Night Island

I realize now how seemingly ominous it is to post about getting Covid and then stop posting for a year. Even if my last post was about getting better, anything could have happened. The good news is that we all survived Covid, but...

( CW for death, Covid, and mental health )

I'm much better now, but it was a real struggle getting through last year. I stopped doing a lot of things (like visiting DW), but that wasn't good for me in the long run. I'm back because I missed this place and am unhappy about what is going on with Twitter and Reddit these days. At any rate, I am glad to be back and will have a happier post soon because some good things did actually happen to me since my last post, but I want to save them for their own entry.

What did I miss?

My mom has Covid. She's a few days shy of 65, but she is vaccinated and boosted. She will probably be okay, but my grandma and I have also been exposed now. My birthday is on Monday next week; this is the worst birthday gift I've ever received!

In other news, I did sign up for getyourwordsout. Anyone else? Wish me luck!

I realize there is a bit of mood whiplash between these two announcements, but I wasn't sure how else to put it and wanted to end on a lighter note.

I just had the beginning of this entry saved from another day, but of course, I lost it because I accidentally clicked out of the dialogue box before restoring it. :(

At any rate, it has been far too long since my last update! I did not mean to go so long without posting, but my internet activities purposely fell by the wayside at the end of last year because I got really stressed about school and the rest of my life. Everything turned out fine, but it was just so easy to make my world smaller by cutting out my fannish activities when they were adding to my stress. That's my current strategy for dealing with anxiety: ignoring the less immediate parts of my life. It's probably not a very good or healthy strategy, so I should probably do something about it.

I start what should be my last semester as an undergraduate on Monday.
I start what should be my last semester as an undergraduate on Monday. Last semester, I dropped half of my classes because I felt overwhelmed, so I’m back to full-time this semester. I’ve had two of the professors before, so I know what to expect from them more or less. I’m most concerned about my creative writing classes because I have had serious second thoughts about my second major in creative writing. I like it, of course, but I’m unsure how beneficial it was to add on to my English literature major. *shrugs* My first creative writing class before I transferred was a good experience, but the non-fiction class I took last year was really hard on me, and I’m not sure if I feel adequately equipped for the upper-division short story and poetry workshops that I have signed up for this semester. I can’t say that I much like the workshop experience at all, but I’m sure that it has been beneficial.

I have mostly frittered away my summer. I haven’t done as much reading as I would have liked, and I’ve done almost no writing. There’s hope for the future, I suppose.

I want to start another entry about my reading this year, so I’ll end it here.

Thankfully, the heat has decided to take a vacation for a while. Apparently, it was over 100 yesterday, but it was no hotter than the low 80s today. I've been enjoying some cool breezes from my window, but the heat kept me from sleeping last night. I don't think I was able to get to sleep until nearly 3 AM. When I did sleep, I had a haunted house-related dream/nightmare. I don't remember anything particularly creepy except for a general feeling of foreboding and the unease of finding myself alone in a dark, old house that was allegedly haunted. I blame this on reading The Haunting of Hill House—which was my first real ghost story ever—and starting Neil Gaiman’s American Gods where ( Spoilers ). I don’t feel particularly tired as I was able to sleep in quite a bit, but I do feel a bit listless and uninspired which is a common side effect of not sleeping enough in my life.

Since I've been varying levels of sick this week, my spring break has evaporated away like melted snow. I planned on updating my journal all week, but I'm just getting to it now after two other failed attempts. I hope this writing will do me some good.

Once again, I signed up for a fanwork exchange against my better judgment, but hey, it's writing. Just in the nick of time, too! I totally forgot about space_swap with the full intention of doing a leisurely and well-thought out sign up earlier this week, but I didn't realize that sign ups were closing today until last night. I got my sign up in, but I was unable to take the time to put prompts or do not wants, so I'm bracing for anything. I just hope that I get something other than smut, but if I don't, it's my own fault for not planning ahead. Fortunately, I do not have many hard-and-fast triggers, but I would prefer that my fics don't get any darker or more adult than the original source material that I requested. Just in case my spacer is reading this, I am not down with incest or underage.

I also signed up for myoldfandom, but I have plenty of time to fiddle with the sign up for that and write a proper letter with prompts and everything. At least, I have until the 25th.

Anyway, I want to write more about my fannish activities, but this is just a brief recap of the little that I've done this week. I also need to post my fics from chocolateboxcomm now that they've been revealed for over a month now.

Crap, it's Halloween tomorrow. I haven't even enjoyed October properly yet. :( Not to mention that I've let my journal updating slide.... I'm not even totally sure what I want to do with this journal anymore. When I created it, I hoped it would be my introduction back into fandom and Internet culture. I hoped that Dreamwidth would be a recreation of LJ in its heyday, but neither site is as vibrant as I would like. Of course, it doesn't help when I check out for these long absences, but I can't shake the feeling that I should move on to another platform.

This semester is definitely not my favorite, but I'm trying to stay open-minded until the end. Philosophy is a killer. I oscillate between liking and disliking Spanish in equal measure. The first half of world literature hasn't captured my heart like I expected it would. Despite the fact that I love mythology, I'm not so enchanted with ancient literature. I think the Iliad will grow on me. I also liked Oedipus Rex, but it made me very uncomfortable at the same time. I want to read the Aeneid in full someday, though. Other than that, my classes have passed in a blur.

A lot else has happened, but I'd rather get into that later.

I feel sooo tired and sick right now, but I'm sure why. *sighs* I'll post about my birthday tomorrow... I hope I'll feel better then.