Christmas Traditions, Ups and Downs, and Rock Poetry · 12:03am Dec 3rd, 2022
As we approach the longest night of the... 2,022nd year or whatever, I have to admit I'm actually looking forward to Christmas this year.
Yes yes, Christmas shopping's hellish, carols drive me crazy, etc., but I find the material schlock's the least interesting part anyway. Christmas for me is a peaceful family reunion and a feast, and that's the best part.
Blog Number 210: "A Bonny Time O' Year!" Edition
I was mainly remembering prior years, because the funny thing is how obvious the joy of the day is when it's simply a roast dinner and a chat around the table. Yet for weeks prior, my main thought was usually along the lines of what the heck I should buy this year for everyone.
Only this year, I managed to get the shopping done so early that I had a vaguely whiplash moment in which to realize the following: "Oh. OK. Actually, this isn't as bad as my cynical workplace jokes make it out to be. In fact, Christmas Day might be quite nice, now that weeks-long trial is done and dusted in less than half o' one week. Sweet!"
Actually, I'm feeling nostalgic overall, all of a sudden. Because looking back at Christmases with plates full of vegetables and a bit of friendly banter after pudding, I'm partly shocked at how chaotic and haphazard my life in general has been. Especially when compared with what I've realized is a reliably comfortable bright spot every year.
It's weird to think this may well shape up to be one of my better Decembers within the last few years, but there you are. I've got nearly all of my Christmas shopping out of the way, and now that the most annoying part is pretty much done and dusted, all I have to do is kick back and wait.
And while I do that, I feel like taking a snapshot. So let's look back at the last few years to get an idea of what kind of mentality I had each time I faced the final celebration of the final month.
How many varieties of madness? Let me count the ways...
2017:
An important year for me. I'd started making a comeback in 2016, but 2017 was when it hit its stride and became an extremely encouraging proliferation of productivity.
It wasn't all smooth sailing, though, as the middle of the year was pretty much a deadzone, but December redeemed it with a trifecta of fics that remains the last time I remember participating in the Jinglemas Collaboration. So a good sign!
2018:
Started off strong, then made several bad moves, fell prey to a competitive context, had a mental breakdown, quit, panicked, then last-minute scraped my debut pony novel. Not an ideal way to end a year, and I felt pretty stressed and sour throughout December.
2019:
Struggled a lot this year and went on hiatus for a while, THANK YOU 2018. I managed to write here and there, but I think I was floundering, to be honest. Essentially, I spent the whole year skulking off to lick my wounds.
December was pretty unremarkable, I think. About the most notable achievement was that I finally got around to watching... bits of Season Eight, the last time I made a concerted effort to keep up with the main show.
2020:
Weirdly found a second wind this year - despite COVID and various controversies - to the point that I wrote 111,581 words in November (my best month ever!). Released three fics in a row. They all managed to hog the Feature Box simultaneously. My reaction: "Am I going to get into trouble for this?"
Leaving the old year and going into the new year with more confidence and an actual commitment to plans? Yes! That all helped too.
2021:
Distracted myself for a long while, then managed to break the resultant (accidental) long hiatus with a burst of fics, which promptly crashed and left me sunk again after What Happened In October.
Despite my sudden interest in writing a major Hearth's Warming story, I pretty much tanked here. The tenth anniversary of my introduction to the fandom resulted in a bout of unhappy "What in blazes am I doing?" philosophical soul-searching that carried over to the next year.
Basically, not a good December, as I was still dealing with the fallout and felt it best to just dump social media for as long as possible. What a comedown.
2022:
Spent most of it rebuilding and laying down new foundations. Not much came out in the way of writing, but surprisingly - in hindsight - I find myself pleased with the more abstract work I accomplished sorting out my headspace. Years of apparently disparate work started coming together here.
I'm hoping that's a happy harbinger...
"I'm... happy?"
"Merry, Spike! Merry!"
