cosmic_llin

Good Things I Did in 2013:

* Spent lots of quality time with good friends
* Lots of writing
* Lots of reading
* Sold a short story, saw another one in print after selling it in late 2012
* Saw Bonnie Langford perform again
* Visited Rome for the first time
* Went to Vidukon, one of my favourite cons ever
* Attended not one but two folk festivals
* Went to Nine Worlds, one of my other favourite cons ever
* GOT MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Seriously you guys it was wicked awesome)
* Pitched to two different literary agents
* Visited the delightful city of Bristol for the first time
* Saw Vienna Teng live
* Went to Bletchley Park
* Sang in my third big concert with my choir

Good Things I Plan/Hope to Do in 2014:

* Spend lots of quality time with good friends, both the ones happily nearby and the ones harder to reach
* Lots of writing
* Lots of reading
* Get a novel published - I've hoped for this at the beginning of every year since I can remember, and I haven't achieved it yet but every year it doesn't happen teaches me more about how I might eventually get there
* Get a new job - my job was ideal until it wasn't. Regardless of how convenient it is in some ways, I need something more interesting and challenging
* Visit Iceland and Japan - the first is coming up in a couple of weeks, the second's in April! We are very spoiled this year
* Attend Vidukon and Nine Worlds, and probably at least one folk festival
* See more live music - Taylor Swift and Dar Williams are already locked in, I'm looking out for more, and I'm also hoping to catch up on some musical theatre soon
* Generally have epic adventures

raven said: If you don't mind talking about it, how's married life?

I don't mind talking about it! (And actually, yesterday was our three-month-iversary, so it seems like a nice time to talk about it.) So far it's, in some ways, exactly what I expected - that is, just the same as it was before. We were already living together and we already knew we wanted to spend our lives together, so getting married was more an affirmation of where we already were than a step into something new.

And yet, it is a tiny bit different. Just in small ways. Like, I like the word 'wife' better than any of the other words we've used to describe our relationship. I do like 'partner' for its simplicity but it's just ambiguous enough to lead to awkward misinterpretations, and you'd think 'girlfriend' would be fairly obvious but the amount of times I've talked about 'my girlfriend' and had people go 'oh, so what does your... friend do?' etc. And 'fiancée' always led to: 'what's his name?' 'her name is Cara...' and then the OTT gushing about how wonderful that is and isn't it nice that you can do that now, which I don't mind because it's well-intentioned but it does get a bit embarrassing. As a word, 'wife' is unambiguous and implies permanence, both of which, for our relationship, I like. And it's just kind of fun to say.

Changing my name has been an interesting experience too. I took Cara's surname for a variety of reasons, and although it's weird to get used to, I'm quite enjoying it. I'm less enjoying the hassle changing it caused with my work email address/log-ins being messed up, and I'm quite put out by the people noticing the change and asking "oh, did you marry someone Welsh?" when I was Welsh all along and Cara, in spite of having a very Welsh-sounding surname, is barely even a tiny bit Welsh. But I like the balance it gives my name - my first name is Welsh to the point of being unpronounceable for some people, and I mostly use my middle name for simplicity, but having a more Welsh last name makes me feel better about that in a weird way. (I'm keeping my original full name for writing, though.)

In terms of how day-to-day married life has been, like I said, pretty much the same as it was before. Although with added work stress for both of us for various reasons, but minus wedding planning and nerves. I miss the wedding planning a little bit, but mostly I'm relieved that it's done. I miss the actual wedding more - it was such a wonderful day full of people we love and who love us, and it felt really special. Some people who follow me on here know that I haven't had the best track record with family members accepting my relationship/identity, and although I don't need anyone's approval to be with Cara, it felt wonderful to know how much support and love surrounds us. The thing that's made married life noticeably different so far is I'm still feeling the ripples from that day, remembering how happy it was and how kind everyone was to us.

And of course Cara herself is as perfect as ever, and a constant delight, and I'm so excited to see where we go next.

I do feel pretty bad for mostly abandoning LJ/DW right when I said I was going to get back into it, but I think I underestimated how much of a time-suck planning a wedding - even a relatively low-key one - is. Plus it's been a pretty busy year generally, but the wedding is the cut-off point after which we don't really have anything planned, and as excited as I am about the wedding, I'm also excited to relax afterwards!

One thing I'm excited about is Nine Worlds this weekend, it's going to be pretty amazing. So torn over exactly what to attend, though!

