the prodigal blogger returns...?
On a whim today I went on Dreamwidth and looked at my profile page and saw that it was 6 years out of date. Six years? Has it really been that long since I blogged regularly? No, not quite, I was pretty active until 2013, but it sure feels that long.
Then I looked at my friendslist, and at my friendslist on LJ and I almost left again, because I'm not sure anyone here remembers me, or that we've still got things in common, and even if we do - after giving no life sign for two years (my last post is from Jan 1 2015) even the people who did know me might not care anymore. I'm a shoddy long-distance friend. This, by the way, is one of the reasons I'm making a post now: I was thinking of several friendships I had with people where I failed to keep in contact, and my LJ friends are one example. Another reason I'm here is that last weekend my boyfriend gently nudged me into this direction by mentioning that there are a lot of things I loved to do that I don't do anymore. He meant drawing and writing, I think, but blogging is also one of these things. He's right, and blogging is the thing I feel like doing, so I'm here now.
But looking at my friendslist, I also see that I seem to have come at another moment of oh-no-LJ-is-deleting-us, so maybe it's also a good time to rescue my old online presence!
I left LJ/DW around 2013 for a number of reasons - I quit Doctor Who fandom, I went over to tumblr for a while, I was busy trying to start a dissertation, and I also had a rather disheartening experience with trying to publish an article about fan studies. 2013 is also when I more or less stopped writing fanfic (with a few small exceptions).
In 2014 I went to the US for a year to teach German as a Foreign Language at Yale. This was a mixed bag of a year - on the one hand, I loved Yale, the US and teaching undergrads, but on the other hand I was pretty lonely, I failed to get much done for my PhD, and as a result, when I got back to Germany it was with empty hands. I quit my PhD in the summer of 2015, and taught German as a Foreign Language at the university of Heidelberg for a year, then I briefly took on a job as a secretary, and finally, last year, I decided to continue my schoolteacher training, which is where I'm at now.
But the really important thing that happened, for me personally, was that a year ago I started a relationship - and it's still going really well. As in, I think this is it, he's the one, and he feels the same about me. In the first couple of months I was continously amazed at my ability to have a happy relationship :) To some extent I think being in love sort of took over the role fandom had played for me for a long time (plus, relationships are time-consuming!). Fandom is a work of love, of investing yourself in something, and it gives back a similar sense of belonging. But I haven't really stopped being a fan of things (we're both huge nerds who loves TV and games and comic books, but he's not into our kind of fandom, being more a reddit guy), and sometimes I really miss the activities of being a fan.
During my year in the US, btw, I kept blogging, but I blogged in German for my German friends and family, which is weirdly different from the anonymity of fandom. I enjoyed it much less!
My teacher training isn't going badly, but it's also not a huge success, and I'm currently thinking that when I've finished it and got my degree, I'll go back to teaching German as a Foreign Language if possible, because I don't really click with kids and prefer teaching grown-ups. It's really frustrating to be 31 and still not quite sure where my life is going!
In terms of fandom, well, as I said I quit Doctor Who. I'm not even up-to-date with the current episodes. For a while I messed around on tumblr, dipping my toes in a number of fandoms there and not making any friends. I felt pretty fannish about a number of books - Iain M. Banks' Culture series, the Discworld books (which I discovered really late, but loved all the more for it), Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series, and I kept up to date with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its TV incarnation. On the DC side of comics I really loved the Flash and I've watched some Arrow. But I guess that if I had been active in fandom during the last couple of years, I'd have been most active in video game fandom, because I discovered video games while in the US (missing my regular pen&paper sessions). I even wrote some Dragon Age fic, most of it either on kink memes or entirely unfinished and thus unpublished.
So, that's it. I think I'll give blogging another try, and see how it goes, and if I feel the itch to write some fanfic, all the better. If you still remember me and don't hate me for being MIA for years, say hello!
Then I looked at my friendslist, and at my friendslist on LJ and I almost left again, because I'm not sure anyone here remembers me, or that we've still got things in common, and even if we do - after giving no life sign for two years (my last post is from Jan 1 2015) even the people who did know me might not care anymore. I'm a shoddy long-distance friend. This, by the way, is one of the reasons I'm making a post now: I was thinking of several friendships I had with people where I failed to keep in contact, and my LJ friends are one example. Another reason I'm here is that last weekend my boyfriend gently nudged me into this direction by mentioning that there are a lot of things I loved to do that I don't do anymore. He meant drawing and writing, I think, but blogging is also one of these things. He's right, and blogging is the thing I feel like doing, so I'm here now.
But looking at my friendslist, I also see that I seem to have come at another moment of oh-no-LJ-is-deleting-us, so maybe it's also a good time to rescue my old online presence!
I left LJ/DW around 2013 for a number of reasons - I quit Doctor Who fandom, I went over to tumblr for a while, I was busy trying to start a dissertation, and I also had a rather disheartening experience with trying to publish an article about fan studies. 2013 is also when I more or less stopped writing fanfic (with a few small exceptions).
In 2014 I went to the US for a year to teach German as a Foreign Language at Yale. This was a mixed bag of a year - on the one hand, I loved Yale, the US and teaching undergrads, but on the other hand I was pretty lonely, I failed to get much done for my PhD, and as a result, when I got back to Germany it was with empty hands. I quit my PhD in the summer of 2015, and taught German as a Foreign Language at the university of Heidelberg for a year, then I briefly took on a job as a secretary, and finally, last year, I decided to continue my schoolteacher training, which is where I'm at now.
But the really important thing that happened, for me personally, was that a year ago I started a relationship - and it's still going really well. As in, I think this is it, he's the one, and he feels the same about me. In the first couple of months I was continously amazed at my ability to have a happy relationship :) To some extent I think being in love sort of took over the role fandom had played for me for a long time (plus, relationships are time-consuming!). Fandom is a work of love, of investing yourself in something, and it gives back a similar sense of belonging. But I haven't really stopped being a fan of things (we're both huge nerds who loves TV and games and comic books, but he's not into our kind of fandom, being more a reddit guy), and sometimes I really miss the activities of being a fan.
During my year in the US, btw, I kept blogging, but I blogged in German for my German friends and family, which is weirdly different from the anonymity of fandom. I enjoyed it much less!
My teacher training isn't going badly, but it's also not a huge success, and I'm currently thinking that when I've finished it and got my degree, I'll go back to teaching German as a Foreign Language if possible, because I don't really click with kids and prefer teaching grown-ups. It's really frustrating to be 31 and still not quite sure where my life is going!
In terms of fandom, well, as I said I quit Doctor Who. I'm not even up-to-date with the current episodes. For a while I messed around on tumblr, dipping my toes in a number of fandoms there and not making any friends. I felt pretty fannish about a number of books - Iain M. Banks' Culture series, the Discworld books (which I discovered really late, but loved all the more for it), Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series, and I kept up to date with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its TV incarnation. On the DC side of comics I really loved the Flash and I've watched some Arrow. But I guess that if I had been active in fandom during the last couple of years, I'd have been most active in video game fandom, because I discovered video games while in the US (missing my regular pen&paper sessions). I even wrote some Dragon Age fic, most of it either on kink memes or entirely unfinished and thus unpublished.
So, that's it. I think I'll give blogging another try, and see how it goes, and if I feel the itch to write some fanfic, all the better. If you still remember me and don't hate me for being MIA for years, say hello!