And now for the opposite perspective of my last three years.
Back at the beginning of 2011, I was living in half a bedroom in someone else's house. I spent most of my time writing freelance articles while looking for jobs or waiting for work to happen. I also managed to get in some good work on my fiction.
At some point just before I got a real job, my mother said something that creeped me out. I don't remember what specifically it was anymore, but the basic gist that came across was that she thought she owned any successes I will have with the fiction writing. When I'm published and rich and famous, she will be proud of me because I did it due to everything she did to contribute to it.
Something like that. Except, she has nothing to do with any of my fiction writing. I was writing fiction while living in her house as a side effect, not because I was living in her house. I'd been writing fiction since 2004 with no contributing support from her whatsoever. And the thought that, if I succeeded, she was going to swoop in and claim that it was all her doing and not all mine, creeped me out to the point where I couldn't write anymore while living there. I managed to do one more writing session shortly after that conversation, and then I just stopped. Even after I moved, I just couldn't get past that sense that I was really doing her bidding whenever I worked on fiction.
So I needed to do something completely different for a while.
When I first moved to Mobile, my life was like an empty slate. I had a good job for a good boss at a good workplace, and I had picked up a bunch of hobbies (an offline roleplay group, yoga, the sea turtles, etc). But there was a hole. I was searching for something to do that had meaning. The community I found in Battle Pirates was what filled that hole - it gave me something to care about, it gave me a whole bunch of people to care about me, and we were all great together. Someone (namelessfiend) said, about 11 months in, that I loved 117 so much that I would marry it if I could. I couldn't disagree. So I let myself get completely sucked in, completely immersed, and stopped thinking about much else for a very long time.
Nanowrimo 2011 and 2012 were both zero words, but by Nanowrimo 2013, after not talking to my mother much at all for two years, I had mostly gotten over it. I started thinking seriously about fiction again. By then things in BP Land were steadily getting more sour, and I really needed to get out. It still took me another six months and a minor Real Life shakeup, but here I am at the end of August in 2014, out the other side.
BP was a good diversion for three years while other aspects of my life repositioned themselves. My work life has gotten a lot more exciting - people actually value my work, and I feel unbelievably more upwardly mobile than I ever did in Savannah. I've been asked to review an NSF grant, asked to join an advisory council for someone else's grant, been written in by name to three other grants, and get asked to do work for pay instead of for free. I have a standing offer of a job in Texas if things go to shit in Mobile.
My social life has also gotten a lot better. In addition to the weekly Wednesday roleplaying, we also get together fairly regularly for board games, trying out of restaurants, and the occasional movie. I found a better yoga studio and am seriously considering becoming an ashtanga instructor at some point in my life (though this is more of a "someday" thing than anything I'm actively working toward).
And now that I no longer play BP and have back all the time I used to sink into the game, writing has come back to me. I spent July's Camp Nanowrimo mapping out the second drafts of the entire Fortress Launne series, and those three years I took off turned out to be exactly what I needed to get myself some distance from the whole project. I'm excited about writing again in a way I haven't really been since ... maybe 2005.
In short, there's no longer a hole. My life is filled with meaning and fiction is back in it. Life is pretty good.
At some point just before I got a real job, my mother said something that creeped me out. I don't remember what specifically it was anymore, but the basic gist that came across was that she thought she owned any successes I will have with the fiction writing. When I'm published and rich and famous, she will be proud of me because I did it due to everything she did to contribute to it.
Something like that. Except, she has nothing to do with any of my fiction writing. I was writing fiction while living in her house as a side effect, not because I was living in her house. I'd been writing fiction since 2004 with no contributing support from her whatsoever. And the thought that, if I succeeded, she was going to swoop in and claim that it was all her doing and not all mine, creeped me out to the point where I couldn't write anymore while living there. I managed to do one more writing session shortly after that conversation, and then I just stopped. Even after I moved, I just couldn't get past that sense that I was really doing her bidding whenever I worked on fiction.
So I needed to do something completely different for a while.
When I first moved to Mobile, my life was like an empty slate. I had a good job for a good boss at a good workplace, and I had picked up a bunch of hobbies (an offline roleplay group, yoga, the sea turtles, etc). But there was a hole. I was searching for something to do that had meaning. The community I found in Battle Pirates was what filled that hole - it gave me something to care about, it gave me a whole bunch of people to care about me, and we were all great together. Someone (namelessfiend) said, about 11 months in, that I loved 117 so much that I would marry it if I could. I couldn't disagree. So I let myself get completely sucked in, completely immersed, and stopped thinking about much else for a very long time.
Nanowrimo 2011 and 2012 were both zero words, but by Nanowrimo 2013, after not talking to my mother much at all for two years, I had mostly gotten over it. I started thinking seriously about fiction again. By then things in BP Land were steadily getting more sour, and I really needed to get out. It still took me another six months and a minor Real Life shakeup, but here I am at the end of August in 2014, out the other side.
BP was a good diversion for three years while other aspects of my life repositioned themselves. My work life has gotten a lot more exciting - people actually value my work, and I feel unbelievably more upwardly mobile than I ever did in Savannah. I've been asked to review an NSF grant, asked to join an advisory council for someone else's grant, been written in by name to three other grants, and get asked to do work for pay instead of for free. I have a standing offer of a job in Texas if things go to shit in Mobile.
My social life has also gotten a lot better. In addition to the weekly Wednesday roleplaying, we also get together fairly regularly for board games, trying out of restaurants, and the occasional movie. I found a better yoga studio and am seriously considering becoming an ashtanga instructor at some point in my life (though this is more of a "someday" thing than anything I'm actively working toward).
And now that I no longer play BP and have back all the time I used to sink into the game, writing has come back to me. I spent July's Camp Nanowrimo mapping out the second drafts of the entire Fortress Launne series, and those three years I took off turned out to be exactly what I needed to get myself some distance from the whole project. I'm excited about writing again in a way I haven't really been since ... maybe 2005.
In short, there's no longer a hole. My life is filled with meaning and fiction is back in it. Life is pretty good.