was lenient with myself because of work and Dinel’s extra essay lesson last night. Yesterday was just a busy day and Sarah even said that Day 10 should be a rest day. Even so, Day 10 wasn’t even yesterday, but I feel like I was right to give myself a break anyway. That, and I had the hiccups three freaking times yesterday: once on a walk, once during my class with Dinel of all times, and then once after dinner. We had pizza for dinner last night, courtesy of my card. I just felt like ordering a pizza so we got Greenbrook and some of their chips too. Mate. The chips were nice. The bulk of it is still in the fridge so I’m looking forward to eating that later. I have to work on the website. That’s definitely my ‘I have to’ sentence for the week. I don’t know why I keep putting it off? The work I’ve done on it so far was let’s say about 2 hours worth, so that’s $100. And I’m seeing Julie next Wednesday, which will be the 2nd of September, so I’ll be able to get my invoice to her when I go see her too. I should get that invoice done before the meeting, I reckon. I might put some time aside to finalise the invoice on Tuesday. I don’t know why I’m expecting a lot from myself when it comes to the invoice too. I mean, why is it important whether or not I know how to make the invoice look pretty? It’s just an invoice, it’s totally back-end and functional, and it doesn’t need to reflect on my professionalism whatsoever. Julie’s probably never even seen a freelance communications consultant’s invoice before, so I can just do whatever I want. I’m going to use the agency’s template invoice of course, but how do you measure hours? Maybe I should look at my work invoice too, or even at Evan’s work invoice. Maybe one from when he was still working.

I feel a bit badly for Lonzo right now, because we both just woke up and now we’re both doing our own thing. I’m a bit annoyed at Evan too because he’s just obsessed with all the fitness/training/Kelley Starrett stuff that he’s been doing, but it’s like HYPER mode over the past few days. And I’ve barely been able to hang out with him, and I hate it. Even now, I want to just chill and play Breath of the Wild for a bit and he’s in the other room glued to his laptop. And he’s stoned all the time. It’s irritating.

So I just had a good cry in front of him and now he’s staring into space out the living room window. It’s interesting, a few days ago I remember saying we hadn’t had one of these fights where there are huge bouts of silence for a while, and here we are. I guess I jinxed it. I’m waiting for him to say something, but also I need to go about my day so I’m still typing as I wait. It’s probably a good idea to record this exact moment as it’s happening, right? Honestly probably not. I want to follow the ethos that life comes before art. If ever there is an opportunity to live over writing, that opportunity to live takes precedence. Fighting is living. This is a visceral portion of all relationships, and I should be present for it. But in my defence, so should he. And he’s not. He’s just staring out the window. I can stare at his face for a second or two at a time and I see the process of thoughts coming in and out of his mind, but that’s it. He’s made no effort to comfort me, which means that his stance is different to mine. He most likely thinks I’m being unreasonable. I hate that way he says ‘sorry’ like it’s an arbitrary sorry because he thinks that I want to hear that, but his tone is absolutely anything but. I don’t want to hear that ‘sorry’ right now. I hope I’m not waiting exclusively for that ‘sorry’, and zero closure.

Okay, so we did have closure. Evan spoke and the first thing he said was that I wasn’t in the wrong last night when I asked him to spend time with me and drop what he was doing. He acknowledged that I had a right to ask for some quality time knowing my schedule, and that he didn’t realise that last night was just one of those nights where I ‘needed it’. It’s normal, I have to keep reminding myself that it’s a normal thing for people to just need some quality time with their partner every now and then, because sometimes Evan can get SOOOO into whatever it is that he’s doing, and totally forget that I’m a secondary person to him, that I’m not just a part of him? I think it’s a [REDACTED] boys thing. Like his dad is just like this too, and from what Sarah’s told me, Mundell was just the same: always carving out their own space to ‘work’, to ‘develop’, and constantly prioritising that space over so many other facets of their life. I lucked out with Evan though. I’d say that of his father and brother and himself, Evan would have to be the most emotionally mature and open to change. I think it has something to do with the fact that he has witnessed the negative impacts of both his father and brother’s self-interested behaviour.

I was just about to talk about Barney and Mundell’s habits, but then I checked my phone and noticed a missed call from my dad, so I called him back. We chatted about the house for a while and now he’s got me on hold because he’s received another call. So I’m taking this opportunity to type, and I’ve decided that I’m going to keep this entry to two pages. I feel like two pages is just so much more sustainable as a practice? And I have too much work to do today and my conversation with Evan has already shown that I’m a bit stressed. I mean two pages will take twenty minutes, and I think twenty minutes of mindfulness is still better than falling short of thirty minutes and then feeling bad about myself for not achieving my goal. And thirty minutes set aside each day for this practice is a bit of a tall ask for an adult with multiple other jobs and commitments. I’m too busy for this, and I don’t mind it. If I’m in need of more mindful time, I can meditate or do some yoga or something.

