#f:bronze

[fyeahx1]

© BRONZE | do not edit.

[gravything]

I actually got a lot done today? wtf??

only one of it was what I started the day planning/wanting to do, and that thing ended up being mostly useless, or at least now it's too far ahead and its three sisters are prioritized in its place.

a dynamic, fast-paced environment. where I have to do deep intellectual work and also respond to multiple competing priorities.

but anyway: a list of Things On My Plate Today is ultimately only as good as how good it makes me feel at the end of the day, and so today's was pretty good, because it was surprising, in how many things came off my plate, because I deplated them.

also I got to talk to bronze in real time for the first time in, we figured out, years??? a real treat. an actual anchor to the day.

[gravything]

10, 14, 37!

10: If you could relive one day from 2014, which day would you choose and why?

Oh wow. Um, I have a couple of front-runners?

1: Araluen? It was gorgeous there, wow-panorama, and I felt like I was doing something, and there was both companionship and quiet solitude, and it was somewhere near the middle so I had good times before and ahead, it was just a really good day. I ate fresh figs for the first time there. I think it was your birthday? I almost chose the day of roasting things at your parents’ house because that is such a nice memory, with the cow-snot passionfruit pavlova. But, not the day we came back up the valley, where it started with a brief rainstorm and we sort-of-snoozed in the car. The full day.2: the day I broke up with the rexbf. I just feel like I could have done that so much better. And possibly earlier, so maybe instead that day.3: I’ve had a couple of really nice I-feel-like-a-part-of-something-bigger days and they were all this summer so I’d choose one of those, for the companionship and the optimism

14: Who were the most meaningful people in your life this past year?

You, jerk! The way you can both poke me and let me sit quiet, you’re a touchstone too many miles away, and I hope you always make this list because I hope I keep tied up in the threads we’ve run between us. You’ve always offered a home away from home, half-joking but totally real. I always want to be worthy of the effort you put into me. 

TJ and Field were bright sparks for different but similar reasons; bonding with TJ over similar experiences was super super helpful to me, and just having her companionship for being kind of silly and very done with things was nice. Field is someone I look up to and respect and pity and like, and I feel like I did him a little wrong this year and like I’m discovering more about him every time we talk even though we’ve known each other for a while. I miss Mace a great deal; he showed me a slightly different way to live, challenged me; I couldn’t be his twin sun all the time, I’d burn myself up, but we were powerful. Bones has been here for me even when I haven’t been… here. Good Boss Lady has saved me — future-me, in a way. Boris and Natasha have had a huge impact on me even though they are shit. Is fandom a person? Fandom can be a person. And the little tiny interactions that I have here and on AO3 with people have been so impactful; it’s asynchronous and without much expectation. It’s nice.

My philosophy professor? She saw me, she heard me, she encouraged me, and she kind of helped me recover some of the things I used to like about classes and study. Also, the DM and the Stanalike of my students this summer — DM was my friend and the Stanalike I barely interacted with but he made this incredible heartfelt speech at the end that made me think “We did it.”

I’m… kind of wary of the way I want to phrase these? Because my people are my people and not just what they’ve done for me, not just what I can see and how i see it. So, like, I want to make sure that even if someone could recognize themselves here, that I try to be respectful of the things that they are and do that aren’t for me and never were.

37: What’s the bravest thing you did in 2014?

I should probably have done some thinking to prepare for these? I’m going to say, moving out. I have long been terrified of living on my own, for what I thought I would become and fail to be. And it involved finally breaking up with my boyfriend, and you know just how big that was even if it was a foregone conclusion — it faced a complex net of fears that weren’t similar but were tangled in each other, and, well, I did it. Some of my fears were baseless and some were realized and some I fight still. 

Aw, you gave me my favorite present ever: talking about myself!

[gravything]

HELLO

It's Friday evening, I don't have things to do immediately or places to be tomorrow, it's cool outside and I've got my new explicit "fuck you I'm awesome" playlist on, so it's time for DRUNK TUMBLRING. 

First matter on the agenda: Fruity Pebbles in Rice Krispie Treats. A+. Also, where did I put those, because I'd like to eat more of them.

Part of the reason I chose to imbibe was that I might write. So that could happen. I have a proper fic and like eighteen AUs. One of them is super specific! Like, I'm pretty sure there are only two of us for whom it is in the fandom wheelhouse, and the other woman is Bronze, who has helped with it. I should post those AU conversations even if they don't ever get turned into fic, Y/Y? IT'S COOL OUTSIDE. Highs in the SIXTIES, my gosh. I'm sohappy. I always get cuddly in cooler weather, probably because that's about the only time I can imagine being okay with someone actually wanting to be close to me. Also: omg, hoodieweather, I am so happy. 

