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silveradept[O hai. It's December Days time, and this year, I'm taking requests, since it's been a while and I have new people on the list and it's 2020, the year where everyone is both closer to and more distant from their friends and family. So if you have a thought you'd like me to talk about on one of these days, let me know and I'll work it into the schedule. That includes things like further asks about anything in a previous December Days tag, if you have any questions on that regard.]
Today's been a day of vacation and rest and reading through the Yuletide archive - I've made it somewhere into C so far, which is not terrible, although as with all Yuletides, I feel like I'm never goig to actually get through all of the ones that I want to read, because there's other things that I want to do with my time, like play games and read other things and do writing, like this. After this gets done, then I'm going to do the Snowflake Challenge in January, and by then, exchange season is up and running (not that it really stops, but a lot of exchanges try not to get across from Yuletide), and I might have another Fandom Trumps Hate bid to work on, and there's always the possibility that I might have an idea solely from my own head instead of writing to the prompt and specifications that I like doing for exchange fic. I try to keep myself busy with all sorts of things, even though that really only increases my pile of stuff that I want to do with the limited time that I have to do it with.
And, y'know, we're coming up on the end of this year, one that promises to be memorable and historic, and I'm sort of torn between the two ideas that suggested this year was the year that everyone was going to be able to get everything done, because we weren't going places and most of us, anyway, had Internet connections and an entire curriculum in Youtube or other tutorial videos so that we could finally start and complete that project that we'd been claiming we were going to get to once we had time, even if it was never going to be something that we did because there were lots of other things that were going to be prioritized over that new skill we kept thinking we were going to pick up, and the idea that says that the fact that you're alive is a miracle, and any further accomplisments that you made on top of surviving this year is gravy that you can be proud of as well.
Which, y'know, duck problem, or the idea of "never compare your inside to other people's outside," which I know that I read somewhere recently, but I've forgotten where it was, shoot. Because the truth is that most of us did something in the middle between ALL THE THINGS and "still here, kthx" And there's nothing to be ashamed of for surviving or to feel like it's a lesser thing, because for everybody who hasn't had a day off of work or their circumstances changed, except now that there are masks and sanitizing stations and barriers between them and the customers, every day has been a question of whether this is the day that they catch the virus or not. Some of those days have been extra difficult because they've had to contend with people deliberately trying to infect them and the people around them. And in less-civilized countries, like the United States, they've also had to deal with politicians deliberately trying to infect them and then shortchange them on being able to recover and otherwise get healthy again. So survival of this year is nothing to sneeze at, as it were.
But, as it turned out, I did get to accomplish some things, here and there. I've been able, with the time that I've spent being at home, to get the initial author run of the Pern analysis uploaded in Director's Cut form to AO3. And I've been able to keep my posting schedule weekly for all of those newer pieces throughout the entire pandemic time, which is getting us pretty close to the end point of the second author's run at this point. And there's all the exchanges that I've participated in and successfully produced works for. And the Fandom Trumps Hate gift got done. And a few other things that weren't related to exchange or Pern, like the Snowflake and the Electric and the Sunshine Challenges. And, y'know, December Days, despite sometims feeling like I haven't got a question to work with this year, or that I haven't had something to write about in the questions that I do have. So there's that, and while writing is something that I have spent a lot of time practicing and geting coherent at, it's still an accomplishment this year to have done all the things that you set out to do, and some of those things were new this year. Because it was something I had expertise it doesn't mean that it's not pretty neat to have accomplished. (One of those pernicious things that have to do with self-perception is that you judge the difficulty of things by how much effort and struggle there was to you in doing it, such that the only things that count are the things that are genuinely hard for you and that are genuinely hard for other people. Because something that's easy for you can't have been difficult for anyone else, and things that are easy for other people are clearly just things that anyone with a real, actual, functioning brain would be able to do and so struggling with those is just proof of failure or deficiency, rather than that it's a genuinely difficult thing for you to do. Most people do not grasp this because they're doing the same thing of "well, if it's not difficult for me, it's not difficult" and there's also the additional fun times of "but you can do the thing, so whatever you claim is in the way is an excuse, rather than an acknowledgement that your brains do not work the same way.") Having an outside reality check is sometimes the most helpful thing ever because it provides that necessary perspective about how what you've done looks like to others.
