step the next

I know I've been awful about posting here this year. I have several drafts saved with subjects I want to blog about, but I honestly haven't had the motivation because I've had so much going on. I jsut wanted to let you guys know, though, that I'm having surgery to correct the scoliosis curve in my back on the 26th. Hopefully after I recover from that I'll have more energy to add blogging into my schedule of work--write--sleep--work, but it may be a while. I jsut want what followers I have to know that I don't plan on abandoning this blog. I just haven't had a very interesting life lately.

LeakyCon

LeakyCon. Until a few days ago that term was abstract to me. I spent most of my teenhood immersed in the Harry Potter fandom, but had moved to the periphery by the time the cons started emerging. College took over my time and, I admit it, television shows took over my fangirling. It wasn’t until I became a nerdfighter and a Maureen Johnson fan that I began to hear about LeakyCon, with its multifandom appeal and literary focus. Last summer, a ton of my favorite authors, bloggers, and webvideo creators attended. Meanwhile, I moved in with a fellow HP fangirl, and she took me to my first wizard rock concert.

“You know,” I said one day, when tweets from Chicago were flooding my timeline, “We should go to LeakyCon next year.”

Reader, we went.

It still surprised me that we followed through on an idea hatched before we found out the con would be happening across the country. I’ve made plenty of plans to travel with friends that haven’t panned out. This one did. In spite of inconvenient summer class scheduling, new jobs, and my ever-evolving physical challenges, we made it to Portland. And it was incredible.

I’m not sure I’m by nature a con person. I’m not fabulous at making fast-friends with groups of strangers, and because my mom ran most of the conferences I went to as a child, I always want to be involved behind the scenes. Sitting in convention center chairs as a participant is strange to me. It feels strangely passive. It lacks intimacy. Luckily, LeakyCon is about much more than the panels. It is about more than the Quidditch matches, or the author signings, or the exhibit hall. It’s about more than Buffy, Doctor Who, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and even Harry Potter. It’s about more, because that’s the point. It is more, just like every fan is more than her house, his age, their ship.

My roommate is not a nerdfighter (yet). I’m not hugely into wrock. Neither of us are massive StarKid fans. And we both had an incredible weekend. I got to thank people whose creative work has gotten me through this year, which has—for many reasons—been one of my more difficult ones. For some of that time, there were days when all I could bring myself to do was watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and Saturday night I got to speak to the cast and hug two of the women who made me laugh and cry when nothing else did. I danced with the show’s executive producer, took a picture with Hank Green, and danced to “Party in the U.S.A.” for the first time since I graduated college.

There are a lot of amazing things about this. There is the fact that nothing hurt when I jumped around the dance floor. That I got to speak to people who have inspired me creatively and emotionally. To people whose face I see on my computer screen every night, but who had never seen me. That my roommate and I got to have fun together indulging our fannishness with abandon. But what was most amazing to me was seeing the other people on the dance floor last night. The Esther Earl Charity Ball is the prom of LeakyCon, except far better than the prom most of the attendees probably had. Amongst the crowd there were moms with their ten-year-old boys. Girls dressed like witches. Guys cosplaying The Doctor. Teenagers who had probably never heard a Katy Perry song. They were all on the dance floor having fun, in their way. And that’s what LeakyCon is about: having fun, in your way. Whatever that way is, as long as it’s awesome.

Tonight, I am back in Boston, unpacked. The pain has shown itself. I have a fever. I definitely shouldn’t have gone into work this morning an hour after landing, but I regret none of it, because my weekend was more than amazing. It was magical.

Ch-Ch-Changes

When I started regularly posting on this blog, I was a first-year grad student hoping to connect with the publishing world. After tomorrow, I will no longer be a grad student.

This has been a rough semester/year. I've been dealing with some mental health issues--specifically depression--physical health issues, and finishing grad school. On top of that, I've been trying to figure out my future, which has been morphing before my eyes over the past few months. Today, though, the day before my final class at Simmons, I have a fairly good idea of what the next year will look like, and I want to share it with all of you.

First of all, I will be staying in Boston in my fabulous apartment, with my great roommate. I can do this because I HAVE A JOB. A real one. A grown-up one. It's not being a full-time author, not yet, but I've promised myself that I will not let working 9-5 affect my goals or my priorities. I will use it to pay the bills while I work my way down the publication path.

My job is at the Boston Center for Independent Living as a Youth Transition Advocate, working specifically with youth between the ages of twelve and twenty-two (writing research!) I'm excited and terrified, slanting somewhat toward terrified. I've technically started trainers, but am not working with consumers, yet.

That's mostly because of my physical health issues. I've had increasing back pain for the past year or more, and they've finally diagnosted it as a severe scoliosis curve. In May, this caused a pinched nerve in my back that laid me up for most of May--I read/watched ALL of Game of Thrones/The Song of Ice and Fire--and I'm having surgery to straighten the curve on August 26th. The worst part of all of it has been that it makes sitting up (and thus writing) painful, and I use most of my sitting time for work/class. It's super-frustrating, but I'm still working on revising some things. Of course, my brain, knowing that I have no time to write new things, is giving me all kinds of ideas. *sigh*. Definitely will be doing NaNoWriMo, if not something while I recover from my surgery.

