"To Quote the philosopher Slavoj Zizek," and other terrible ways to start off 2018 · 5:10am Jan 2nd, 2018
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.
Antonio Gramsci
2017 was a lot of things for me.
It was change. My life changed drastically over the course those three hundred and sixty five days. Friends moved and my entire social orbit altered severely. I lost a friend. I gained many more. I was manipulated and lied to. I was told heartbreaking and wonderful truths. I baked in the oppressive Belizean sun and I froze on my porch in a surprisingly cold winter, I stopped drinking almost altogether and gained other habits. Many books were read, many dollars were wasted on as of yet not finished warhammer models. Experience was varied.
I came out as trans, went in public presenting femme, had a lot of heart to hearts about it. I saw Cecil Baldwin performing a Nightvale show live and see Jason Webley play a version of "Last Song" which made me cry in public. I sang the Internationale loudly in the middle of street and pulled angry auto workers off of a street preacher.
I wrote a lot of stories. Like, tons. Well. not tons. Actually I slowed down a lot. 14 stories, if I'm right in my count. Looking back, I like all of them at least a bit, which is very much an improvement on my part to not immediately have a complicated hate/love feeling about my bastard creations.
I fell in love with Scarlet and then Chuck. We talked and laughed and watched anime and Iron Chef together. We looked at each other's writing and played magic the gathering over cockatrice. We talked for hours and saw each other only in passing as we extended our lunch break or bedtime to reach out and clasp hands across a great gulf. I blabbed into discord in a panicked heap, I squinted in the darkness at my phone even when it was all but useless from cracks. I love y'all. Scarlet, you helped me in so many ways and you continue to. I pray only to be worthy of it.
Sad for most of it, but also incredibly happy for stretches. 2015-early 2016 was the worst period of my life, and I can say that in some ways even as the world continued burning all around me, that 2017 made up for much of that grief and suffering. But we must go beyond good and evil for this--beyond a binary of winning and losing. Time takes away all things, even our minds--forgot who said that--and so when it gives I am not surprised to find it take. My life improved but my writing suffered. I coasted on trained reflexes and could not capture but the smallest particles of that fleeting silver-breathed mythlie of beauty that I had all but swam in before. I made a lot of money but lost most of it one way or another, and mostly my situation stayed as it had been.
But it's a new year. And somehow in the cold, mostly empty apartment, high as a kite but not really, still a bit cold but in a manageable sort of way, I almost feel as if there is a bit of life still in me. So, in that vein... Here's a bit of what I'll be doing this year. This is what I intend, what I hope, and what god willing I'll be able to do at least most of this year. Here are my resolutions, such as they are.
1.) Finish Love, the sequel to Ageless.
2.) Write consistently every single day at least 500 words.
3.) Finish assembling and painting every warhammer model I now have before I buy a single new thing for it. Play at least once a month. Mae myself go out.
4.) No more weekday naps. No more depression naps. No. Stoppit.
5.) Revive and continue with my neglected and ignored FOE story at least one more arc.
6.) Play guitar at least once a day every day. Don't lost all of my skills to despair.
7. Make more macaroni and cheese.
8. Take my medicine, do good by my mental health, improve, stop being afraid of other people. Don't focus on if people want to be around me and focus on being someone worth being around.
9.) Finish Esoteric, maybe Lilies of the Field, and continue Mother Nature Suite.
10.) Write that Rarilight Utena crossover. Write that CTS fic finally when I can hammer out something worth doing. Write a fic with Scarlet and Perique. Write more period. Write poems for Perique Blend's poemfic. Bail or finish commissions. Write the sequel to 80 Days I so want to write.
11.) Learn how to use eyeshadow properly because I am Le Bad at it.
12.) Eat a bit less.
13.) Settle on a name for my rifle.
14.) Be gayer.
15.) Finish at least one novella of original writing before Spring is over. Decide what to do with the humanified draft of Absolution. Write out all of The Harrowing and decide if you want a weird post-apocalytpic horror-tinged fetishy kinkfic about servitude and training of a hunter to be your first exposure of the world to Lyra and company and Mall and that whole world.
