"Hello? Is there anybody in there?"
Wow. I don't even know. 2012 was the last time I was on here. That's...fucking wild.
So. Ok. For the maybe three people who still frequent this thing, here goes a brief synopsis of what happened:
I am a lazy asshole.
Hm. Too brief. Let me explain.
I spent most of 2012 and 2013 trying to get a Real Job as a teacher. I succeeded in August 2013; I currently teach journalism at a high school in the Miami-Dade County Public School system, as well as advise the school yearbook. This is a stressful job that I'm never entirely off the clock for. There is a part of me that likes that aspect, because my mind is never really off, and advising the yearbook means I can indulge certain creative tendencies I have in a really geeky way that is super satisfying.
There is another side of me that is super resentful of this aspect, because it keeps me from writing and reading. And also doing nothing, which I'm very into these days, probably because I've never not been working my ass off. (There have been a lot of articles written about the millenial experience that make me feel very "seen," as the Youths® say, and I may link those here later, if anyone is interested; basically my entire generation was "lied to" about a lot of things and have been subsequently punished by a society that hasn't yet twigged to the reality of what it means to be a part of Current Society. But I digress.)
I have always wanted to try to publish something original, and so I thought to try to pull my focus away from my fanfic-heavy writing and more toward my original stuff. Making that switch never quite worked the way I'd hoped, because I was never as disciplined about my original stuff as I was with the fanfic; you guys kept me honest and helped me adhere to a schedule, and no one was really holding me accountable with the original stuff. At the same time, I was trying to settle into a job I hadn't ever expected to have, and learn the ropes of a world I had exited 10 years previous, never thinking I would have anything to do with it ever again (shows what I know; also, Life is a capricious old bitch).
Teaching is fucking hard, you guys. It's a lot of extra work that no one warns you about (grading student work is a whole other job that would earn me OT in nearly any other job; school systems would be bankrupted by this aspect of teaching alone if they had to pay OT, forget everything else). And no one warns you about how long it takes for you to get comfortable, either, not until you're already in the weeds and thinking that there's no way you're going to be able to do this. A lot of it is faith: that you'll survive, that you won't fuck up, that you'll get better. It's been said it takes about 3 years for a new teacher to feel like they understand how to do their job, and can confirm, fam.
In addition to a stable job, there were a lot of other big changes in the lives of the people around me that have impacted me in ways large and small: Two of my best friends married each other in 2014. My little sister got married to a truly awesome guy in 2015. My half-sister graduated high school in 2016. Another two of my best friends moved away for work in 2017, one to Orlando, Florida, and the other to Virginia/DC-adjacent to work for DOD.
My grandfather had a massive stroke in January 2017, and then died April 2017, exactly a month after his 81st birthday.
I spent the rest of 2017 basically depressed, although I didn't realize that at the time.
My nephew, Thomas Jacob, was born December 2017.
It's been a lot, just the personal shit, not even counting the 2016 election, and how badly that fucked me up, and how it's affected how my mom and I relate to each other, because she voted for 45 and I didn't.
The last year has felt really bleak. I've been consuming a lot of Star Trek, especially lately, because I'm sad that we're so far off the path that could conceivably lead us to a Star Trek-like world, and because it's optimistic about the fate of humanity, and I really need that right now. I don't feel optimistic about us as a species, but sometimes I'll watch Nichelle Nichols and Leonard Nimoy being just fucking adorable in the Enterprise's rec room in "Charlie X," or Sir Patrick Stewart argue that Brent Spiner's Data is a person, and I can hope that we might get there, even if I don't ever live to see it.
[I have lots of thoughts and opinions on the ST universe(s). We can get as geeky and esoteric as you like, if that's your jam.]
Anyway. I've been feeling like I lack something, and that something has been writing. I've never actually stopped writing (my mind never stops and all that), but follow-through has been a demon bitch. So I tried to do the harder thing first, which is focus on the original stuff, and then pick up the fanfic, because that's always been pretty effortless for me.
It goddamn worked, you guys.
Part of it was that I'd been held accountable by my friend Christie on the original works side, and I got through 170-odd pages of something I really think I might be able to publish within the next year or two (!!!!!) in November/December 2018 alone. (Ok, not quite 170-odd, some 50-odd had already been, laborously, produced over the past I-have-no-fucking-idea years; but since I edit as I write and then I go back and edit some more, I feel like it counts). At the same time, I'd been bouncing between several fanfic stories like I always do, following the threads to the end, wherever that lay.
And then my thumb drive fucking died.
Like, D-E-D dead, brochachos.
Friday, December 21th, 2018, 10:00 a.m.: my little 4GB pink, Susan G, Kohmen-related thumb drive dropped hella dead.
One of my friends is trying to recover what's on it, which includes everything I've ever written, fanfic and original. Yes fam, my dumb ass has been living in the Stone Ages. I have been thinking about moving my stuff to something else for like three years, but never did because I am a lazy asshole (remember?). So instead, I waited for technology to shit on me, and compounded that mistake by putting all of my eggs in one ancient little basket.
So right now, I'm stuck waiting for the final word on whether I can move my stuff to the Cloud (I'm so old when it comes to this shit it's fucking embarrassing; I don't understand what the hell "the Cloud" actually means or is, which is why I was still using a thumb drive to save things like I'm a 21st century Luddite or some shit), or whether I need to start from scratch. I'm attempting to keep Zen about it all, and hoping 2019 starts on a good note.
I hope you've all been well! I also hope to give you an opportunity to revisit stories and characters without the emptiness of an "unfinished" or "discontinued" status to leave you wondering/hanging. I've always hated it when that's happened to me as a reader, and I always told myself I didn't want to do that as a fanfic writer.
I should also give legalronin on FF.net a s/o; they are the reason I decided to dust this thing off and talk to you guys. They said they missed me, and I realized just how much I missed my RK community, and all of the people I'd once had so much fun interacting with. Hopefully I can reconnect with those friends one day again.
Fingers crossed, y'all.