Four years! Time sure does fly by quickly · 2:58am Sep 20th, 2024
So quickly that I’m late to posting this, since the fourth ponyversary of me joining this site was actually three days ago. And I’m still not sure what the point of this post is. All I know is that it starts with telling you that it was almost a goodbye. (To clarify: from the site and community, not my life!)
It was tempting! The temptation was very strong to just finish paying out the winners of the A Thousand Words Contest III and then disappear into the mist (to my increasingly busy non-fandom life!). Only my burning need for the MxM Shipping Contest IV to happen and not wanting to let down my co-judges got me to make the post and commit to sticking around for that at least. But I’ve been thinking a lot about just why it felt so tempting.
On the level of personal connections, I have a lot of regrets. There are a few friendships that I’ve destroyed with things I regret doing, and I haven’t been good at making and maintaining them in general. I just haven’t been acting with the qualities that make a good friend or a person that’s fun to be around, at least in my own head.
On the level of writing, things just haven’t been as satisfying as they could be? I mean, I’m really glad and honored that Believer made it onto the results post for the contest it was in, but it was the story that I wrote because the longer story that I had really wanted to write didn’t come together in time. I just haven’t been writing very much at all, and what I have managed to write has rarely been the full expression of what I had hoped for.
And then there are my contests! Which have at least been chugging along, though I can’t say the same for the once-again-dormant Comment Club or my now-very-slow effort to slog through and comment on every fic on my RiL. But still, the contests keep happening!
And I can’t help but feel that what I did was give up on the first two aspects of being here. I’m not letting myself create and feel personal connections, and I’m not getting together the artistic drive to create and improve my craft, but at least I can put the work in to organize and read and comment and find contentment in what that brings to others.
I didn’t think that I could positively impact someone through being a great friend or writing something moving and profound, so I’d settled for being a little droplet in a lot of different cups, and nothing more.
It’s no wonder that didn’t feel good! And these are supposed to be the positive things I get from being here! I haven’t even talked about the negatives, and would rather not do so here.
So I guess this post is trying to put down for myself how I want to approach being here going forward.
I want the things I do here to not feel like a task or duty to be fulfilled, but rather things I do because I enjoy them for their own sake.
I want to focus on the positives and the good that might happen and not the negatives and the bad that might never happen.
I want to appreciate the connections and friends that I do have more.
I want to be more humble, kind, and curious.
I want to get excited about reading again.
I want to talk to people more about their writing and about themselves.
I want to write a lot more, and I want to have fun doing it.
I want to collaborate more. Prereading, editing, brainstorming, co-writing.
I hope I do all these things, and feel satisfied by them. But if there ever comes a day where it does feel right to disappear, I hope I do have what it takes to say a proper goodbye, and thank you all for what you’ve meant to me.
I’ve always been terrible about keeping up a regular blog! But maybe going forward, I should try to make it a thing to take the time to reflect openly about where I am in these ponyversary posts. And I hope that what I have to say on the fifth one will be just how fun it has been being with you all during this year to come.
Happy four year anniversary!
Happy fourth ponyversary! The site’s been much more alive with your presence, and here’s to many more days and weeks and months and years to come!
Happy fourthiversary, Bicyclette! You are an important part of the horsewords ecosystem, and I wish you all the best and hope you find the energy and inspiration to write more, read more, and enjoy the ponies more!
Happy four year anniversary Bike!
If we've not had as much contact as we might, it's because he four years you've been here overlap almost exactly with the most difficult four years of my life since high school. I think you've been very encouraging for me, and great for the site.
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Happy Anniversary!
And genuinely, glad you're sticking around still, I've always enjoyed seeing you around, whether it's commenting or writing. I hope things smooth out for you soon. n_n
Congratulations on your anniversary! May you be around here for many more!
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thank you!
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thank you! i hope so, too, since that will mean it will continue to be worth it
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thank you so much! i look forward to all of those things
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it's always great to hear from you CH, and i hope that the difficult times pass soon. and if i have been encouraging for you, that is one of the things that makes being here worth it
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so true
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aww, thank you so much!
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thanks, Nailah!
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thank you!
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I really cannot stress how much help you've been gaying up the place.
I feel you there. I had two stories I thought would’ve been great for the 1000 Words—only needed to add 200 words to one and trim 50 from the other—, but it just didn’t happen. Mostly because they were not written with genre in mind. One was too atmospheric to be horror and the other wasn’t funny enough to be humor yet too absurdist to be slice-of-life.
I’d like to try my hoof at this year’s MxM, but it’s increasingly doubtful I’ll have much writing time between now and November.
Speaking of November, while you may be too busy reading the MxM entries to participate in this, I’m tempted to try the NaNoWriMo pace, but focused on finishing my voluminous slush pile my time with Q&S has generated. Perhaps I instead be traditional and dive headfirst into my forever-unwritten megaproject and make a glorious mess, but that’d also risk me discovering story-collapsing plot holes after 70k words due to excessive time travel if I don’t carefully model it first.
I viscerally feel this one. I can only speak for myself, but I finally stopped feeling like this once I stopped chasing social connections on social media and finally gave in to create a dedicated Discord account for my Publiq persona. Even still, I’m probably stretched a hair thin to maintain strong connections.
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Fig. 1: editing buddies
I’m curious: how often do you have feelings that you’re a better editor than writer? Are you looking for a Lennon to your McCartney, or do you wish to cultivate a whole stable of writing friends?
Four.. four years? But I was just commenting on your Ellie fic last year in 2020... oh no....
Stumbled my way in here half a year after your very kind comment on Mr Perfect, and wanted to send some of that positivity back your way.
After catching up on my history, I'll echo what others here have said: you're doing great work here on the site, contests and stories alike, and I hope that you're able to find the joy and excitement in it that you're looking for. Those points at the end resonated.
In that spirit, if I wanted to read some of your fic, do you have any recommendations where I could start?