Field Notes

 hiiiii. I'm alive. 

I keep thinking of things I want to post about, and then not doing it, so this post is going to be a mishmash of all of those things. I've also been terribly behind on my Reading page. I have this ... completionist thing? IDK how to explain it, but I feel bad when I haven't read everything up until the last time I read stuff, and then it gets overwhelming if it's been a while. So today I just let myself read the first page of my reading page and left it at that.

Writing stuff:

I finished the page edits for the book yesterday! It's ... really happening. It's really a book book. They're actually going to publish it. Because that book is so much about creativity, it has also inspired me to get back to work on my novel. I've been doing Rachael Stephen's Story Magic Academy and it is such a lovely and supportive community, and going through her videos is an incredible process for getting really deep into the planning for a fictional work. 

She's actually moved away from writing novels herself, but honestly the Story Magic Academy works for any kind of storytelling in my opinion. Theatre, YouTube videos, tabletop games, etc. can all benefit from Story Magic Academy. It only opens for enrollment twice a year, and they just started a new session, but it will open back up in the fall. 

Fandom: 

Rusty Quill Big Bang is happening again and I am Sorely Tempted. I have this epic idea for a TMA fic set in Somewhere Else that focuses on the potential working relationship between Gertrude and Jon. And of course there will be an exploration of Jon and Martin's relationship, and some Evil Threats to be Slayed. I just don't know if I have the time to commit. My friend moon suggested that I could chop up the epic plot into a series and just do the first of the series for RQ Big Bang so I'm not horrendously overwhelmed, and I might do that. The RQ Big Bang is only 20k words, but I know that this story will be far longer than 20k - but regardless of the length of the story, it needs to be a first draft done by July 9th. Two months gives me some time, but I have Significant Life Stuff that I need to take into consideration. 

I think what I need to do is go through some Story Magic Academy exercises with this particular story, flesh it out, and see if I think it's feasible to finish by July 9th. moon also reminded me that I can back out if I need to. I hate being the person who always backs out of fests, but that's kind of where I'm at. I feel awful for backing out of HP Triad Fest, but I was feeling particularly icky about participating in HP fandom around that time because of ... well ... JKR's toxicity.

Speaking of HP fandom tho ... I am getting more inspiration to work on my HP fics lately too. I think it's honestly reading all of these super epic fics that is getting me in the mood to write. That and going through the SMA. But I need to prioritize my original fiction over my fanfic at this time! I am genuinely really excited about this novel and need to make space for it. It's just so much more work to write original fiction because you have to create everything from scratch. Fanfic is so easy to just ... go go go.

Life Outside of Work:

AE got their wisdom teeth out yesterday, so I've been nursing them. Not much really to say there - AE is a trooper. 

I'm going to get to see a bunch of family from my dad's side in a couple of weeks. My Uncle Dan will be in town. He lives in the Seattle area and so people don't really see him all that often - whenever he comes to town they make a huge party of it. Chuck is flying into town, and apparently a bunch of the cousins are coming over to our side of the state as well. It will be AE's first time meeting any of my extended family. Which is weird to think about! But honestly I don't see my extendeds that much and then right when I was getting to the point of wanting to introduce them, COVID hit and we haven't been doing much. 

I will say, I'm getting really excited to see folks. It's been way too long. It's so easy for me to get into the habit of daily life, and since my dad had such strained relationships with his side of the family (and still does, frankly), we never saw them much when I was a kid. Having extended family that you see often is a pretty foreign concept to me. 

Folk Magic Stuff: 

My friend is teaching a yearlong class on Glamour Magic and invited me to audit it. While I'm definitely not new to magic, I am very new to glamour magic! I'm honestly honored they invited me to audit it - they said that since they're pairing people up, they needed another person. I'm a bit behind, but am hoping to catch up today in time for tomorrow's live class. 

Not much else to report. I've been feeling so burned out that I've decided to take a bit of a break from doing a bunch of magic. I know - I just talked about being in a new magic class - but I'm giving myself full permission to just ... not do much outside of it. I also decided to go on a Patreon sabbatical, which is honestly fantastic. I feel so free - which is probably a sign that I need to change things dramatically.

Well, today Elon Musk bought Twitter so ... continuing to hang on to my Dreamwidth account because this is my favorite form of social media and doesn't have ads, an alogrithm, or problematic owners. 

Now if only my real life friends would get on here XD

I felt completely at a standstill today regarding work stuff. One of those "holy shit I have so much to do but I can't figure out what it all is" things. I've reached a level of burnout where I've realized that ... witchcraft and folk magic aren't even all that interesting to me anymore. I've done it for work for so goddamn long, and for so many unpaid hours, that I'm really losing sight of whether or not I want to continue doing it at all. 

I mean, I won't stop. When I have a really good client session or when I have a good reading for myself, when I'm in the flow and actually doing magic, it's incredible. 

But reading about it and studying it and writing about it and everything is just so exhausting for me these days. 

I need a vacation desperately, but in order for that to happen I need to make a lot more money and in order for me to make a lot more money I need to work a lot more and ... you get the point. I really want to travel internationally soon, but it's so expensive. We have a trip out to New Jersey planned for June, but that isn't really a vacation as much as it is prepping move stuff and seeing the in-laws. 

I'm almost done reading a monster fanfic (aka 100k+ words). I started reading it so that I could read the SECOND in the series, in which Draco is Trans and I neeeeeeeeed to read it. But the author basically said "this will not make sense unless you read the first one" so I read the first one. There are some hints at a Big Secret that Draco is keeping and there are definitely some instances where Draco seems very in-the-closet trans, but I think it's only noticeable to me because I'm trans.

Hopefully tonight we'll watch more Our Flag Means Death. If Anais doesn't want to watch it tonight, I might just ask for permission to finish it on my own XD I need a funny thing tonight. For the healing burnout purposes.