Hello, world!
I doubt I'm the only person who ended up abandoning their blogs during the pandemic. Apparently, a few people actually started during the pandemic, too. Everyone's hobbies got added and deleted in all kinds of ways in 2020. I mostly lost mine, including writing, but EGL got stronger. I'd ordered some of my very first pieces in Nov 2019, when there's no way I could've known they'd end up getting shipped in the middle of quarantine summer. The comm had gotten moved onto Discord that March, though, so I was still able to interact with the comm in the state with the things I already had until then. I'd found the FB group a few months before and been disappointed that it was mostly dead, though they'd just barely started reviving it around Jan 2020, and moving to Discord revived it further. At this point, now that I've been able to go to the in-person meets since last April, I think I might be one of the more prominent members! I accidentally put myself in charge of the next meet, even. I seem to be becoming a grocery store lolita/ouji, too. I dressed up a couple times to go to the tailor's because I wanted to make sure the clothes would be tailored to fit over my ruffliest blouse, and I felt really comfortable just wandering around like that, even when I was in Smith's and Rancho afterwards! I preordered a big, long cloak that I really hope will work out for everyday wear too, and besides that, I just have an idea of grabbing a suitable short-sleeve black blouse if the opportunity presents itself... I really don't think I need anything else. I'm trying to slowly reduce the rest of my clothes, partly because there's so much and partly cuz it would make it possible to wear my EGL stuff even more instead of trying to work through everything in my closet.
Anyway- what I said about losing my writing habit is true but not. During my college years, my posts were sparse and based off short notes I wrote to myself. Everything else I noted down during that time will probably never see the light of day, and probably doesn't make sense anymore after all this time anyway. When quarantine started, though, I began a proper physical diary. I called it the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Chronicles, C(C)C for short. It was actually my writing teacher's idea. On our last day of in-person class, she set out journals for us to take for an assignment where we all had to keep some form of journal with those or something else of our choosing. She changed the order of remaining assignments, I believe, so we could start it now, and I'm grateful for that. From that moment on, I've kept a daily diary. The physical one ends at June 6, 2020 (Day 85), cuz that was harder to maintain, so I just switched to online again. This coming March, I'll have been writing the C(C)C for 3 years- cuz as much as people like to believe otherwise, the pandemic isn't over. I figure it's safe to say it is once we don't have to wear masks in the hospital (though we should honestly keep that around), but I'll consider the Chronicles complete once I've reached the point where I feel comfortable without a mask in a crowd. (I might keep them around for the winter for the long run, though, cuz it's nice to have a face covering out in the snow.) The pandemic will theoretically never scientifically end, like the 1918 Spanish flu, I know, but there's still a point where it's essentially done and irrelevant, and what other good measure is there for that? It's certainly not "when nobody cares anymore", cuz in that case, this would've been over in summer 2020.
Though I'm glad I managed to keep the diary this whole time, cuz it was sometimes a huge help and way less overwhelming than the biweekly posts I used to do, I was way less consistent with writing for fun. I kept it up for a bit, but over time, it reached the point where I hadn't touched my drafts in months. 2022 is probably the year I've written for fun the least in a decade. I was also a very bad beta reader for a good chunk of this time, cuz I was too unmotivated to work on it for months at a time. Probably my biggest accomplishment was editing Kez's entire book near the end of summer 2020. They asked me to proofread a different book late last year, too, though that was much less work. I got paid for both, though, which was kinda wild! A part of me wants to send the money back because I would've gladly done it for free, but Di insisted that I should take the pay.
I don't think it wouldn't have gotten so bad for my own WIPs if I hadn't somehow lost interest in fandom in general, which had never happened before. It just... disappeared, I think around Oct 2021. It came back, sorta, for a time in 2022, but it's gone again. Even though things overall got better for me over the past year, losing fandom made me feel like I'm not even myself anymore. I might sound dramatic, especially cuz I know some people hyperfixate way more than I ever did, but I definitely hyperfixated enough that not having anything specific to be addicted to was just wrong. It's mostly meant watching a lot of Youtube instead, with that anxious energy of not knowing what I want but not knowing what else to do. And, of course, my writing is mostly tied up with fics, so I've just felt stuck on that front.
So... that's why I'm back. I feel like I can function enough to keep up a decent habit of writing on here again. It's gonna be more just rambling about a topic, like I did at the very beginning of this blog, since I already have the diary material covered somewhere else. I need to write something that isn't fic, cuz I want at least one of both halves back so I feel more like myself again.
Alright. I'll try to write an entry every one or two weeks, like back in the day. See you soon!