16.) Play magic with Scarlet more. Bully Chuck into playing games with me. Watch more Iron Chef together. Don't let winter SAD shit keep me from being with people I want to be with and care about.
17.) Finish the Gunslinging Twilight Dark Tower fic IF AND ONLY IF FLOYDIENSLIP FINISHES THE NIGHT IS PASSING.
18.) Smoke less.
19.) Write at least one novel length story on here this year.
20.) Start blogging more and better.
21.) Finally, start the podcast about fics and shit that I've been considering doing for awhile. More on that when its ready.
Hope you all had a good new years. Tell me about it if you want! Tell me a story. Or don't. Or do. Explain to me why you think Sumo Wrestling is gay as hell!
I want to tell you that you will not do this. You won't. You will some days and other days you'll fail and maybe you'll feel bad, but I'm here to tell you that sometime during the year you'll write 5000 words in a blaze of glory across just a day or two, and it will all be okay.
Be kind to yourself.
And naps are good things, at least once in a while.
Also I thoroughly approve of
And also of
I could tell you a story, but I am telling you a story called Dragon's Blood and it is one of the best things in the world that you like and enjoy and care about it. Aidan is very happy. I am very happy. It is good. Thank you.
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I know I won't. But I want to set it for myself as kind of talisman/totem/touchstone. As a thing to travel to as much as to arrive at.
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It is good to have goals!
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You're a goal!
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Well, fuck.
It’s good to hear you sound better. Not perfect. None of us are that. But… better than last year. Getting a little bit better from day to day is all we can reasonably ask for ourselves and our friends.
It made me smile to read that you had found love. And made me want to set ‘finding love’ as a goal for myself. I’ll have to do some deep introspection on that topic.
A suggestion that helped me when it came to setting and keeping goals. Aim to make them five days out of seven. Set them a little higher then you would if you were to commit to making them every day. And since you know you only expect to make them five days out of seven, you don’t have to beat yourself up when you miss a day or two.
I use a simple iPhone app called Momentum to track when I make my daily goals. There are others for iOS and Android. Search for ‘habit trackers’ in your favorite App Store.
May 2018 be better for us all.
I hope you have reasonable success with all your goals in the new year!
And... Night Vale live shows are the best, aren't they?
Re #13, I think you should call it "Thirteen." At face value it's a strange blend of ominous and utterly abstractly mundane, and if anyone asks for the story, "I named it after an item on my to-do list" is an amusingly Twilight Sparkle thing to deliver offhoofedly.
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The gauntlet it is thrown
Have at you
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I’ve also considered naming it The Child. The sixgun is Mother and the Henry Repeater Child. Also thought about naming it Makhno Special
While I can't speak for others, I'll add one victory to your list of 2017: You touched people's hearts and spoke to them in ways so startling, so profound, it helped put to words problems that had been haunting them for years. You didn't offer foolish make-believe solutions, but instead portrayed the reality of one of the hardest parts of life. Yet at the end of the day, you gave hope that there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. (Me with Silhouettes.)
I have this really strong feeling that #'s 13 and 14 really need to be closely affiliated somehow...like a moral imperative, or something.
More Magic: the Gathering with loved ones is always a laudable goal. Here's hoping this is a good year for you.
'Be gayer'.
Heh, that's pretty gay.
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Das gey
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You have done well
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Happy New Years Cynewulf :3
21.) Write another collab with Super Trampoline
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Tankiegeddon the Awakening: how twilight and sunset sexed so hard they rose Lenin from the dead
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Here’s how Bernie can still kill Rosa
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Super Tramp is a Revisionist and The only revolutionary vanguard is Kudzu-Haikuist thought
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There are *so* many inappropriate suggestions I could make here that I can't pick just one.
So, I'm a little late to this, in several ways
And maybe this is presumptuous of me or something, idk
But I figure you might appreciate some nice words on the subject
So: this is okay by me, I used to think you were a cool dude but now I know you're a cool lady, thumbs up all around