In other parts, because of this pandemic, I have learned how to be less afraid of arts and crafts and other programming possibilities where things might go absolutely kerflooey or not turn out the way I had envisioned them. It helps that I'm learning how to do this in front of children, rather than adults, and that we're all learning how to do something together. Because when I was a small, there was a lot of Tall Poppy Syndrome going around and the only options I felt I had was for something to either be flawless or done without any attempt at all at trying to make it good, so that when it turned out not so good, I could say that I wasn't actually trying. Even if, for many of those times that I thought I didn't care, I did, and I wanted it to turn out flawlessly. I wouldn't say that being more grown has given me any greater perspective or wisdom in that regard, but doing training and experimentation and programming where there's a clear expectation that it may not turn out perfectly the first time has taught me a lot more about how to model the experience that I would have benefited greatly from as a small, had I been able to put aside the rampant perfectionism and had the peer group that I was in been better about allowing everyone to succeed and fail or express themselves without it becoming a matter for mockery or ridicule. (Or maybe I was a sensitive child, prone to taking things too personally where no such thing existed,. The effect was the same, and nobody really bothered to care because they needed to focus their energies elsewhere.)
As it is, instead, I get to do things and see other things done and otherwise end up in a situation where I can try it, and if it doesn't go according to plan, then everybody gets to see one way it doesn't work out, and that's basically it. Maybe I've gotten better about all of this because there are no consequences past showing smalls one way that things don't work, or that I get to be the grownup who doesn't understand. I've already made it a deliberate part of my career choices to be silly around smalls, so it's not like I'm trying (or want to try) to be the unassailable srs bzns librarian anyway. And in letting go of the need for it to be perfect, in doing it in front of children instead of a gallery of critical people, or professionals, it's become low enough stakes that it turns out that I can make it work, or at least make it work well enough that I get the idea across. So, y'know, I've learned to be a little bit more tolerant of not having the answers or a prescribed process that has to be followed where I've practiced all the steps to perfection and can do it all in my sleep. And that, too, is an accomplishment, in addition to all of the small crafty things that I've done that have turned out just fine, and all of the things that I've baked that have also turned out just fine, and pretty delicious, actually!
So this was a year where, at least so far, we've survived it. And, on top of survival, which was pretty damn hard by itself, we kept to the schedule we've already established, and got all of our works in on time, including some new ones that got worked into the schedule. We got more confident about being able to do programming where we don't have all the answers, and more okay with the idea that "ish" is an okay result for things that can be ishy.
(Yes, I'm still worried that when I need to be able to take a criticism well and change, I'm going to end up making it about myself in unhelpful ways instead of being able to make the necessary changes and then go off and have whatever recriminations or feelings I need to have about it away from the people who will be affected by my having those feelings in public. But, y'know, practice the small things so that you can hopefull do it right when the big ones happen.)
Today's been a day of vacation and rest and reading through the Yuletide archive - I've made it somewhere into C so far, which is not terrible, although as with all Yuletides, I feel like I'm never goig to actually get through all of the ones that I want to read, because there's other things that I want to do with my time, like play games and read other things and do writing, like this. After this gets done, then I'm going to do the Snowflake Challenge in January, and by then, exchange season is up and running (not that it really stops, but a lot of exchanges try not to get across from Yuletide), and I might have another Fandom Trumps Hate bid to work on, and there's always the possibility that I might have an idea solely from my own head instead of writing to the prompt and specifications that I like doing for exchange fic. I try to keep myself busy with all sorts of things, even though that really only increases my pile of stuff that I want to do with the limited time that I have to do it with.
And, y'know, we're coming up on the end of this year, one that promises to be memorable and historic, and I'm sort of torn between the two ideas that suggested this year was the year that everyone was going to be able to get everything done, because we weren't going places and most of us, anyway, had Internet connections and an entire curriculum in Youtube or other tutorial videos so that we could finally start and complete that project that we'd been claiming we were going to get to once we had time, even if it was never going to be something that we did because there were lots of other things that were going to be prioritized over that new skill we kept thinking we were going to pick up, and the idea that says that the fact that you're alive is a miracle, and any further accomplisments that you made on top of surviving this year is gravy that you can be proud of as well.
Is this the year you did it all, or the year that you survived and are happy about that by itself?
Which, y'know, duck problem, or the idea of "never compare your inside to other people's outside," which I know that I read somewhere recently, but I've forgotten where it was, shoot. Because the truth is that most of us did something in the middle between ALL THE THINGS and "still here, kthx" And there's nothing to be ashamed of for surviving or to feel like it's a lesser thing, because for everybody who hasn't had a day off of work or their circumstances changed, except now that there are masks and sanitizing stations and barriers between them and the customers, every day has been a question of whether this is the day that they catch the virus or not. Some of those days have been extra difficult because they've had to contend with people deliberately trying to infect them and the people around them. And in less-civilized countries, like the United States, they've also had to deal with politicians deliberately trying to infect them and then shortchange them on being able to recover and otherwise get healthy again. So survival of this year is nothing to sneeze at, as it were.
