mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2026-06-01 08:50 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2026-06-01 08:50 pm
Entry tags:
Writing Goals/Calendar: June 2026
My break from writing is still going strong, ha.
A week or two ago I had a surge of nostalgia for ye old fandom, back in the Livejournal days, and the fic communities and the culture around it at the time.
Part of that nostalgia is more about the feeling of having missed out on it a bit at the time, like I never really quite "experienced" it to the fullest in the way that a lot of the retrospective nostalgia about that time and space focuses on. I was a little younger than the most active and engaged writers, and I was also being nerfed by my own brain a bit. I was shy and anxious, and while I did a good job of internalizing "lurk moar" as a way to get the feel and etiquette of a community, I had a very hard time moving past that stage into really participating. My unmedicated probable-ADHD meant I never felt like I had time to do everything, so I'd promise to get to it "later," but later just felt increasingly overwhelming as the undone tasks piled up. That was the case for everything, really: reading fic, commenting on things, joining discussions, writing my own works. I always planned to do it later... and then it actually hit a point where it was too late.
To be fair, it's not like the unmedicated probable-ADHD has changed. I still struggle to get everything done that I want to, I still sabotage myself by putting things off and getting overwhelmed at the resulting backlog of stuff that needs doing, but I have at least improved on my follow-through. It may not always be timely, but I almost always do it eventually! I have remained terrible at participating in most forms of social media, which is even more the case now than it was back in those LJ days. Even if I was a bit out of the loop, I knew where the loop was, lol. Now... less so.
And granted, as is often pointed out, plenty of the nostalgia (including that feeling of missing out) isn't so much about what was happening at the time, but who I was at the time. I don't necessarily miss the old-school BNFs, or even being in a more active/current fandom, so much as I miss aspects of who I was as a teen and 20-something. Lots of that time sucked, and I sucked in a lot of ways, but there are also parts I miss, things I wish I'd done differently, things I feel I missed out on.
That long-ass tangent about that sense of nostalgia is mostly to say that it does make me want to want to work on things. I don't have a project that I want to be working on, but I wish I did!
And I am not letting that push me toward trying to force myself to work on anything! At least not yet.
I think that's been the fail point on some of my earlier breaks from writing. The first hint of vague interest coming back, even just "wishing I was interested in something," or the return to liking the idea of writing, would send me trying to leap right back in. That tiny conceptual bit of interest couldn't actually sustain anything, and I'd crash immediately back into the burnout I'd been trying to escape.
This time... I don't feel ready for more, so I'm not trying for more.
I'm hoping I can play persistence hunter this time, instead of pouncing too fast and spooking my prey, lol.
So like I said, I still feel good about the break/hiatus/whatever it is. Everything else feels like it sort of sucks, but at least I'm not also stressing about this!
Some skippable rambling about fandom. tl;dr nostalgia for ye olde LJ:
A week or two ago I had a surge of nostalgia for ye old fandom, back in the Livejournal days, and the fic communities and the culture around it at the time.
Part of that nostalgia is more about the feeling of having missed out on it a bit at the time, like I never really quite "experienced" it to the fullest in the way that a lot of the retrospective nostalgia about that time and space focuses on. I was a little younger than the most active and engaged writers, and I was also being nerfed by my own brain a bit. I was shy and anxious, and while I did a good job of internalizing "lurk moar" as a way to get the feel and etiquette of a community, I had a very hard time moving past that stage into really participating. My unmedicated probable-ADHD meant I never felt like I had time to do everything, so I'd promise to get to it "later," but later just felt increasingly overwhelming as the undone tasks piled up. That was the case for everything, really: reading fic, commenting on things, joining discussions, writing my own works. I always planned to do it later... and then it actually hit a point where it was too late.
To be fair, it's not like the unmedicated probable-ADHD has changed. I still struggle to get everything done that I want to, I still sabotage myself by putting things off and getting overwhelmed at the resulting backlog of stuff that needs doing, but I have at least improved on my follow-through. It may not always be timely, but I almost always do it eventually! I have remained terrible at participating in most forms of social media, which is even more the case now than it was back in those LJ days. Even if I was a bit out of the loop, I knew where the loop was, lol. Now... less so.
And granted, as is often pointed out, plenty of the nostalgia (including that feeling of missing out) isn't so much about what was happening at the time, but who I was at the time. I don't necessarily miss the old-school BNFs, or even being in a more active/current fandom, so much as I miss aspects of who I was as a teen and 20-something. Lots of that time sucked, and I sucked in a lot of ways, but there are also parts I miss, things I wish I'd done differently, things I feel I missed out on.
That long-ass tangent about that sense of nostalgia is mostly to say that it does make me want to want to work on things. I don't have a project that I want to be working on, but I wish I did!
And I am not letting that push me toward trying to force myself to work on anything! At least not yet.
I think that's been the fail point on some of my earlier breaks from writing. The first hint of vague interest coming back, even just "wishing I was interested in something," or the return to liking the idea of writing, would send me trying to leap right back in. That tiny conceptual bit of interest couldn't actually sustain anything, and I'd crash immediately back into the burnout I'd been trying to escape.
This time... I don't feel ready for more, so I'm not trying for more.
I'm hoping I can play persistence hunter this time, instead of pouncing too fast and spooking my prey, lol.
So like I said, I still feel good about the break/hiatus/whatever it is. Everything else feels like it sort of sucks, but at least I'm not also stressing about this!