The gist is that I've had my ups and downs - more downs than I would have liked - but 2022 felt radically different in a good way. For once, I'm not beating myself up over words not written, despite how this year has really been one of my least productive by that metric. I find myself caring more about what I'm going to write, what quality I'm aspiring to, what my overall vision is.
These blogs have helped too. It's been more exploratory these last few years, and as much as I think I need to cut back on some of them (the Ep-By-Step ones are starting to feel daunting, and can take most of a day to compose, so I might cut down on that), I feel more and more like I'm making a contribution rather than just blabbering on about whatever pops into my head. It's much more fun to write about black holes, Simpsons crossovers, Arimaspians, and Gravity Falls theories than to moan again about how my writing's going.
So yeah, I'm feeling confident at the mo. Ready to keep a good thing going, and looking forward to a good month. Wish me luck! 🤞
Also, I wrote rock poetry.
There once was a rock called Boulder
Who married a crystal egg holder;
Said his kid: "Why climb up
And then sit in her cup?"
Said Boulder: "I'll explain when you're older."
"Ba dum. Tish."
That's all for now! Impossible Numbers, out.
Apparently it’s possible for a ghost to burn with envy so much it removes his transparency, at least briefly. Who knew?
If you couldn’t tell, I am hilariously bad at buying gifts for others, or getting shopping done early at all. I just don’t read people, ponies ghosts, etc. well when it comes to that (though organised Secret Santa’s are fine). I guess I should thank this blog for serving as a motivator for me to maybe start doing something about it soon…? Up to you whether that’s a compliment or not.
Anyway, as to the bulk of this post: knowing how tough you often have been on keeping your writing up over the years, this wasn’t surprising, but even within that, seeing years with 10+ fics still qualify as “notably light” is telling. And I knew in advance last October would be a very sore spot.
That said, the brighter mood of the last few months wasn’t a surprise, there’s been more energy in them. A bit over about our past the effort at times (dude, your Ep-By-Step ones taking the bulk of a day, that’s my FiM Production Changes dives all over again. Take it from a friend, stop before it feels like a painful obligation), but fun.
So, to summarise, great you’re looking forward to Christmas! Will try to do the same here. And keep up the blogs, they’re evidently good for your mental health!
5701341
My gift-buying strategy the last few years has been incredibly tactical. I simply go up to people and say, "OK, sod it: What do you want for Christmas? Tell me, tell me, tell me."
It's called "having high standards". I don't recommend 'em; they'll tear through your mental health like Rudolph through a carrot cake.
These days, I'm not too bothered by the more graceful slowdown, but back then I had it in my head that I should constantly one-up myself, gracefulness be damned. Even when you know perfectionism's a devil, it's still a sorely tempting one.
Duly noted. The irony is that the writing itself isn't all that bad; most of the lost time comes about because it takes me ages to track down the pictures. I'm not joking when I say half of a day can be spent fussing over image hyperlinks and swearing because the preview keeps showing error messages.
🤝 👍👌 And other hand gestures of approval!
5701342
Ahhh, I see. You're directly linking to the images' original source, aren't you? In this case the MLP wikia. And when they break for whatever reason, you need to figure out and fix the problem or find an alternative, right? Say no more. I got you. I had this same problem with the mega-reviews, but it's actually a really easy fix.
Just do a quick bout of image searching first to find what you think you need. Save them when you find them. If they're in a fucking weird format for whatever reason, then screenshot that shit. Then you open a Google Doc (as in a word document) and just drag and drop them in one by one. Once the doc finishes saving, select all, copy, and then just paste straight into FimFiction. Images are automatically embedded with the correct tags either at their original size or scaled down to FimFiction standard, using a Google docs URL for the images (meaning, bonus, old images on your blogs will now never break years later due to factors outside your control). Then you can just simply move them into their proper places in the blog.
This isn't totally foolproof. Unnecessarily large file sizes will still break things. But generally speaking, this saves a lot of time and stress.
5702308
That is brilliant. I'll give it a try next blog post: I'm hoping to get the next in my Gravity Falls series ready soon.
5702354
Hope it helps!