Boredom, whoredom--er, workdom, fandom
I’m so tired of opening this journal and seeing the same picture of J.K. Rowling that’s been sitting there undisturbed since Valentine’s Day that I think a little thought experiment is in order. I’m going to try and see if for once I can post something new without tweaking it for a fucking week beforehand.
For the last month my working life has been beating my fandom life right into the ground. At a major event hosted by my employer, I had to speak for thirty minutes about a project which was inadequately executed to start with, has since fallen into stagnation, and which now provides an unpleasant reminder of a corporate relationship that will shortly end in less-than-amicable divorce. In other words, a situation that my employer should have wanted to deflect attention from, not further publicize. I actually made that argument early on, and not just because I dislike public speaking. I was shot down, however, largely for the probably lucky reason that my coworkers are less aware of the project’s flaws than I am. My job, then, was to talk about the project in a way that would continue to conceal said flaws both from them and from the attendees of the event. While I was attempting to prepare to do this, I was simultaneously drafting the divorce papers for the corporate relationship in question. The drafting consumed so much time and energy that I was very nearly not able to get the speech together in time. I mean that the speech was scheduled as the first thing after lunch one day, and I was still tweaking the thing into coherency five minutes before the end of lunch.
In a world we never made, coworker bullshit is something none of us can avoid.
More generally, anxiety over work relationships continues to be the chief bane of my existence. It now appears that my hanging on to my job has less and less to do with my actual job performance (though failure on that front could still prove fatal) and everything to do with my ability to second-guess my coworkers: their unspoken thoughts, their secret and ever-shifting alliances, their grudges, resentments, ambitions and prejudices. My working life - if not my continued employment itself, then certainly my daily quality of life - now depends on my success or failure in these matters. And I have never excelled at such things, to say the least. It is terrifying.
All this largely explains my failure to post anything for ages. I had a postscript in the works for the “Gryffindor tyranny” entry below, which consisted of more moaning about my Ravenclaw identity and specifically how fucked up the Ravenclaw tower “password” system is, as briefly glimpsed in Deathly Hallows. I’ve lost so much momentum on that entry that I don’t know if it will see the light of day, however. Meanwhile, I remain dimly aware of the existence of a person character person known as Severus Snape; I seem to remember, in fact, that somewhere in my files there is a Word document of over a hundred pages devoted to this individual. A fanfic, I think is what those fan-type people who participate in fandoms call it. Not that I would know anything about what goes on in fandoms lately. I don’t even know my own name at this point.
Actually, it’s not true that I’m completely out of touch with the Snape fandom, but I have felt of late that my corner of it, at least, needs some reorganizing and/or fresh blood. To be frank, I’ve been bored lately. It seems churlish to make such a complaint; if I’m bored with my fandoms, I should try to write something myself that might enrich them. But since I’ve been completely unable to gather the wit to write lately, I’ve been glomming off the writing of others, and have found myself really wishing there was more good stuff out there, or an easier way to find the good stuff.
There’s more Potter fanfic than can be read in a normal person’s lifetime, of course, but I am an extremely moody fanfic consumer at the best of times, and sometimes I don’t want to read fic at all. In a fandom this huge, why isn’t there a centralized place to go for reliably high-quality nonfictional riffing on the Potterverse - a Salon.com of the fandom? Don’t say the Leaky Cauldron; for all I know there are staggeringly eloquent discussions going on somewhere in there, but the place is so overwhelming in its diversity of nooks and crannies that every time I do happen on something potentially interesting I can’t remember its location later. Also, the type of stuff that’s reported on their news page tends to make me feel I am, shall we say, not their target audience. I like Robbie Coltrane, but the fact that it’s his birthday does not, in my view, qualify as compelling fandom news.
Oh, whatever. Happy birthday, Robbie.
There’s Snapedom, which sometimes has gripping nonfictional discussions amidst its fanfic posts. It is, however, a place with lingering associations of verbal violence to me; I’ve read a number of “debates” there that left me feeling beat up just by association. I have a great affection for Snapecast and its makers, and would be happy to consider them my central clearinghouse for Snape-related matter, but the frequency of the ‘casts, and of their content updates in general, has understandably declined since the series came to closure. Much as I love them, I need a more regular fix than they can provide.
While I figure out how better to meet my fandom needs, meanwhile, it’s high time I friended some of the people out there whose contributions have largely constituted the fandom for me. To anyone who was included in this recent friending initiative and clicked over here wondering, “Who the hell’s this person that friended me?”, I’m a random fellow fan who liked something you said or did, and would like to have quick and easy access to your future sayings and doings. (Apologies if I didn’t say so by commenting directly at your LJ; sometimes I don’t have the energy or wit to describe in detail, and in a timely manner, the exact nature of someone’s excellence.) People have different friending preferences and purposes, so I will not take it amiss if you don’t friend me back. I just wanted to come out into the open to say hello and thanks for adding enjoyment to my life. If I can, I will return the favor.
(Turnaround time on the composition of this post: under 24 hours. So it can be done. Also, as if to gently mock my ingratitude, a new episode of Snapecast has just appeared. Plus it's the weekend and spring has come to New York. MIght be time to put the bitching on mute, yes?)
*There seems to be a conspiracy of nostalgia underway involving this song, which certain people suddenly insist was a generational touchstone for people who were twentysomethings during the 1990’s. As an avowed music fan who fits that description, but was only dimly aware of the band at the time and had never heard the song at all until the aforesaid nostalgic conspiracy made me curious, I call bullshit on this notion. However, that is no particular fault of the song, which as it happens is pretty good.
