New approach to reading my f-list... and other stuff
But first: new layout! This has the fun feature of having a tags list in the left sidebar. I'm now - little by little - going through my old entries and tagging them, just a few each day - probably going to do that kind of in parallel with the updating of my retro journal. Unsurprisingly, 'Life On Mars' is one of the most frequent tags for recent entries; rivalled only by 'Writing' and 'Real Life'. Never thought 'Real Life' would ever come to such prominence in this LJ of mine... Oh, and there's also a links list in the sidebar, which I have mostly stocked with brilliant web comics, so check them out! ;-)
So. The f-list issue: I'm trying the LJ catch-up game again... this time by taking a couple of hours every other evening or so to read one or two LJs (well, to read the last few months of the archives of one or two LJs, anyway). I will primarily do so for the thirty or so people on my f-list that I'm somewhat closer to, and I think I'll give up on the idea of catching up with *everybody*. Closer friends, yes, but everybody else will have to make do with me just jumping in at the present, once I've caught up with said closer friends. Sorry guys. I simply don't have enough time this year, and my f-list is at 100+ people now, by which point it becomes unmanageable to *really* catch up with everybody if you've been out of the game for months.
Actually, I feel that I may be able to cope better with reading LJs this way in general - i.e. a few of them every other day, instead of everybody, all the time. I may have to create some cunning filters to enable me to do that... a 'Monday' filter, a 'Wednesday' filter and 'Friday' filter, perhaps? Although that would still be over thirty LJs per day... but maybe, if I made six filters, I could spread the 100+ LJs out over two weeks. That would mean I'd 'visit' everyone at least once per fortnight, and wouldn't have to check more than 15-20 LJs on one evening.
Hmm.
To all you other people out there with pretty long f-lists - do you have any tricks how to deal with them without setting aside several hours for them every day? I'm grateful for any tip that helps me to organise my LJ life better...
I'm also somewhat behind on reading LoM fic in jumping_off, although I had planned to (and still intend to) read everything posted or recced there; but the time simply isn't there, at the moment. So I'm pacing myself at a couple of fics per week there at the moment. (Anyone eagerly expecting feedback: if you haven't heard from me yet about a story posted in the last ten days or so, you'll probably get feedback from me one of these days. Special note for lozenger8: Yes, I *will* read 'Palimpsest' - probably even sooner than in a couple of years. ;-) It *may* take a couple of months, though.)
BTW, just an observation, but I've just taken a look at some of the recent stuff in lifein1973, and the fandom has gone seriously morbid... it's all incest, rape, zombies, death, and bizarre forms of mutilation now! o.O Sadly, no-one's so far written the kind of fix-it fic I so urgently need to feel better about 2.08. Seems I *really* will have to do that myself. I mean, I *am* already doing that myself, of course, but I'm so frelling slow... *g*
In other news... I've been walking a lot - discovering a lot of wonderful places within a one-hour walking radius of my flat, and writing a bit, too - well, revising old stories and plotting new ones. Yes, actually plotting; I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to try a new approach to writing, didn't I? So, my Sandman/LoM crossover actually will be *planned out* before I start writing. Wow. *g*
"Sometimes We Believe" is proving in need of a bit more work still than I thought, and I think I need to contact my betas about some details of "68 Wives", so I probably won't be able to post those two stories before, hm, late next week or so. After those two have been posted, the old Maya/Sam fic will have top priority (as well as seriously starting research for the epic fix-it fic again), because that's actually the closest to completion. @beccatoria: I'm afraid it will remain a fairly run-of-the-mill introspective shippy fic with a side order of angst - it will not become another "Normal". I've decided that for now it's more important for me to learn to *finish* things in a reasonable time than to distill my entire feelings and thoughts about a show or a character into just one fic. Besides, I get a lot of enjoyment out of reading fairly standard fic, so I'm fine with writing some fairly standard fic, too. *g*
Uni-wise, I'm now deep in my second reading of "One-Dimensional Man", and it's actually making me want to read more Frankfurt School theory. cathexys I'm sure would be happy to know. *g* (I'm not sure if you're reading this, cathexys, but if you do, feel free to suggest what I should read next! I already have "Minima Moralia" by my bedside... - happened to be the only Adorno my parents had in their bookcase.)
I'm also reading some of the other neglected books from my own bookcase that I've been meaning to read for years - Brian Aldiss' "Trillion Year Spree" (a history of science fiction), and some prehistory. It's a bit of shame that I only got my motivation back this late in my studies, though - it's definitely too late now to achieve the kind of overview of my fields that I would have liked to have.
