Happy New Year! (and some reflections on the past year)
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!
I still have my Yuletide post-reveals post to make and Fanfic In Review as well, but I wanted to make this post separately.
2014 was tough. Personal-life wise as well as on a more...global scale.
I've been missing my college friends and realizing that it's harder to stay in touch than I thought it might be. My summer job was fine, but it did mean much less free time, no Europe travel and no seeing family. Fall semester was one of the hardest school terms I've had in a very long time.
Politics this year were terrible. I managed to care way too much about everything that is happening in Ukraine. I follow some Ukrainian bloggers and just...agh. This year has been awful for them despite its hopeful beginnings and knowing/following actual people stuck in a situation makes that situation so much more real. It's not just some abstract news story. Best wishes for the new year for all of them, seriously.
The politics has caused some major tensions within my family. Even during the New Year celebration the other night politics came up. It seems like the only person who really has the same position that I do is my Aunt. My parents have a kind of a...fence-straddling position, though I think they're more Putin-side when push comes to shove. Grandparents are full-on Putinists. JFC. While Putin was giving his New Years speech yesterday, I was posting pro-Ukrainian things on facebook. It was the most surreal thing ever. (Didn't help that politics also came up later in the night when we went to shoot fireworks and met up with some of my childhood friends. One of them is a super-active Russian-opposition activist. In a participant sense, not a community organizing sense. The point being that politics managed to permeate even the largest holiday of the year.)
If ever I had hope that the new year would be better than the last, it's this time. I don't post lots of politics stuff here, mainly because I like it to be a fandom space with some RL stuff mixed in, but without it turning into any sort of politics hot-spot. That's just too stressful. I also know most of my flist is English-speaking so I haven't bothered re-posting a lot of lovely Russian/Ukrainian-language stuff that I've seen floating around. I also feel strange being so invested/involved in what, for the most part, are the internal affairs of a country I'm not a citizen of and have very little hereditary connection to (I do have a Ukrainian great-grandmother, but that's it). I also have a hard time writing in Russian, so I don't comment on the (Ukrainian) blogs I do read much if at all. Maybe I should find a way to do that this year: make that my 2015 resolution. After all, it's too late to not get emotionally involved.
I don't know where all of this is going. I guess I just needed to get this out. Sorry guys! Happier posts to come soon!
I still have my Yuletide post-reveals post to make and Fanfic In Review as well, but I wanted to make this post separately.
2014 was tough. Personal-life wise as well as on a more...global scale.
I've been missing my college friends and realizing that it's harder to stay in touch than I thought it might be. My summer job was fine, but it did mean much less free time, no Europe travel and no seeing family. Fall semester was one of the hardest school terms I've had in a very long time.
Politics this year were terrible. I managed to care way too much about everything that is happening in Ukraine. I follow some Ukrainian bloggers and just...agh. This year has been awful for them despite its hopeful beginnings and knowing/following actual people stuck in a situation makes that situation so much more real. It's not just some abstract news story. Best wishes for the new year for all of them, seriously.
The politics has caused some major tensions within my family. Even during the New Year celebration the other night politics came up. It seems like the only person who really has the same position that I do is my Aunt. My parents have a kind of a...fence-straddling position, though I think they're more Putin-side when push comes to shove. Grandparents are full-on Putinists. JFC. While Putin was giving his New Years speech yesterday, I was posting pro-Ukrainian things on facebook. It was the most surreal thing ever. (Didn't help that politics also came up later in the night when we went to shoot fireworks and met up with some of my childhood friends. One of them is a super-active Russian-opposition activist. In a participant sense, not a community organizing sense. The point being that politics managed to permeate even the largest holiday of the year.)
If ever I had hope that the new year would be better than the last, it's this time. I don't post lots of politics stuff here, mainly because I like it to be a fandom space with some RL stuff mixed in, but without it turning into any sort of politics hot-spot. That's just too stressful. I also know most of my flist is English-speaking so I haven't bothered re-posting a lot of lovely Russian/Ukrainian-language stuff that I've seen floating around. I also feel strange being so invested/involved in what, for the most part, are the internal affairs of a country I'm not a citizen of and have very little hereditary connection to (I do have a Ukrainian great-grandmother, but that's it). I also have a hard time writing in Russian, so I don't comment on the (Ukrainian) blogs I do read much if at all. Maybe I should find a way to do that this year: make that my 2015 resolution. After all, it's too late to not get emotionally involved.
I don't know where all of this is going. I guess I just needed to get this out. Sorry guys! Happier posts to come soon!