SWG Birthday Cards! Thank You! :)
I want to thank everyone who sent me a birthday card for the SWG's 10th birthday. I was very generously treated and am grateful for each and every one. Quite a few had heartfelt messages that made me wubble hard and that I will cherish for a long, long time.
As a result of putting this together*, I am hella behind on pretty much everything else fannish, so if you are waiting on me for an email reply, a beta, archive stuff ... I'm huffing and puffing but slowly catching up! In addition to Alex (who is doing extremely well, though we are still waiting on biopsy results), things have been pretty heavy at work recently. I feel like my time has been crunched down to fit into a jack-in-the-box and springs out at random to bop me in the nose; I am back to waking up in a panic periodically, convinced that I've left something undone. (I have! Many things!) This weekend is pretty empty except for a hafla on Sunday, so I should have everything set to rights very soon.
*And, yes, a few people have asked: I did do my own birthday card album! :D That was my modly job, to upload the cards to Photobucket as they came in. Trust me, it did not diminish the joy I felt to receive such lovely cards and messages, and I pretended yesterday like I hadn't seen them all already and went through and looked at them again. My comods even set up an email for me, so I even got an email with a password like everyone else. ;) And Russa did use her mod access to sneak one past the form, so I did get a bit of a surprise!
It's hard to express how much the SWG and the people in this community mean to me. Starting this group was life-changing, and I don't mean that I spend a lot more time than I would have otherwise using Notepad to write code or debating the finer points of copyright law with my obliging comods. I mean that, before fandom and before the SWG, I did not take my writing or my love of language seriously. I forced myself onto any path but the one I secretly longed for, where books and writing and words were the chief delight.
I mean that I would not be a teacher, would not be working with at-risk kids, would not be a grad student in humanities, would not be starting to publish my scholarly work (would not have scholarly work) without the people in this community. I have been so generously treated over the years by people who have pushed me to see myself differently. To recognize my value in this world, which I was honestly struggling to do when, bored at an unrewarding job that I took only because I didn't know what I truly wanted to do with myself, I began to write Another Man's Cage and not long after set up the SWG. I sometimes worry that I can never repay the kindness and generosity with which I have been treated. The SWG is an attempt to do so, to create a version of the way I was myself treated, in hopes that others might continue to find their voices through the humble mode of fanfic. I am sometimes terrified when I imagine what life would have been like if I'd never discovered fandom, never started writing AMC, never founded the SWG because, for all my grumbling and complaining--some of it petty, some of it very legit--I am so happy in my life and am doing what I love and want to do for as long as I can do it, fighting the good fight to change the fact that "everyone speaks but few are heard."
So I am grateful to you all for what you've done for me over the years. And I am saying that to those of you who sent me a card and those of you who didn't but have been a part of the fandom, the SWG, and my life for these last ten years.
Thank you.
This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
http://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/368024.html
As a result of putting this together*, I am hella behind on pretty much everything else fannish, so if you are waiting on me for an email reply, a beta, archive stuff ... I'm huffing and puffing but slowly catching up! In addition to Alex (who is doing extremely well, though we are still waiting on biopsy results), things have been pretty heavy at work recently. I feel like my time has been crunched down to fit into a jack-in-the-box and springs out at random to bop me in the nose; I am back to waking up in a panic periodically, convinced that I've left something undone. (I have! Many things!) This weekend is pretty empty except for a hafla on Sunday, so I should have everything set to rights very soon.
*And, yes, a few people have asked: I did do my own birthday card album! :D That was my modly job, to upload the cards to Photobucket as they came in. Trust me, it did not diminish the joy I felt to receive such lovely cards and messages, and I pretended yesterday like I hadn't seen them all already and went through and looked at them again. My comods even set up an email for me, so I even got an email with a password like everyone else. ;) And Russa did use her mod access to sneak one past the form, so I did get a bit of a surprise!
It's hard to express how much the SWG and the people in this community mean to me. Starting this group was life-changing, and I don't mean that I spend a lot more time than I would have otherwise using Notepad to write code or debating the finer points of copyright law with my obliging comods. I mean that, before fandom and before the SWG, I did not take my writing or my love of language seriously. I forced myself onto any path but the one I secretly longed for, where books and writing and words were the chief delight.
I mean that I would not be a teacher, would not be working with at-risk kids, would not be a grad student in humanities, would not be starting to publish my scholarly work (would not have scholarly work) without the people in this community. I have been so generously treated over the years by people who have pushed me to see myself differently. To recognize my value in this world, which I was honestly struggling to do when, bored at an unrewarding job that I took only because I didn't know what I truly wanted to do with myself, I began to write Another Man's Cage and not long after set up the SWG. I sometimes worry that I can never repay the kindness and generosity with which I have been treated. The SWG is an attempt to do so, to create a version of the way I was myself treated, in hopes that others might continue to find their voices through the humble mode of fanfic. I am sometimes terrified when I imagine what life would have been like if I'd never discovered fandom, never started writing AMC, never founded the SWG because, for all my grumbling and complaining--some of it petty, some of it very legit--I am so happy in my life and am doing what I love and want to do for as long as I can do it, fighting the good fight to change the fact that "everyone speaks but few are heard."
So I am grateful to you all for what you've done for me over the years. And I am saying that to those of you who sent me a card and those of you who didn't but have been a part of the fandom, the SWG, and my life for these last ten years.
Thank you.
This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
http://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/368024.html