But, as it turned out, I did get to accomplish some things, here and there. I've been able, with the time that I've spent being at home, to get the initial author run of the Pern analysis uploaded in Director's Cut form to AO3. And I've been able to keep my posting schedule weekly for all of those newer pieces throughout the entire pandemic time, which is getting us pretty close to the end point of the second author's run at this point. And there's all the exchanges that I've participated in and successfully produced works for. And the Fandom Trumps Hate gift got done. And a few other things that weren't related to exchange or Pern, like the Snowflake and the Electric and the Sunshine Challenges. And, y'know, December Days, despite sometims feeling like I haven't got a question to work with this year, or that I haven't had something to write about in the questions that I do have. So there's that, and while writing is something that I have spent a lot of time practicing and geting coherent at, it's still an accomplishment this year to have done all the things that you set out to do, and some of those things were new this year. Because it was something I had expertise it doesn't mean that it's not pretty neat to have accomplished. (One of those pernicious things that have to do with self-perception is that you judge the difficulty of things by how much effort and struggle there was to you in doing it, such that the only things that count are the things that are genuinely hard for you and that are genuinely hard for other people. Because something that's easy for you can't have been difficult for anyone else, and things that are easy for other people are clearly just things that anyone with a real, actual, functioning brain would be able to do and so struggling with those is just proof of failure or deficiency, rather than that it's a genuinely difficult thing for you to do. Most people do not grasp this because they're doing the same thing of "well, if it's not difficult for me, it's not difficult" and there's also the additional fun times of "but you can do the thing, so whatever you claim is in the way is an excuse, rather than an acknowledgement that your brains do not work the same way.") Having an outside reality check is sometimes the most helpful thing ever because it provides that necessary perspective about how what you've done looks like to others.
In other parts, because of this pandemic, I have learned how to be less afraid of arts and crafts and other programming possibilities where things might go absolutely kerflooey or not turn out the way I had envisioned them. It helps that I'm learning how to do this in front of children, rather than adults, and that we're all learning how to do something together. Because when I was a small, there was a lot of Tall Poppy Syndrome going around and the only options I felt I had was for something to either be flawless or done without any attempt at all at trying to make it good, so that when it turned out not so good, I could say that I wasn't actually trying. Even if, for many of those times that I thought I didn't care, I did, and I wanted it to turn out flawlessly. I wouldn't say that being more grown has given me any greater perspective or wisdom in that regard, but doing training and experimentation and programming where there's a clear expectation that it may not turn out perfectly the first time has taught me a lot more about how to model the experience that I would have benefited greatly from as a small, had I been able to put aside the rampant perfectionism and had the peer group that I was in been better about allowing everyone to succeed and fail or express themselves without it becoming a matter for mockery or ridicule. (Or maybe I was a sensitive child, prone to taking things too personally where no such thing existed,. The effect was the same, and nobody really bothered to care because they needed to focus their energies elsewhere.)
As it is, instead, I get to do things and see other things done and otherwise end up in a situation where I can try it, and if it doesn't go according to plan, then everybody gets to see one way it doesn't work out, and that's basically it. Maybe I've gotten better about all of this because there are no consequences past showing smalls one way that things don't work, or that I get to be the grownup who doesn't understand. I've already made it a deliberate part of my career choices to be silly around smalls, so it's not like I'm trying (or want to try) to be the unassailable srs bzns librarian anyway. And in letting go of the need for it to be perfect, in doing it in front of children instead of a gallery of critical people, or professionals, it's become low enough stakes that it turns out that I can make it work, or at least make it work well enough that I get the idea across. So, y'know, I've learned to be a little bit more tolerant of not having the answers or a prescribed process that has to be followed where I've practiced all the steps to perfection and can do it all in my sleep. And that, too, is an accomplishment, in addition to all of the small crafty things that I've done that have turned out just fine, and all of the things that I've baked that have also turned out just fine, and pretty delicious, actually!
So this was a year where, at least so far, we've survived it. And, on top of survival, which was pretty damn hard by itself, we kept to the schedule we've already established, and got all of our works in on time, including some new ones that got worked into the schedule. We got more confident about being able to do programming where we don't have all the answers, and more okay with the idea that "ish" is an okay result for things that can be ishy.
(Yes, I'm still worried that when I need to be able to take a criticism well and change, I'm going to end up making it about myself in unhelpful ways instead of being able to make the necessary changes and then go off and have whatever recriminations or feelings I need to have about it away from the people who will be affected by my having those feelings in public. But, y'know, practice the small things so that you can hopefull do it right when the big ones happen.)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-27 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-27 10:38 pm (UTC)Yay, that's a huge shift!