anything but the numbness, please
I know it's super super irrational and also very wrong and just fuelling the bad spiral of depressive doom to be all "I'm there for everyone but when I need someone there, nobody is around". But well I just had the worst drop down that spiral I've had since high school and I'm still a little numb but also how the fuck is it that I can drop that quickly in a day and recover? Or at least be rational about it enough to not lash out? I know it's wrong of me to go "you don't care because you don't have time for me" because well not everybody is me. Not everybody gets that feeling in their head of "oh, I need to talk to [name] now" and then find out that acutally they're in the middle of a bit of anxious panic and not everybody will then know how to step in and ease that for them.
And I guess having said it like that it feels like I'm...putting??? myself??? on a pedestal???
I guess I still just haven't learnt the right way to say to someone "I need to you talk to me; I need you to distract me" and have them actually say something that works. I don't actually know if anyone's ever said the right words for me. They probably have and I just can't see through the haze to remember it right now.
You know, every so often it just...hits me how much I miss the LJ days. Before everyone splintered off, before fandom became...once removed from your person. I miss...the closeness, I guess. the...identity of it all The idea that all of what you were went into the one blog and then from there maybe you’d promote that fic or that art out to communities. That you’d be so much more involved with your mutual friends’ lives. And it’s the strangest things I miss too. Remember Fandom Secrets? I remember how massive those posts got, and how you’d have to remember the number of the ones you wanted to comment on, and how ridiculous those threads got at times. I remember Smut Sundays, back when weekends were real for me, and how silly it felt but how nice that we all decided on this one thing. Fic challenges and kink memes and the obsession with finding the best icons to use and moodthemes, and the late night theme updates because you just got bored of how your blog looked, or it was seasonal, or you had a new fandom you wanted to love. I guess I loved the feeling of everything consolidated into the one site. I guess it all felt closer as a community and when one fandom hurt it reverberated across the others.
To me, tumblr has always felt a little like...we’ve lost that voice. See something, like something, reblog something. Lose that personal among the onslaught of images that you could never fully be up to date on.
I remember the LJ days when you’d scroll through your inbox and your friend feed until you hit where you left off the last time and you knew you hadn’t missed anything. Because that’d be terrible. On tumblr? ell if you missed it the first time you’ll probably just see a meme version later.
I remember the scare, the backlash, the sudden Dreamwidth exodus. The rise of AO3. Since the LJ days, I have had one, count it, one active fandom that lived up to that standard. And that was because we had late night livestreams and a forum. But even to do that, we had to take it off tumblr. Tumblr made the conversations confusing, the streams of reblogs hard to follow.
And today I'm melancholy which means I'm back here again. It's not even that I want to go back to those days. How can I when I know just how many issues I had then, and how much better I am now? I like my life now too. It's what I wanted, even then. It's not that I want to be young again, because being young would mean I'd have so many things still to sort out. It's just that I miss the community. I miss the hope and optimism and not being so damn jaded about the world and all the terribleness there is out there. It's that fandom has been slowly slipping away from me and I'm not sure if I like it's new form. It's seeing terminology and text post style changing and realising I don't really want to keep up with the times anymore. It's wondering when we started calling it "discourse" instead of "wank", when fandom had to have this social political edge to it instead of just being explorative and communal.
And yet I don't know what to do about it.
What can I do?
Maybe I just have to wait for the new wave. For tumblr to be usurped by the next blogging platform and hope that that one is more along the lines of a community than a collection of blogs all screaming out into the wild, repeating the same posts until they echo. Or maybe it's finally happened and I've outgrown fandom. Didn't I used to say that was a ridiculous phrase? Well I don't really know how I feel now. I'm surprised that my journal code hasn't broken yet.
I read back a bit and found all this...theatre AU ideas and I almost cringed because well. I forgot what my world now looks like from the outside. I guess now it feels a bit like I've forgotten how to interact with and in fandom. Like I'm on the outside looking in, trying to recapture the feeling of warmth from the last place I was actually in.
I have just over 12 hours to get through this and over it, because then I have ballet season and what with not having worked with them properly for three years, I really need to be on my wits and at my best and not forgetting stupid things or being lazy because that's how stupid rumours start. And I know I have to prove myself all over again because it's been so long and I've changed so much and I'm both looking forward to it and not. Please, Alia, remind me of why I took this contract over the other one, when the other would have given me more days to get over these lingering stupid issues that choose inconvenient times to resurface - though I guess any time would be inconvenient and at least it was on a day off.
