momebie

I am all out of sorts and having a really hard time being me lately. I just have this constant, deep feeling of confusion that wells up sometimes and makes me forget what I was even doing. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know what I want to do anymore. And I feel guilty about it, because some of my friends are having very tangibly shitty times of it lately and I'm not. I shouldn't feel this way, but I do. But I can't voice it. Not that I'd know how if I felt like I was allowed to.

It's different than my general undercurrent of existential angst, too. It's both more and less sharp and more and less frightening because I can't write it off as that. It's not as heavy as my bout of massive anxiety early in the year, and it doesn't feel inescapable and depressive. It just...is. Like all things, I suppose. But that's never something that's sat easy with me, things just being.

It doesn't help that I don't know where I'll be in a year. There are places I'd like to be, but right now I'm letting a lot of my less immediate future hinge on the Boy deciding what to do about grad school, because I should go with him. I'm getting older. It's time to move on with my life. I want to move on with my life with him in it. I want to go and be with him wherever he settles on school and then hash out the future from there. At the same time his mere existence isn't enough of a star to set my course by, you know? I want to plan. I wan't to act. I want something to look forward to, not simply this gaping crack in the universe up ahead. And the thing about the abyss is, it stares back.

Also, writing. Self-sabotage. Afraid of failure and success. KL should just settle for how she'll never finish anything that she's written and never sell anything she's written and be happy with her AO3 kudos but she won't because she doesn't know how to be complacent. Yada yada. Here, take this switch and help me further pummel this dead horse about the head and shoulders.

I don't know. I'm out of evens to can. And it's slowly turning my insides vaporous.

I came home tonight and re-read Without Blood. I don't know why, really. I just got an itch to earlier and it's short and mean and I thought 'why not?' It didn't make me feel better. It didn't answer any of my questions. But, it did make me feel calm for about an hour and that's one less hour of feeling like an utter basket case, so I'm chalking it up in the Good Life Choices category.

They got out in front of a hotel called California. The sign lit up in big red letters, one by one, up the four floors of the building. When the word was complete it shone for a little while, then went out completely and began again from the first letter. C. Ca. Cal. Cali. Calif. Califo. Califor. Californ. Californi. California. California. California. California. Darkness.

It really wouldn't be a KL Dragon*Con recap without the steampunk, would it? This year I went to quite a few steampunk panels, to varying rates of success. I have two panels that I wanted to touch on more in depth for those of you who might be interested.

1.) I enjoyed the Weird West panel, because that's not a section of steampunk I usually dabble in, so it's good to get recs and see where people are going with that. I really, really disagreed with one of the panelists, though. Her basic point was this: If you're at the beginning of any given technological advancement, then everything that you create with your new found tech feels like magic. Anything is possible. Because of this, it's okay to hand wave the science in your story, because it's the story that's most important.

Now, I agree with the feeling of magic and wonder and endlessness that new tech can bring to a society. I think it's wonderful, and I love it when a steampunk (or any other scifi) author tries to capture that feeling. What I don't agree with is the idea that it's okay to hand wave the tech aspects of your story. If your story can survive without the tech aspects, why is it steampunk to begin with? If your story is independent of the feeling of wonder and possibility, of the creativity of doing something we in the present do every day in a new way, then why not just set it in already realized history?

Though, I think part of my negative gut reaction to this idea is that I worry that when we get this whole ball rolling on the novel, we'll be seen as outsiders. On the other hand, we work really hard on, and pester mckays_lab to help us in, making sure that the science is possible. Theoretically anyway. I'm not about to inject cobalt into my arm to find out. There's bleeding for your art, and then there's bleeding for your art. I like all my blood on the inside, thanks.

2.) The Rule, Victoria panel was the best one I sat in on all weekend. The panel included two professors (who said that they were Victorianists by trade, which I didn't know you could be, now I'm all second thinking not getting that Lit degree) and two authors currently working on steampunk projects. ( Now, it would take forever for me to rehash all that they said, but I'm going to leave my notes here by panelist... )