I found a video on Facebook that was essentially a handstand training guide through yoga poses. Basically, you work on one pose for a week each and the third pose is a soft handstand. I’m going to give it a go. I feel like I could handle a handstand pose if I just apply myself. I’m also keen to go for a bike ride, but I have a feeling it may be way too cold. And my main gripe with scheduling bike rides is knowing that I can’t take Lonzo too. Especially now. He’s just too boisterous, and I’d feel like I was always looking out for him.

Thathi just answered the phone again, and he said we should schedule a trip to the mortgage broker’s. He sounded tired. I’m worried I spoke too much about myself, but I’m not sure what to speak to him about. I don’t know. I feel like a bad daughter. We didn’t even talk at all about my license. Ah. I don’t know what to do about feeling guilty about parents. The older you get, the more independent you become, and the less time you have to chat to your parents. I feel like we should do a family dinner thing, like Evan’s family. I’ve just sent a message to the brother and sister about maybe organising weekly family dinners after lockdown. I just feel so deprived of my family, I don’t like it. I haven’t seen my mum in so so so long. I know I have issues with ammi, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love her and want to talk to her. But I’m worried that so much time has eclipsed now that it’ll be impossible for us to chat without her getting emotional? I don’t know. I can’t really deal with other people’s emotions, I get uncomfortable. I think that’s my Asian upbringing having a bit of an influence on my adult self. I got that Asian level of oppression, yo. That cultural ish.

Man, I’m already well into the third page, I think I’m just going to finish it off. Well, not well into it. I’d say about a quarter of the way there. I’m currently at 1520 words. Ah, I want to stop listing my word count midway through the doc all the time, but I am writing this out on Google Docs! It’s interesting, I just realised that whilst I do have Microsoft Word and I paid a pretty fucking penny for it, I still use Google Docs so much more? I suppose it’s just so much more convenient. Word is only really useful if the internet gives out, but now I’ve invested so much money in our internet, it’s not likely that our internet will ever give out for a long period of time anymore anyway. That being said, I’ve been finding the loading speeds to be abysmal on my phone. I feel like I should turn the modem and the nbn box off at the wall for a minute and let the whole system restart, that usually works.

Okay, I know I said that I was going to finish these pages off...I am, no I am. I can do this. I’m so close anyway, what’s another paragraph or two. I just know that I’m going to be doing a lot of work today and I feel like I’m not going to start on the website right after finishing this entry off because I’m going to follow a natural urge to give myself a break. But I’m not hungry, and I want to tell Evan about the contaminated water thing so that he doesn’t accidentally drink a full glass of water straight from the sink. He’s been drinking a lot of water lately. Good on him, right? Ugh, he’s going to get so much healthier than me if I don’t catch up soon.

Both Nicky and Lonzo are asleep on the green couch next to me. Evan said he’d be keen to move the green couch into the TV room and I think I am too. It’d be nice to have the futon in a space where it actually fucking fits, and I think the green couch would look so nice with the Persian rug in that room now. It’d also be nice to have the futon set up in bed mode right under the big window we have in the living room, so that I can just lay there and read by the wide source of daylight. Ooh, this feels like such a great idea now. My only concern is that that futon is going to be really chilly for people who stay over now. At least in the other room it was in a confined space, but out here it’s going to be so drafty. It’s fine, I don’t see us having people over anytime soon anyway. I keep thinking about that time Steve and Mundell came over and Malith was here. They had a lot of fun with him, but I mean he’s a very accessible character. Fuck, I need to finish ‘Fleabag’. I’ll do that at work tomorrow? After Dominicana. It should be an easy read. But Ben is managing tomorrow and he’ll want to talk to me. He’s been wanting to talk to me more since his divorce, and I’ve been amenable to that. I just know he’s enjoying the social aspects of our working relationship. We’re both conversationalists, and he’s a joker like Sam. Just not as immersed in puns as Shepherd is.

#stream of consciousness #morning pages #64 #evan

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lovelyparanormalbooks · 5 years

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Looking Back // 2018 goals, highlights, and what's to come...

