And then the weekend went away.

[boosette_archive]

I am counting down the days til 4th of July, when I will have a real, solid vacation:  5 days off work, oh, how glorious you will be.

*

There’s carne al pastor in my crockpot; it’s been in for about an hour, and it’s starting to make my house smell like food.  At some point I’m going to fire up the rice cooker, and slice some bell pepper, and put the rest of my groceries in the fridge.  I have noms for the week, including both real food and snacky food, and I am trying my damnedest to not spend money because oh god, end of April/beginning of May is going to suck, between the double-sized student loan payment and the three-weeks-between-pay periods.

*

Iron Man 3 and Star Trek 2 are both coming out soon!  I am excite, but for my own good (id est, keeping stress down and my mental health in a shape resembling “functional”), I am not  going to be engaging critically with the source, or in the fandom.  (This blanket non-engagement applies equally to all of the things I love.)

Additionally, I’ve come to the conclusion that people who identify as “angry”, “extremist”, and/or “radical” are as a rule not safe for me to be around, and so I’m trying my best to stay out of spaces they control and to not engage with them.

*

I miss writing.  I think I need a coffee table to facilitate writing more.

via boosette.com/blog

Comments

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Please explain how the coffee table will help bc if it is magic then I will buy myself one and strap it to my head.

Also I support you in that avoiding angry/radical faction. I kind of like this new, improved "dead" LJ in terms of fandom. There is absolutely none of that lately.

[boosette.livejournal.com]

My setup before was sofa/headphones/feet and breakfast on the coffee table for an hour before work. No coffee table, not a lot getting done in chez Boo.

To be completely honest I think metafandom dying was one of the best things to happen to fandom in a damned long time. That place had the perpetual tendency to attract vitriol and toxicity.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I haven't thought about metafandom in AGES. I don't go to Tumblr, but I understand there's still wank there- which is, quite frankly, one of the reasons I don't go.

[boosette.livejournal.com]

I've been assuming that everyone on tumblr is 15, which makes it easier to go, "I am not responsible for training you to be a decent human being." and move on.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

LOL, yeah, it definitely skews young. Another reason I'm not there.


...

I have to keep listing these reasons otherwise I would be there endlessly scrolling through pictures of Vincent Karthesier, Marjorie Tyrell, and Bones' gun scenes. *hands*

[boosette.livejournal.com]

My favorite is Not So Eloquent But Super Supportive Shark:

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

LOL! That's fucking awesome.

[pico-the-great.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've sort of gone completely off Fandom's meta parts too. Every now and then in my internetting I find a bit, and it's interesting, but I just can't devote that much energy to getting angry about things a movie/book/show does wrong. I don't mind complaining, just ... maybe one post or two, not hundreds. (Does this make me a Bad Hungarian?)

I understand the need for a Wrting Space. I've been going to Catlike Life for the story I'm currently writing, but once it finishes I'm not sure - my bed and my desk are my two other usual writing spaces, but they're getting a bit worn-out (IE, I'm too used to using them for Not Writing). What about trying to formulate a new Writing Space? Moving around and testing how well you can write in different parts of the hosue until something sticks?

[boosette.livejournal.com]

I've given myself permission to not go there, because there are too many stressful things in my life to deliberately invite stress to the things that I do for decompression.

(and yet: I still feel like a bad person for choosing to not fight ALL the oppression, or allowing myself to end activist activity at the polling booth & donation page.)

[rustydragonfly.livejournal.com]

I feel this way too and the "if you're not angry you're not paying attention" attitude that is very pervasive around angry parts of fandom does not help.

I've had decent success staving it off by reminding myself that as a creator of things, I can get my quota of Doing Good Within Fandom by focusing my energy on making sure the things I make don't fail too hard (with the note that it's important to distinguish between reasonable crit and the more extreme SJ stuff). I feel this is more constructive than getting angry over something I'm unlikely to be able to influence and it's significantly less stressful, though admittedly not perfectly stress free. But it keeps the guilt monkeys at bay.

[pico-the-great.livejournal.com]

"if you're not angry you're not paying attention"

wot de fok is dat

No. Anger is very different from constructiveness. The two can overlap, certainly! But mistaking the one for the other, and praising people who are the one as if that implied that they were the other - that is simply juvenile.

I can understand that. For my part, I figure - change it from inside: I write my books with the kinds of awesomes I want to see more of, instead of complaining that X and Y don't have more of these awesomes. (Well, I complain sometimes, but that's just because it's fun.) But i far prefer to focus on the awesomes than to focus on the sucks. Maybe it's because I'm an optimist? Or maybe it's just because I don't like BS :D

[pico-the-great.livejournal.com]

Exactly. A hobby is not a place you go for more stress - a hobby is something you do for hte love of it, and for enjoyment, and to not have to think about IRL Responsibilities, and etc. It is not a place you need people telling you "you should X" and "you're bad for not Y-ing" and "people who think about Z are better than you".

(I hate this kind of behavior catagorically anyway, but when it's criticising someone for the terrible habit of (gasp) enjoying a movie non-critically, then, well.)

(...blegh. You can be as activist as you want. That was something I really appreciated in my Pride group - whoever wanted to be activists could do that; people who didn't want to didn't have to. Unfortunately nowadays the new activism group on campus is suckign everyone away from Pride, so ... kinda glad I left when I did, when there wasn't that pressure.)