I've been vaguely keeping up with my circle/friends page, but I'm sure there's stuff I've missed. So everyone - tell me what's the most awesome thing that happened to you recently? (If nothing did, feel free to make something up!)

 Aaargh, so, our wedding reception venue is double-booked, and the alternative they offered us is... not that nice.

We are staying calm and exploring avenues but aargh. I was so pleased to have that part done and dusted.

On the plus side I've been getting a fair bit of writing done this last week or so, which is nice. And it's only a few weeks until the long Easter weekend. And then it's only a couple of weeks until we go to Rome! I would ask for suggestions of what to see, but carawj and the Classicists seem to have it pretty much sewn up. (Eeee old stuff!)

Ahahahaha, yeah, I dropped the ball on this. And on blogging generally. WEDDING. (I will blame the wedding for everything I don't get around to doing until September. But we have a venue now!!)

So, here are the ones I was in the middle of:

Day 11  - Share a favourite piece of original canon and explain why you love it so much.

I know I go on about this, but I love this scene where Deanna beats Data at chess (although the comments on that video are infuriating...). This is one of my favourite kinds of scenes - it's clearly just a joke for the teaser, and it never comes up again, but it speaks volumes. Deanna can beat Data at chess. This suggests vast intelligence and ingenuity than normally we don't see Deanna getting to have. I know the scene is making a point about how sometimes intuition can count for more than knowledge, but even so, Data is, y'know, Data. It would be surprising for anyone on the ship to beat him at a game like chess. (Poker is different because it involves chance.)

I'd rather Deanna and characters like her were more often and more consciously given this sort of character development, but in the absence of that, I really enjoy these kinds of scenes that say a lot without meaning to. If they're not going to give me the scenes I want, then I'm going to work with what they do give me to make up what's missing. And from this scene I deduce that Deanna is a super-genius but just acts low-key about it. (Ask me sometime about my myriad ideas about Betazoid culture based on a few throwaway lines...)


Day 13 - Ask for recs.

Oooh, what to ask for? Well, I'm always on the lookout for more stories about the women of Star Trek. Also at the moment I'm really interested in stories about unconventional relationships - ones for which there's no cultural script to fall back on when deciding what to do and how to behave. So, relationships between people of different species, and how they work. Or between different categories of life forms entirely, like stories about relationships/sex between people and machines, be they androids, cyborgs or spacegoing vessels!


Day 15 - Share a favourite memory about fandom.

It's hard to choose - I've been in fandom for around ten years now and it's been a big part of my life. But I still have a lot of really good memories about Cosmic Cheerleaders, the Yahoo group about women in SF&F that I co-ran with my best friend from school. We had a lot of really great conversations, I connected with people and shared my opinions and feelings on media in a way that I hadn't really been able to before, and some of the people I met there are still my very good friends today. I've since found a lot of fandom spaces where I've felt at home and listened to, but that was the first real fandom community I was in and I still miss it.

It's been an interesting year.

I don't think I did one of these posts last year, it seems - and I feel like that was partly because I was so glad to see the back of 2011. I remember seeing the new year in and thinking, please, let this one be better.

And you know, it really was. I feel like 2012 was the first time since graduation that I could just concentrate on living my life, without having family stuff to worry about and obsess over. Not that I wasn't still sad sometimes, but it got a lot easier to concentrate on other things.

Not to mention the fact that it's when I redrafted my entire novel, mostly in my lunch hours, and started sending it out to agents. (Right now I'm reworking the beginning ready to start submitting again in the next couple of weeks.) And although I finished the first draft in 2011, 2012 was the year I really got to grips with what I wanted it to be, and what I want to achieve with it.

In 2012 I: saw Sharon Gless and Bonnie Langford live at the theatre (not in the same production!); went to Paris for the first time; baked more things in one go than ever in my life before; had an MRI; went to Croatia; visited the Harry Potter Studio Tour; saw some amazing people live at the Diamond Jubilee concert; went to Folk by the Oak; went to the Edinburgh fringe; moved house; saw lots of the Paralympics; read 86 books; and hung out a lot with some terrific people, and not enough with some others.

Also, obviously, 2012 was the year I got engaged! So that's pretty exciting. :D And I'm looking forward to 2013 being the year I get married!

Also for 2013 I'd like to sell more writing than I sold in 2012 (1 short story), and have a bit more money - that was the one thing that made 2012 not so great.

Let's see what happens.

So, I've finished work now until 2013! Not going back until January 7th! I'm so thrilled to have a nice long stretch of nothing particular to do. I plan to focus on getting lots of books read, doing some writing, and some craft stuff (with my brand-new sewing machine, aaaah! Early Christmas presents are the awesomest!)