I will be going to LeakyCon this week. I'm worried about pain/stamina, but I'm determined to have a blast and stalk meet Maureen Johnson for all I'm worth!

Free-Time Shaming

"Oh my God, i can't remember the last time I read for fun!"

"Wow, you're going to another concert? I wish I had that kind of time!"

"How do you write on top of all of this?"

"One day, you won't have time for pleasure reading."

These are things I hear all the time. All day, everyday, from everyone. People in my program, people online. Everyone who hears I'm doing something widely considered to be "leisure activity" has to counter with an explanation of how busy they are. These statements, while often genuine, are also thinly-veiled expressions of envy that are meant to shame the subject--re: me--into feeling bad for not having as many commitments. And I do feel bad.

Or I did.

Not anymore. Now I'm calling bullshit. Because, here's the thing, I have commitments. I'm finishing my final semester of grad school. I have a job. I have medical issues that, frankly, take up a lot of my time. But I also read, and write, and go to concerts. I go out for drinks with my friends and coffee with my coworkers. And when these things slide--until yesterday, I hadn't read a not-for-school book in a week--I don't shame the people whose lives haven't offered them that opportunity. Because I understand that we choose the way we spend our time. It's not shameful that when I manage my time, I factor in at least an hour every day to wrie, or revise, instead of watching reality TV. It's not shameful if you marathon Top Model every weekend.

It's a choice, and it's a choice I make with sanity in mind. I'm a much happier person when I'm regularly seeing live music and if I'm writing. And I arrange my schedule around it. I write papers late at night, I do my reading for class in the doctor's waiting room. Whatever it takes. And if I complain about being busy, it's not okay to counter that with a "But, wait, didn't you go to three concerts this week?" because, yes, I did. I made that choice. It doesn't mean that I'm not still swamped, or that I choose to be swamped, because my choice to go to the concert is, to me, just as valid as my choice to go to grad school, and people complain about that constantly. Don't say I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed if I didn't constantly sleep past ten, because not only am I up past two most nights writing--which is a huge part of my life--it has to do with my medical issues, and I compensate. My time is differently-shaped, and my use of it is my business.

I'm not saying you shouldn't complain about being busy. I'm saying stop shaming other people because their "busy" doesn't look like yours.

Identity Shift

There's a haunting picture that came out of the bombings. If you've seen it, you know it. If you haven't, I don't recommend clicking. It shows a man who was severely injured in the bombing, and it makes me realize that a fairly significant amount of people who joined the ranks of the disabeld on Monday. I'm hoping that they get the services they need. The media will turn away from this. It will be gradual, it will get mentioned, but in the scheme of things, it will happen. In the meantime, many people, some of whom are runners, will have their lives changed fundamentally.

I am proud of being disabiled. Acquring a disabilty is the horrible thing that both media and literature points it out to be, but it is a different lifestyle. I presents challenges that many able-bodied people do not think about, and that can be circumnavigated, but that often the majority do not know about. I hope that there is outreach happening to the people who were injuried on Monday. I'm sure they are being approached as victims of tragedy, but I also hope they are being approached as people with disability, because those are two different, disparate things.

Theory of Moral Sentiments

I went to a pretentious liberal arts college. The kind that claims to be teaching you how to be a human being, instead of how to recite facts. I was/am a die-hard believer in the company line, but I never got it. I never knew how much I applied the intellectual BS I learned, until today.

In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith says "Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people... If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own." To paraphrase: You are always going to be more affected by your own pain.

I've always quoted it whenever people complain about how we give more attention to events in our country than to loss of life abroad, but that's not the point of my education. The point is to understand the philosophies, but also to apply and challenge them.

Today, I'm thinking about what Smith left out. What if the tragedy happened near you, within miles of your apartment, but not to you? What if you do have "connexions" in "China"? What if your friends have complex relationships with the event that happened, but your own understanding is empathetic, yet superficial? How does your pain rate?

I believe in not comparing tragedies. I believe that the relativity of pain is how we stop ourselves from being overwhelmed by our own narcissism. It's a direct result of an ability humans lack--the ability to experience someone else's consciousness.

And yet, when I consider my own fear of getting stranded in Dedham yesterday--I didn't--or get upst about our troubles finding a roommate for next year, I feel wrong. I feel like I'm a callous European conceptualized by a dead white man. I don't want to be. There's an in-between that Smith doesn't consider, and I think in coming to grips with that, I am actually utilizing my education.

For an account by someone who is from here, rather than lives here, see Amanda Palmer's post.

Boston

This should be a post about the Taylor Swift concert I went to this weekend, or taking the train from Boston to Orlando. It's not. Those posts will come. Later.

Right now, all I can think of is Boston. It's the city where I am living, but in the past twenty-four hours, it has become the city "where I live." It's so easy to abstract occurances like this. I wasn't at the marathon. I was on a train coming in from Penn Station, and my biggest worry was how I'd get home if they didn't take us all the way into the city. But these bombings happened in a place I go all the time. A place that I love. A place that will never be the same. So, today, that's where my thoughts are.