Oh, and I'm finally actively learning Spanish again.
ETA: I just decided that this deserved a link here:
http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/461739.html
Would you believe this *still* bothers me so much? No, neither would I.
*sigh*
So. The f-list issue: I'm trying the LJ catch-up game again... this time by taking a couple of hours every other evening or so to read one or two LJs (well, to read the last few months of the archives of one or two LJs, anyway). I will primarily do so for the thirty or so people on my f-list that I'm somewhat closer to, and I think I'll give up on the idea of catching up with *everybody*. Closer friends, yes, but everybody else will have to make do with me just jumping in at the present, once I've caught up with said closer friends. Sorry guys. I simply don't have enough time this year, and my f-list is at 100+ people now, by which point it becomes unmanageable to *really* catch up with everybody if you've been out of the game for months.
Actually, I feel that I may be able to cope better with reading LJs this way in general - i.e. a few of them every other day, instead of everybody, all the time. I may have to create some cunning filters to enable me to do that... a 'Monday' filter, a 'Wednesday' filter and 'Friday' filter, perhaps? Although that would still be over thirty LJs per day... but maybe, if I made six filters, I could spread the 100+ LJs out over two weeks. That would mean I'd 'visit' everyone at least once per fortnight, and wouldn't have to check more than 15-20 LJs on one evening.
Hmm.
To all you other people out there with pretty long f-lists - do you have any tricks how to deal with them without setting aside several hours for them every day? I'm grateful for any tip that helps me to organise my LJ life better...
I'm also somewhat behind on reading LoM fic in jumping_off, although I had planned to (and still intend to) read everything posted or recced there; but the time simply isn't there, at the moment. So I'm pacing myself at a couple of fics per week there at the moment. (Anyone eagerly expecting feedback: if you haven't heard from me yet about a story posted in the last ten days or so, you'll probably get feedback from me one of these days. Special note for lozenger8: Yes, I *will* read 'Palimpsest' - probably even sooner than in a couple of years. ;-) It *may* take a couple of months, though.)
BTW, just an observation, but I've just taken a look at some of the recent stuff in lifein1973, and the fandom has gone seriously morbid... it's all incest, rape, zombies, death, and bizarre forms of mutilation now! o.O Sadly, no-one's so far written the kind of fix-it fic I so urgently need to feel better about 2.08. Seems I *really* will have to do that myself. I mean, I *am* already doing that myself, of course, but I'm so frelling slow... *g*
In other news... I've been walking a lot - discovering a lot of wonderful places within a one-hour walking radius of my flat, and writing a bit, too - well, revising old stories and plotting new ones. Yes, actually plotting; I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to try a new approach to writing, didn't I? So, my Sandman/LoM crossover actually will be *planned out* before I start writing. Wow. *g*
"Sometimes We Believe" is proving in need of a bit more work still than I thought, and I think I need to contact my betas about some details of "68 Wives", so I probably won't be able to post those two stories before, hm, late next week or so. After those two have been posted, the old Maya/Sam fic will have top priority (as well as seriously starting research for the epic fix-it fic again), because that's actually the closest to completion. @beccatoria: I'm afraid it will remain a fairly run-of-the-mill introspective shippy fic with a side order of angst - it will not become another "Normal". I've decided that for now it's more important for me to learn to *finish* things in a reasonable time than to distill my entire feelings and thoughts about a show or a character into just one fic. Besides, I get a lot of enjoyment out of reading fairly standard fic, so I'm fine with writing some fairly standard fic, too. *g*
Uni-wise, I'm now deep in my second reading of "One-Dimensional Man", and it's actually making me want to read more Frankfurt School theory. cathexys I'm sure would be happy to know. *g* (I'm not sure if you're reading this, cathexys, but if you do, feel free to suggest what I should read next! I already have "Minima Moralia" by my bedside... - happened to be the only Adorno my parents had in their bookcase.)
I'm also reading some of the other neglected books from my own bookcase that I've been meaning to read for years - Brian Aldiss' "Trillion Year Spree" (a history of science fiction), and some prehistory. It's a bit of shame that I only got my motivation back this late in my studies, though - it's definitely too late now to achieve the kind of overview of my fields that I would have liked to have.
Oh, and I'm finally actively learning Spanish again.
ETA: I just decided that this deserved a link here:
http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/461739.html
Would you believe this *still* bothers me so much? No, neither would I.
*sigh*