hmpf | Entries tagged with angsting

Recently, I seem to be even better than usual at pissing people off in vague and bizarre ways. Generally without meaning to. And, to be honest, I'm not even entirely sure if I'm pissing people off so much as perhaps rather causing a kind of "errrrrrrr you're a FREAK, get away from me" type of reaction. I dunno. Anyway, I've had heaps of odd situations recently that I don't quite know how to interpret.

I'd like a neat little rulebook for how to be a socially functional human being. I don't have the instinct.

Current Music: Thom Yorke: Analyse

I tend not to think about that while I'm writing, because, really, thinking about that kind of thing when it takes you years and years to finish something is kinda counterproductive. Usually I don't even know if a given fandom will still be around in any significant way by the time I finish a fic.

But, obviously, after working on something for so long it becomes infused with a lot of myself, and yeah, I want all those years to... I dunno. Have some sort of positive result. Seeing this fic sink like a stone would be painful. Even though I don't exactly write *for* an audience/for recognition.

Half of the time I still think it's a pretty damn great fic (not perfect, not even close, but still - pretty great). Then again, the other half of the time I feel like it has all kinds of serious issues. I don't think I can really judge which of these perceptions is right.

I am aware that there's also the possibility that it's neither great, nor hampered by serious issues, but simply kinda blah and mediocre. That would be the worst possible verdict, of course. Who would want to spend four years producing something that is just blah?

Of course, even if it should sink like a stone in

lifein1973, it could still, eventually, turn into a sleeper hit on AO3 or The Collators' Den. ;-) Something a bit like that seems to be happening to 68 Wives at the moment - that has been getting a lot of kudos in the last couple of weeks, although it was uploaded more than a year ago.

Speaking of archives: I do need to get back to being an active admin at the Den. I really do. Kind of shying back from all the work potentially involved in familiarising myself with how it all works now, though...

ETA: Please don't misunderstand this as me begging for feedback. I don't want pity feedback, nor friendship feedback. I want you to comment if you feel genuinely moved to comment - and only then. Never, ever feel obligated to comment on my fic.

This post is just random pre-publication angsting.

if I can't even bring myself to open the frelling document before it's three a.m. and I have exhausted every other possibility of entertainment? I sort of sit at the computer all day, with the thesis folder open in the task bar as if I'm *just* about to open a file, and read the Engrish blog, and Cute Overload, and boingboing, and I Can Has Cheezburger, and half a dozen eco sites, and basically every timewaster site there is on the net. I'm not even writing fic, or spamming Mikey with comments anymore, which was at least a sort-of-useful form of procrastination... I'm really just killing time - when time is the last thing I can afford to lose.

Needless to say, my sleep rhythm is completely out of whack again, too. And I'm totally panicking at the thought of next week, which is a week where I have four hour shifts instead of my usual two hours, and those four hour shifts involve a type of work that does not really allow you to write 'on the side', as the two hour shifts usually do. Basically, I'll be at work all day (or what constitutes 'all day' if your regular day is only five hours long because your sleep pattern is fucked up) and only get home at about ten in the evening, probably somewhat exhausted, and then I'll have to make dinner and stuff, and *then*, at eleven in the evening or so, I will be able to start working. If I'm still able to work then, that is.

Actually, the more I consider this, the more sense it makes to just give in to my bizarre sleep rhythm and redefine three p.m. as 'morning,' at least for the next week, and possibly for the rest of the writing phase. That way, I'd get to go to work about two hours after waking up next week, and would have the entire ~~night~~ 'day' left for working on my thesis. I could go to sleep at, say, eight a.m. or so? One thing that really fucks me up at the moment is trying to fight my sick sleep pattern all the time. See, normally - I mean, 'normally' for a value of 'normal' that includes my current severe sleep problem - I'd probably go to bed after posting this - i.e. at a quarter to four a.m. or so. And then I'd spend several hours in bed trying to go to sleep - probably until around eight or so in the morning. And then I'd sleep until my alarm clock would wake me up for the first time - and because I'm constantly fighting my sleep rhythm, that would probably be at eleven or so, after only three hours of sleep. So of course I'd go to sleep again after the alarm rang. And probably sleep until the early afternoon.

I may as well give up on the pretense of being able to sleep before eight if I go to bed by four, and just *work* till eight; actually get a few pages of writing done.

Oh fuck. I forgot that I actually have to work early on Tuesday and Thursday. *sigh* There goes that plan.

Though I suppose I could go to sleep *after* work on those days.

That would be at about half past eleven in the morning. So... if I get up at half past four in the afternoon to go to work, that'd still be about five hours of sleep.

Hey, why don't I just stop sleeping altogether?

