(no subject)

[spryng]

This post comes in two parts.

Part one:

Everybody feels weird about their childhood, right? That's like, a universal thing. One of the downsides of my parents moving nearby is they feel the need to just randomly drop off a box of stuff from childhood, without warning.

This latest one had a few toys that I parceled out to the kids, but a whole lot of things that fall into the I Would Rather Not categories. Old pictures, journals, stuff from high school and middle school. I don't want to go through this but I would also feel bad just chucking it all in the bin. I did that with my yearbooks when they dropped those on me in Arizona, which felt weirdly liberating.

Any suggestions on what to do with it would be welcome. I could burn the journals, at least. That might be freeing.

But it really does feel like they just left a box of hand grenades and some of them might still be live and some not, but do I really want to risk sorting the good from bad?

It's also frustrating because like, I spent my 20s getting over so much of the stuff represented in that box. So why does it still cause me pain?

Speaking of pain (a neat segue into Part Two:)

I can't shake this malaise that has formed like a crust around everything writing-related. I have stepped back so much from most of the publishing world and most of the arbitrary deadlines and rules I was setting for myself, but always kept one toe in the proverbial publishing waters. Partially because it's hard to not know what's going on and partially because I really wanted to keep going with the queer books list.

But I should've recognized I needed a break in 2023 when the List became a monthly struggle instead of the mainly once or twice a year work of joy it had been. The downfall of Twitter really made managing and creating the List infinitely harder. I went from mostly just asking on Twitter and getting all the books to having to scour Edelweiss (a publishing hub where publishers share their catalogues) and squint sideways at reviews. When authors themselves aren't the ones loudly and happily telling me about their queer books, it becomes a lot more of a chore, who knew.

I just didn't feel like I could stop yet, and I didn't want to stop. I just wanted to magically have the many extra hours it was taking to create the List and have time to write. But I couldn't do both, wasn't doing both, so. I'm allowing myself to take a break. I can always put the list together at the end of the year, like I did the first time. Or just - gasp - let it go entirely. SFF appears to have firmly shifted into a queerer territory in general now and the once impossible to suss as gay is now loudly touted as such.

IDK, I'm not making an Official Decision on that just yet. But I am going to step away from all of it: Bluesky, the List, any discords or servers I'm on, any publishing podcasts or news. I need a clean break. Maybe, maybe then, I can finally heal.

Comments

[profiterole_reads]

The List is great, but if you need to take a break, go for it. It has become easier to find adult queer SF/F in the middle of all the YA queer SF/F. I for one have a very long to-read list.

[spryng]

That is the other consideration for pausing/stopping -- it's not nearly as difficult to find queer adult sff anymore. And maybe it's just the demise of Twitter, but I don't see anyone lamenting the absence thereof.

[mrissa]

You know, I did a series of appreciation posts called Present Writers about older (women and nonbinary, though I never specified that) writers, and I really felt like it was good work, calling attention to older writers, and there were loads of people I could still do, and also I stopped. You can stop good work, you can do it for a while and stop, the fact that it's good work doesn't mean that it's work you have to pour yourself into infinitely even if there's still a need for it. Even if people still want a List. Someone else could do a List. It doesn't have to be you. It's good that you've done it, but there is not infinite you, friend. Your healing matters too.

And speaking of which...

I feel like it's okay to just chuck things if that's the direction you decide to go. And it's also okay, if you have the space, to box it up with a firm note that says, "Do not open until 2036." (And then maybe not open it then, either, depending.)

It's also okay to ask Doctor Lady to, for example, go through the pictures and take out any pictures of someone she knows is terrible and throw them away before you go through it, if you want to go through it now. Or some other sorting mechanism that is...not you having the hand grenades, if that's possible, if it won't hurt her like it would hurt you.

I did a quick sort on two of my photo albums: I flipped through and I pulled out every picture that DID contain humans and DID NOT contain humans I currently have positive feelings about, and I threw them away. So there are still, for example, pictures of my college bestie's abusive ex in there, but there are not SOLO PORTRAITS of my college bestie's abusive ex in there. There are also not pictures of some guy who was my lab partner for a summer and made no emotional impact UNLESS I AM ALSO IN THE PICTURE. Down side: this did not get rid of a lot of stuff I will probably want to get rid of later. Up side: it was something I could do in 10 minutes that made the photo albums more emotionally manageable to have in my house. I'm not saying this is the exact magical answer, I'm saying, maybe you have some kind of speed run thing like that? for your stuff? dunno. hugs.

[spryng]

<3 <3 <3
That's really solid advice. I'll talk to Lady about helping me go through it.