For the last month my working life has been beating my fandom life right into the ground. At a major event hosted by my employer, I had to speak for thirty minutes about a project which was inadequately executed to start with, has since fallen into stagnation, and which now provides an unpleasant reminder of a corporate relationship that will shortly end in less-than-amicable divorce. In other words, a situation that my employer should have wanted to deflect attention from, not further publicize. I actually made that argument early on, and not just because I dislike public speaking. I was shot down, however, largely for the probably lucky reason that my coworkers are less aware of the project’s flaws than I am. My job, then, was to talk about the project in a way that would continue to conceal said flaws both from them and from the attendees of the event. While I was attempting to prepare to do this, I was simultaneously drafting the divorce papers for the corporate relationship in question. The drafting consumed so much time and energy that I was very nearly not able to get the speech together in time. I mean that the speech was scheduled as the first thing after lunch one day, and I was still tweaking the thing into coherency five minutes before the end of lunch.
In a world we never made, coworker bullshit is something none of us can avoid.
More generally, anxiety over work relationships continues to be the chief bane of my existence. It now appears that my hanging on to my job has less and less to do with my actual job performance (though failure on that front could still prove fatal) and everything to do with my ability to second-guess my coworkers: their unspoken thoughts, their secret and ever-shifting alliances, their grudges, resentments, ambitions and prejudices. My working life - if not my continued employment itself, then certainly my daily quality of life - now depends on my success or failure in these matters. And I have never excelled at such things, to say the least. It is terrifying.
All this largely explains my failure to post anything for ages. I had a postscript in the works for the “Gryffindor tyranny” entry below, which consisted of more moaning about my Ravenclaw identity and specifically how fucked up the Ravenclaw tower “password” system is, as briefly glimpsed in Deathly Hallows. I’ve lost so much momentum on that entry that I don’t know if it will see the light of day, however. Meanwhile, I remain dimly aware of the existence of a person character person known as Severus Snape; I seem to remember, in fact, that somewhere in my files there is a Word document of over a hundred pages devoted to this individual. A fanfic, I think is what those fan-type people who participate in fandoms call it. Not that I would know anything about what goes on in fandoms lately. I don’t even know my own name at this point.
Actually, it’s not true that I’m completely out of touch with the Snape fandom, but I have felt of late that my corner of it, at least, needs some reorganizing and/or fresh blood. To be frank, I’ve been bored lately. It seems churlish to make such a complaint; if I’m bored with my fandoms, I should try to write something myself that might enrich them. But since I’ve been completely unable to gather the wit to write lately, I’ve been glomming off the writing of others, and have found myself really wishing there was more good stuff out there, or an easier way to find the good stuff.
There’s more Potter fanfic than can be read in a normal person’s lifetime, of course, but I am an extremely moody fanfic consumer at the best of times, and sometimes I don’t want to read fic at all. In a fandom this huge, why isn’t there a centralized place to go for reliably high-quality nonfictional riffing on the Potterverse - a Salon.com of the fandom? Don’t say the Leaky Cauldron; for all I know there are staggeringly eloquent discussions going on somewhere in there, but the place is so overwhelming in its diversity of nooks and crannies that every time I do happen on something potentially interesting I can’t remember its location later. Also, the type of stuff that’s reported on their news page tends to make me feel I am, shall we say, not their target audience. I like Robbie Coltrane, but the fact that it’s his birthday does not, in my view, qualify as compelling fandom news.
Oh, whatever. Happy birthday, Robbie.
There’s Snapedom, which sometimes has gripping nonfictional discussions amidst its fanfic posts. It is, however, a place with lingering associations of verbal violence to me; I’ve read a number of “debates” there that left me feeling beat up just by association. I have a great affection for Snapecast and its makers, and would be happy to consider them my central clearinghouse for Snape-related matter, but the frequency of the ‘casts, and of their content updates in general, has understandably declined since the series came to closure. Much as I love them, I need a more regular fix than they can provide.
While I figure out how better to meet my fandom needs, meanwhile, it’s high time I friended some of the people out there whose contributions have largely constituted the fandom for me. To anyone who was included in this recent friending initiative and clicked over here wondering, “Who the hell’s this person that friended me?”, I’m a random fellow fan who liked something you said or did, and would like to have quick and easy access to your future sayings and doings. (Apologies if I didn’t say so by commenting directly at your LJ; sometimes I don’t have the energy or wit to describe in detail, and in a timely manner, the exact nature of someone’s excellence.) People have different friending preferences and purposes, so I will not take it amiss if you don’t friend me back. I just wanted to come out into the open to say hello and thanks for adding enjoyment to my life. If I can, I will return the favor.
(Turnaround time on the composition of this post: under 24 hours. So it can be done. Also, as if to gently mock my ingratitude, a new episode of Snapecast has just appeared. Plus it's the weekend and spring has come to New York. MIght be time to put the bitching on mute, yes?)
*There seems to be a conspiracy of nostalgia underway involving this song, which certain people suddenly insist was a generational touchstone for people who were twentysomethings during the 1990’s. As an avowed music fan who fits that description, but was only dimly aware of the band at the time and had never heard the song at all until the aforesaid nostalgic conspiracy made me curious, I call bullshit on this notion. However, that is no particular fault of the song, which as it happens is pretty good.