Okay well this year has FLOWN by?! I can't believe we're already at the end of 2018. I have barely any school left (a few years but still in the long scheme of things),... Having 'proper' exams has certainly kept me busier than I would've liked but this is also partly my own fault due to my (now cured) binge watching obsession and desire to procrastination (because it's cool but my bad, I no longer believe this). This is one of a series of 2018 wind down posts; you can view reasons why I am grateful for this blog here. The other posts, Looking Ahead and December Wrap-up aren't live yet. I'm gonna use this post as a platform to talk about this year's goals, my highlights (blogging and life), and discuss what's to come since I'm leaving and you guys should remain in the loop about that! Without further ado:

i. reflecting on mmxviii goals (yes the format is just to feel cool)

Here are the goals I set at the start of this year, along with notes about the completion of them:

1. 2+ blog posts a week except on hiatuses

(I finally used a gif here!!! But anyway.) This one was a big fat FAIL. What a joke. By my count, there will be a total of 58 blog posts completed and published in 2018 (keep in mind a lot of the first few posts were things like weekly wrap-ups too, so I wouldn't really count those as proper posts either). I'm hesitant to set a similar goal for 2019, but I might just go with "try to post regularly" which can be interpreted ambiguously I guess. It'll be even busier than this year, that I'm certain, but I'm going to try and manage my time better so I frequent the blog more.

2. NO backscheduling; if I don't have a post done in time, I'll post it a week later or when it's finished

This one, I adhered to; much easier than last year since I wasn't as strict about post frequency, and didn't make it my life's mission to do 365 posts for 365 days (stupidest idea ever). As stated above, since I didn't keep my two posts a week goal at all there wasn't a point to backscheduling. But just as a fact, I have several posts which I need to write which are on my calendar that just keep getting pushed back, and I was quite proud of myself for finally writing pt. ii of NZ Education Issues a few weeks ago, which you can view here (I pushed this post back week after week from April).

3. Less Blitzes/Tours; I'm only going to do them if they're about books I care about

In 2018: zero book blitzes/tours! (No wonder my blog traffic was so static.) I wanted to step away from doing these because even though they were pretty much zero effort for me I wasn't promoting content I was genuinely interested in. So I stopped altogether, though I think I might do some in 2019 on the odd occasion, and to make it more worth my time, actually go digging for books I'm actually passionate about.

4. More discussion posts

Yuss!! Another success. I wrote ten this year, which isn't a lot (hang on, in 2017 I wrote 37... does that mean I don't win?) but it was more a focus of my blog for sure, though that's mainly due to a lack of posts. So I'll count this one as a completed goal but the fix for 2019 is just to post more, because I have plenty of ideas waiting to be thrown out into the world.

5. Comment on more blogs frequently

I didn't comment on other blogs a massive amount in 2018 (I wish I had stats for this!) but then again when do I ever? Sorry fellow bloggers, I'm super lazy and I know I should do it more, but effort. I did try harder to comment on other blogs, achieving this through unfollowing pretty much all blogs on Bloglovin and going onto Wordpress to find blogs I was genuinely interested in to follow (and even then, only commenting on posts of theirs that attracted my attention in order to leave meaningful comments). This worked for me because it created a connection between me and other bloggers and gave me incentive to comment on their posts because I wanted to read the content rather than feeling forced to do so.

6. Set aside more time for blogging

I definitely class this one as a fail, but hear me out. I did do one thing right here; I had blocks of time which I devoted to blogging, and these often stretched past an hour. The problem is, with every one of these (I am forever indebted to my dad for providing me with such nice office space to do this, btw) were two or more sessions of bland internet surfing where I could've been blogging. Sometimes I did stuff related to school, but mostly this was just a massive waste of time. I'm trying to plan more in 2019, so I'll try and make computer sessions just for blogging.

7. Make graphics for blog posts

Yes, and no? Yes: weekly wrap-up graphics (which I barely used since I gave up on that pretty quick), monthly wrap-up graphics, and the "until next time" at the end of each post (by far my favourite, not because it looks great but because I completed something I'm satisfied with and use often). No: review graphics (this is the reason I haven't posted a review here at all this year, in case you've been wondering about the lack of those on here even though there are a bunch on goodreads). My aims for 2018 were really only these four things, so 3/4? But I'm pretty disappointed about the reviews thing because it's the rating graphic that stumped me as I wanted something unique here; I even made two header graphics for my reviews of Nevernight and Godsgrave, which I might use in 2019? Ah well, something for 2019 I guess! Just so you know, I'm also planning on making divider graphics, and as for anything else... you'll see. That's it for goals: is 4/7 a pass? Next up is a reflection on the yearly challenges I did.

A-Z Book Challenge

I was a bit disappointed I didn't complete this challenge last year, but I'm giving it yet another shot this year. I have all the necessary books to complete it (I haven't yet read them all though as of writing this post), so all I gotta do is read! I'll check back in to see if I do complete it, or it's another thing to add to my long list of fails.

