Happy 2019 and a short, self-center retrospective · 7:29pm Jan 2nd, 2019

I’m sitting in an automatic laundry on the morning of the second of January in the city where I started college, where I met my wife, and where I lived many years before leaving Italy. A mosquito just landed on my hand and I killed it before the little bastard could get fat on my blood.

This is kind of a throwback, with a couple of fundamental differences here and there. It’s also a good, if belated, conclusion of 2018. Depending on how long the washing machine takes, it’s possible I will finish this on the fourth of January.

So, before I get on to a self-centered look back and it gets ridiculously late, let me wish you all Happy New Year!

Let’s look back at my writing. Last year I published about 76k Words. It is more than all my years before put together, and it also means I broke the 100k barrier. While not good enough (I fell short of my personal objective by about 25k words) it’s still a nice lower limit for 2019.

Most of those words come from my long story, which is going decently and seems to entertain my readers. It’s also teaching me a lot through the medium of tough love.

Pretty good for something I dreaded to start.

I admit I was kind of fearful of starting something long-term and then somehow running out of steam somewhere 40k words in breaking the implicit promise to my readers that I was going somewhere with it. I already have something like 80k-100k words (not necessarily good ones, mind you) rotting in my folders in the form of two incomplete stories.

Well, it seemed I worried about the wrong thing. A decent outline, a beginning, an end, and self-imposed deadlines with external validation was what I needed to keep writing. Now, we are talking about a story format that allows this kind of schedule—a murder mystery couldn‘t be written that way— but it still gave me the impulse to plan the next multi-chapter ideas. A Bug on a Stick is more than half over, and the path to the end is quite clear. New ideas are thrown in the barrels to ferment (some have been there for over six months at this point) and will probably see the light in 2019.

On the technical side, my idea to write on the train while commuting to work was a sound one that allowed me to be productive consistently every work-day and proceed steadily if a tad slowly on the thing I was working on. For about six months.

In my infinite wisdom, I kind of forgot (repeatedly) about all the other students taking the train when there are lectures. They fill up the wagons and keep me from either find a sitting place or enough peace to hammer out words. The transit is short, so it’s not that it’s uncomfortable. It just kills my output.

Now, as students won’t stop taking the train, it means I must find some other way to get consistent writing times. I may try again to reserve half an hour a day during the night, but experience taught me that I tend to be a bit winded by then, and not really a paragon of performance. So, no solution in sight yet, but maybe there are a couple of things I could try.

As for the rest of my production, I wrote a couple of short stories, and I think I got quite comfortable with the format. I manage to finish them by the deadline when writing for collaborations or competitions, and I’m a bit proud of being able to fit a complete arc into them. I think I’ll try to focus on longer formats to see if I get any better there. I have so many ideas, and I would love to deliver at least some of them before the next big fandom-shift.

Washing cycle just terminated. It was spot on. Now let’s start the dryer and then move on to other topics centered mostly around me.

On a purely personal level the last year has been tiring, but, on the bottom line, good.

Work was the usual bipolar ride of boring-paint-by-the-numbers and panic-inducing-challenging. I got some juicy slices of humble-pie here and there, validation on other stuff, and overall I reinforced the impression I don’t know shit, but am slightly better at handling not knowing shit than a lot of others. Which is why I still got the same customers after years working with them.

For the first time in my life, while I’m not rich by any measure of the word, I got disposable income. Truly disposable. Not if-I-count-money-well-and-don’t-buy-coffee-for-a-month-I-can-get-this-thing disposable but I-guess-I-can-get-this-thing-without-changing-habits disposable. It’s weird. It’s worrying too. I often have to check twice that my numbers are right because I keep fearing I forgot something important that would come later to bite me in the ass. But it seems I finally got a grip on this responsible adult thing. That was good.

College is getting harder. I go to lectures while doing my day job, and am close to finally getting my degree. I’m also at the point where I’m having a hard time following some lectures and studying. Considering I already completed most of the challenging courses, I fear that these could be the early symptoms of a burn out on that front. Let’s hope that I can find a way around the issue and finish this last sprint.

I have the feeling that my issues here are all kind of first-world problems.

This was also the year where I finally went to a pony-related con, and I had a blast. I met wonderful people, had fun, got to feel inadequate in all the good ways, which is when you surround yourself with brilliant people and then want to be better because right there are wonderful examples of what one can be.

I also became aware of how minimal my social interaction is in the fandom. I talk little, I don’t comment often, and even on Discord I tend to be mostly silent. In part this is because I rarely like to repeat things others already said even if there is some minimal difference here and there. The rest is that I’m awful at multitasking, and can easily get lost between threads and then re-entering some discourse feels a bit pointless.

This has to change. It’s something I will try to change. Not the repeating things to the point of uselessness. That I like about me. But I think I should participate more, talk more, be a part of the community. After all, I met wonderful people already, I’m sure there is a lot more where those came from.

I came to visit my family in Italy for the first time in years (disposable income thing from before). I also celebrated New Year with old friends. It was wonderful and strange at the same time. Wonderful how even after seven years away they were still friends, we still had fun together, and how the things that bound us are still there and strong. Strange how seven years can change things. How they change the city, how life chaffs on people. It changed my perspective about myself. How it changes me is still a thing I have to process.

I also can’t look at my little brother and see an adult instead of a teenager. It‘s uncanny valley stuff.

The dryer finished its cycle. Time to wrap up this slightly pointless rant.

I’m sitting in an automatic laundry in the city where much of my life has been shaped. I come from a handful of days of fun and drinking with friends, and I’m happily exhausted. Just like all those years ago. And yet I’m a different person, reaching out to other, different people. It feels like being on the cusp of some change, more or less like 2018.

For many, many people this was a shit-show of a year. It started with punches in the kidneys and ended with rabid badgers on speed. I’m privileged. I know that.

So, to everybody out there, let me end this like Warren Ellis ends his newsletter. It’s a good thing to do, we all should probably remind each other more of this.

You are still alive and kicking, the bastards haven’t gotten you yet. Take time, breath in, do something nice for yourself. You are still there, and the world can’t break you.

Have a good year, all of you.

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