My Christmas shopping is pretty much done. I've been efficient this year - because of the nonsense with my pay date changing, I only really had one payday to work with, so I made sure I did it all as soon as I got paid... 

This is the first Christmas I won't be seeing both of my siblings on the day itself - my sister is spending it with her fiance's family. Feels a little weird but it'll be nice to hang out with my dad and my brother, and I think we might make Christmas dinner anyway, especially since when you're vegetarian it's much less stressful because no turkey etc to worry about. Then my sister comes back on Boxing Day.

Also my Yuletide is finished and posted, although I'm waiting on a second beta from a friend familiar with the fandom! And I have one gift story in the main collection and one in Madness waiting for me! *anticipates*

Since I've met quite a few new people on the friending post *waves* I thought I'd do a little introduction with a bit more about me! So, here goes:

About my journal:

I've been on LJ for the last ten years or so but at the moment I'm crossposting from DW and gradually moving over here. Lately I've been a little quiet but I'm hoping to change that. I post a mixture of fandom stuff and real life stuff. I used to tag properly on LJ, and I'm going to start doing it here too!

About me in fandom:

I was raised on a steady diet of Star Trek and it's been one of my primary fandoms for almost all of my life. For a while I cheated on it with Harry Potter fandom (or, more accurately, McGonagall and teacher femslash fandom...) and Doctor Who. Recent fannish discoveries include the Vorkosigan Saga, Warehouse 13 and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

In terms of fic etc, I write and read mostly femslash and fem-gen. I multiship and I like some poly relationships as well as a bit of het and m/m now and then. I also vid, and I'm interested to listen to more podfic. Most of my fanworks are HERE.

About my real life:

I live with and am engaged to carawj and I'll probably post about wedding stuff a bit in the next year or so. Most of my RL friends are also pretty fannish (and awesome) so I'll post about them now and then.

I am a sub-editor in media and I find it pretty dull so occasionally I'll rant about my job. My long-term plan is to make a living out of writing, so sometimes I'll talk about that too. Also I talk occasionally about health and family issues.

So, that's me! Hi!

 Oooh, also, I totally forgot, Cara and I went to Folk by the Oak the other weekend - her birthday present to me! It was such good fun, it's only a tiny one-day festival but there was lots going on, plus it was a lovely, sunny day. Music-wise, Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo really grabbed me, as did Cara Dillon, and the Ukuleke Orchestra were lots of fun too. I have to say, I wasn't that impressed by Show of Hands - the music was good but they opened with three unbelievably cynical and miserable songs and I lost patience with it a bit.

On the whole the music was great, but possibly the nicest thing about the day was that we didn't have to do anything apart from turn up and lie around in a field listening to music, reading, snoozing and occasionally getting up for chips and ice cream. We spend so many weekends rushing around doing All The Things, it was really good to have some real down time. (Plus the last couple of years we've been to Cambridge Folk Fest, and although it's always good we spend more time dashing between stages and trying to figure out where we can sit, whereas FbtO was much easier in that respect because it's that much smaller.) 

So, I went to the neurologist the other day! She was really nice. She thought the GP's diagnosis of TN was a bit premature, or at least, I don't have the classic set of symptoms even if I have something roughly similar. But we agreed that since my meds are working fine and my MRI looked good there's no point worrying too much about exactly what it is. We may end up calling it atypical TN for lack of a better phrase.

There are ways to narrow down exactly what it is a bit better, but they mostly involve trying me on different meds and seeing how effective they are. Considering that what I'm on now is really safe and has only mild side-effects, I don't really want to switch to something else that might be harder to deal with unless it becomes necessary.

The tricky part with not knowing exactly what it is, is that there's not really any way of guessing how long it will last. TN generally worsens over time and often requires surgery eventually. But some other types of headache/nerve disorders just go away by themselves. So I've gone from assuming I have a lifelong health problem to... not really having a clue whether I do or not. Which is a bit frustrating.

One good thing is that I'm allowed to vary my dose as I see fit, within reason. So I'm going to halve it starting from today and see if that helps me to keep awake a bit more.

In non-face-based news:

* Finally got my new laptop! I have named her Toph. She is badass. 
* Working from home! It is great! I have like three extra hours in a day!
* We are moving house yet again.
* The Vorkosigan Saga has eaten my brain in the best possible way.
* Cara and I are going to Folk by the Oak this weekend!