Shower. Something creative. And then bed. Clean if I can. Organise a bag for tomorrow. Check the bus times. You can do this.
And I guess having said it like that it feels like I'm...putting??? myself??? on a pedestal???
I guess I still just haven't learnt the right way to say to someone "I need to you talk to me; I need you to distract me" and have them actually say something that works. I don't actually know if anyone's ever said the right words for me. They probably have and I just can't see through the haze to remember it right now.
You know, every so often it just...hits me how much I miss the LJ days. Before everyone splintered off, before fandom became...once removed from your person. I miss...the closeness, I guess. the...identity of it all The idea that all of what you were went into the one blog and then from there maybe you’d promote that fic or that art out to communities. That you’d be so much more involved with your mutual friends’ lives. And it’s the strangest things I miss too. Remember Fandom Secrets? I remember how massive those posts got, and how you’d have to remember the number of the ones you wanted to comment on, and how ridiculous those threads got at times. I remember Smut Sundays, back when weekends were real for me, and how silly it felt but how nice that we all decided on this one thing. Fic challenges and kink memes and the obsession with finding the best icons to use and moodthemes, and the late night theme updates because you just got bored of how your blog looked, or it was seasonal, or you had a new fandom you wanted to love. I guess I loved the feeling of everything consolidated into the one site. I guess it all felt closer as a community and when one fandom hurt it reverberated across the others.
To me, tumblr has always felt a little like...we’ve lost that voice. See something, like something, reblog something. Lose that personal among the onslaught of images that you could never fully be up to date on.
I remember the LJ days when you’d scroll through your inbox and your friend feed until you hit where you left off the last time and you knew you hadn’t missed anything. Because that’d be terrible. On tumblr? ell if you missed it the first time you’ll probably just see a meme version later.
I remember the scare, the backlash, the sudden Dreamwidth exodus. The rise of AO3. Since the LJ days, I have had one, count it, one active fandom that lived up to that standard. And that was because we had late night livestreams and a forum. But even to do that, we had to take it off tumblr. Tumblr made the conversations confusing, the streams of reblogs hard to follow.
And today I'm melancholy which means I'm back here again. It's not even that I want to go back to those days. How can I when I know just how many issues I had then, and how much better I am now? I like my life now too. It's what I wanted, even then. It's not that I want to be young again, because being young would mean I'd have so many things still to sort out. It's just that I miss the community. I miss the hope and optimism and not being so damn jaded about the world and all the terribleness there is out there. It's that fandom has been slowly slipping away from me and I'm not sure if I like it's new form. It's seeing terminology and text post style changing and realising I don't really want to keep up with the times anymore. It's wondering when we started calling it "discourse" instead of "wank", when fandom had to have this social political edge to it instead of just being explorative and communal.
And yet I don't know what to do about it.
What can I do?
Maybe I just have to wait for the new wave. For tumblr to be usurped by the next blogging platform and hope that that one is more along the lines of a community than a collection of blogs all screaming out into the wild, repeating the same posts until they echo. Or maybe it's finally happened and I've outgrown fandom. Didn't I used to say that was a ridiculous phrase? Well I don't really know how I feel now. I'm surprised that my journal code hasn't broken yet.
I read back a bit and found all this...theatre AU ideas and I almost cringed because well. I forgot what my world now looks like from the outside. I guess now it feels a bit like I've forgotten how to interact with and in fandom. Like I'm on the outside looking in, trying to recapture the feeling of warmth from the last place I was actually in.
I have just over 12 hours to get through this and over it, because then I have ballet season and what with not having worked with them properly for three years, I really need to be on my wits and at my best and not forgetting stupid things or being lazy because that's how stupid rumours start. And I know I have to prove myself all over again because it's been so long and I've changed so much and I'm both looking forward to it and not. Please, Alia, remind me of why I took this contract over the other one, when the other would have given me more days to get over these lingering stupid issues that choose inconvenient times to resurface - though I guess any time would be inconvenient and at least it was on a day off.
Shower. Something creative. And then bed. Clean if I can. Organise a bag for tomorrow. Check the bus times. You can do this.