Goodreads Yearly Challenge

I don't wanna talk about this,,, a massive fail. My reading goal each year has gone down, from 2014 when I first did this challenge, 250 {completed}, to 2015, 210 {incomplete, I didn't even make it to 200}, 2016, 150 {complete}, 2017, 125 {complete}. All of these years I pretty much expected that I could do what I did the year before, but ended up lowering and adjusting them towards the end of December when I finally confronted reality. This year, I aimed for 100, but no. I've reset it to 50, which I know I'll get, but it's quite disappointing that I didn't even get 100. (What's sadder than that is for next year's goal I'm thinking 75 because I gotta read more, but I'd ideally like to read 100+).

Ebook Challenge

An accurate description of the time I've spent on my iPad when I could've been reading on kindle:

(instagram). Disappointing, I know! I was thinking, I'll read more on my iPad when I go away this summer and there's no wifi, but that's yet to happen as of writing this post so we'll see, we'll see. I aimed for 25 books here but so far I've read 5. It may rise to a few more, but I'd say 2/3 maximum, and I'll update you if/when that happens.

ii. highlights of this year

If you thought I was done... Nope, not yet. I'm sorry this is so long!! But I've been enjoying dragging out my posts for a bit longer if just so that I feel I've accomplished more (this probably isn't helping). Did I forget to mention that this isn't all gonna be positive? Oops. Well. Let's start off on a negative:

1. my twitter being deactivated

This was... not fun for me. I don't even use Twitter that much, but at that point in my life I was using it a lot as a tool to keep myself updated about certain things which occur around the world; the deactivation funnily enough occurred around a convenient time in that I was unwillingly one distraction less during some stressful months. And recently I rejoined Twitter with a new account (@caszriel_) when things had calmed down, and I guess it's the fresh start I wanted but also I want my old account back please!

2. following more people on Wordpress and being (relatively) active on their blogs

I was able to interact with so many cool people this year! Maybe it was partially due to my own lack of consistent posting, but I found time to read and comment on a bunch of blogs which was a really enjoyable experience. In 2019 I'd love to become closer to these people and discover more amazing blogs.

3. making amazing memories with amazing people

Oh man. While it was sad not to have classes with some people who I'd been casual friends with in 2016/2017 the independence of the timetable for senior classes and lack of a 'core class' group of people you encounter in 5/8 classes made it so much better for me, even when sometimes I hated the lack of streaming since I had classes with people who had previously been kept out by the streaming (I'm sorry but I just really don't like these people okay), but I wouldn't trade it because firstly, less classes total (6), more like a genuine high school experience, and 2017 was not great. But kinda and also not related to this are all the amazing people I hung out with this year who helped make my year awesome. Because true friendship doesn't suffer the bounds of having none/few classes together or even being at different schools. I'm so thankful for all of you who helped cheer me up when I wasn't having the best time, and being around to listen to my stupid rants. (And to everyone reading this post, I love you too

4. getting through my first year of formal examinations

At the start of 2018 I was pretty excited for this year. Yay, exams (yes I know I'm weird) which I can actually study for online with past papers. Also, I didn't think anything could be worse than parts of 2017 (hey, I wasn't wrong). Proper assessments!! (Yeah I feel like every year up till this year has been pretty wasteful education wise but that's just me,) the externals were mostly fine but I can never say I'm looking forward to results coming out on January 15. Internals got extremely stressful at some points just because not all of my teachers are the greatest or sympathetic to your many extracurricular commitments (in June I had SO much music stuff I was out of one class for around two weeks straight because of that and that ate up all my lunch times and pretty much all after schools that weren't already occupied). For 2019 I'm motivated and hoping to amp up the workload and go for a lot of scholarships, so bring it on!

5. 2018 in general; discovering new music, getting back into tennis (passionately)

I was not expecting 2018 to be so good. I had an amazing time and it's gone pretty fast! I love that I've been able to listen to more country music and discover all these amazing artists, and also reignite my love for tennis (Roger Federer is the best guys). Here's to 2019!

iii. what's to come?

I'll elaborate in more detail in at the top of my final post of the year, December Wrap-up (live 12AM EST 31st December) but basically, I'm leaving this blog... But making another one? I'll be transferring all my Bloglovin' followers and meanwhile you can find it here. I'd also really like to start making designs and stuff on etsy/society6 and I'll keep you guys updated about that!

How did you find 2018? Was it better/worse than previous years? What are your most memorable moments, positive or negative? Did you meet all your 2018 goals?

#ParanormalBooks

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