Wednesday it was wet and warm and humid. Like, it was sort-of cool, in the morning, but then it was just gross. And I was on high function, after several days of little sleep and lots of caffeine and some existential angst, and it was very annoying but I got to not-so-subtly insinuate myself into friends' not!plans and we played cards and pretended to do homework and ate barbecue and also drank. 

OH. There was a beer -- a honey kolsch from Rogue, and it had as a listed ingredient "free range coastal water". We had no idea what it actually meant so we made jokes about it all night. Also: passive-aggressive drink-clinks. Very good times. I HAVE FRIENDs. sometimes. in meatspace. It's nice to remember. 

Current drink: Ninkasi Believer double red ale. My first one was a gift from Bones, and so it makes me happy to remember her like this. I think I'm supposed to talk to her over Skype tonight. That'll be fun, regardless of whether I'm still drunk! I haven't talked to her for soooo long. 

So: I'm going to drink some more, and read fic, and play with pretend dragons, and any tagging activity (or posting) that goes beyond the normal will get the warning: drunk tumblring tag, and I'll answer asks if anybody is simultaneously on and wants to talk to me, and I'll probably spontaneously remember thigns and post about them as well. Oh my gosh, is it good to be free of this week.

[gravything]

Updating instead of sleeping!

Because I've had a couple of days of more caffeine, sugar, and grease than I'm used to (I know, right). Also opportunistic nap-taking.

Friend from undergrad came up from where she's visiting her family (she now lives a couple thousand miles further away) and spent a couple nights with me. We walked around campus -- I told her the stories of everything that's changed in the couple years since she's been here. We watched movies while working on our research on the same futon -- ahh, like old times, when we'd both be in the living room of the apartment we shared for three years, with something vaguely sciencey or, like, Smallville, on TV as background, where she'd be doing her diagramming and math on her tablet and I'd be shaking my head at my code and we'd sometimes talk over IM and giggle at each other from across the room. None of that furniture has survived -- most of it was crap that we rented as part of the apartment, and one was a couch that my dad took a sledgehammer to last week because it was so broken it wasn't worth moving over to my new place. Not much of those couple of years has stayed the same. Skater is a lot happier about reminiscing there than I am, and than she was even a few years closer to when it all happened.

We ate hot sandwiches from our favorite weekend place (where the staff knew us, a few years ago, when it was a five-minute walk from our apartment), and burgers from her favorite burger place, and sushi rolls from our favorite sushi place, and giant crispy -sweet apple fritters from our favorite donut place, and got huge cheap sodas like we were in undergrad again. And we took a bit of time today to go see a mutual friend (Aim) and watch her newest daughter while she went and scoped out a daycare for her. Babies are still weird and I still don't want any. Luckily both Skater and Aim are pretty fine with me being Aunt Gravy, specializing in wrangling pets and older children, and occasionally willing to stare at an infant skeptically while parents take showers or naps or essential errands. Well, okay, one time I succeeded in distracting Aim's older daughter from screaming for, like, ten whole minutes. It was an Accomplishment, and I am perfectly willing to amass such skills for my friends' use.

  Cat is being incredibly demonstrative and I think it's related to having the friend over. Not that she hid much, but for some reason she is all over tonight.

  Working on a new playlist. Keep getting sidetracked into dubstep-flavored electronica when that's not the feel I wanted for this one. Might have to work on two.

  Not writing anything, still. I have a fic-thing (courtesy of Bronze -- she handed it to me like a sacred duty) that I was raring to go on a couple days ago, but I'm going to have to sneak up on it again. What helps is figuring out (like half an hour ago!) that a non-standard headcanon I have on one of the characters will actually make it easier to work with. I have an angle on my thesis that I should probably pursue soon before it cools off and starts to look like something my inner editor hates on sight. But at least I mostly have a handle on how the rest of the PhD stuff is going for the next year or so, which is better than I could have said last week.

  I have batteries! And baking soda and baking powder, now, so I can make bread and waffles and stuff.

  The third constant from that apartment a few years ago, Bones, is inexplicably in Hawaii right now with her boyfriend-type-person. It's odd. Skater and I suspect engagement, which is also odd. The boyfriend-type-person makes moderate money, but Bones is more skint than either of us, but she does run off to climb mountains. Two weeks, though. Probably some of my confusion is that my friends are 'growing up' even though it feels like only last month that we all moved into that first apartment.