*groan*

I can haz normal sleep pattern, plz? I'm not exactly the most efficient person at the best of times, but this? This is just screwing me up in so many ways, and it exacerbates the writer's block-induced inefficiency like nobody's business.

(Filename is now: Frankensteins_thesis.odt, because I've begun patching my various truncated attempts at introductions and whatnot together. So far, it's fifteen pages of fail.)

Current Mood: morose

is that it's still about ten weeks till I have to register for my M.A., after which there will be another six to eight months of writing (hopefully just the six, as I desperately need those extra two months to prepare for exams)... yet I'm already consistently unable to sleep (two weeks and counting, now), and unable to find *any* time for anything except researching etc.

So... if I'm *already* unable to function in so many ways, what is it going to be like in three or, god forbid, six months?

The not sleeping thing is the worst bit, though. I can live on fast food and sandwiches wolfed down at the computer for a year if necessary, but I can't live without sleep.

What I really need (besides sleep) is someone knowledgeable about this stuff (i.e. sf and fantasy and comics studies) to have a long conversation with, to help me clarify my desperately vague muddled ideas. Alas, there is no one who can take that role.

Current Mood: tired

60% M.A. thesis fear
10% fear of not finding a job in summer/autumn 2009
5% fear of finding a job that will eat my life
10% awareness of precarious pecuniary situation
10% social guilt
5% frustration at lack of headspace for creative endeavours
----------------------------------------------------
100% insomnia

Though, to be honest, tonight it's more like

30% M.A. thesis fear
10% fear of not finding a job
5% fear of finding a job
45% awareness of precarious pecuniary situation
5% social guilt
5% frustration at lack of headspace for creativity

The result is still 100% insomnia, though.

It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't affect my eyes and my back so badly. Unfortunately, after a few sleepless nights my eyes and my back are pretty much killing me, and while caffeine will help keep me awake and somewhat functional for thesis preparation purposes through the day, there's nothing that can be done to combat the back and eye pain.

Well, I guess I could take painkillers. But really, needing massive doses of caffeine to get through the day is bad enough. I don't want to get dependent on something worse than that.

Current Mood: tired

First off, I'm kind of... not around because I *still* haven't finished that one freaking essay, arrgh. It's like every time I think I'm nearly done I accidentally open a new can of worms, sort of on the home stretch, making another day of work for myself. Very frustrating. Plus, as a consequence it's now so late I'm not sure they'll still accept it. They usually do, this being the German university system which is somewhat more lenient about stuff like this than, say, Britain's, but... you never know. Very nervous here!

In addition to this I'm angsting about my thesis again. I just talked about it to a rather skeptical friend and that reminded me how little of an idea I have yet about what I'm *really* going to do with it. And how much theory I still need to read, and how little idea I have where even to start on *that*. And how badly I need to read a whole lot of older indie and small press comics to understand the context better. Will I have to shell out for the ten Cerebus 'phonebooks'? I am afraid so. And Cerebus isn't even the biggest problem; at least that's *available*, if rather pricey. A lot of the other stuff - even the stuff I sort of know about - isn't available at all anymore. Not to mention that I only have a vague idea of indie and small press books of the early 90s and earlier, because that's way before I ever started reading comics. And with this kind of stuff you can't just go to a library, you need to buy it or you need to know someone with a huge collection. Arrgh. I need to befriend my local comic shop guys, I think. (In fact, I *am* planning to talk to them about this; at the very least they should be able to give me a better idea of essential titles etc. They're pretty good with American indie and small press stuff. - Oh, and I'll try forums, too.)

I'm thinking of really just focusing on Finder now. I just received my copy of the recent Sin-Eater hardcover and that reminded me rather forcefully how Finder is *teeming* with stuff to write and think about. Finder alone is probably more than I can handle, to be honest. (I just still lack a lot of the necessary background to say much of academic worth about it.)

The most interesting and most worrying thing my friend (who has a Ph.D. in American studies) did regarding my thesis was questioning my choice of doing a thesis about these comics at all. How could I be sure, she asked, if there was really something - or, perhaps rather, 'enough' - there that was worth talking about in an academic way; could I be sure that, as a fan, I wasn't *putting* things there that I *wanted* to see but that weren't really present in the material? Which, yeah... may be a good question. Although I'm fairly certain that Finder is of academic interest, really, because it tickles all my academic bones, so to speak - it really speaks more to me as an academic, almost, than it does to me as a fan. Still, I'm setting myself up for a fall here, potentially, as I will have to go that extra length of convincing the readers of my thesis not just of the worth of my own ideas but also of the worth of the material I've chosen to talk about. This is something you don't have to do if you write about something that already has academic acceptance.

***

To balance all that angst, here's your daily dose of squee:

As I said, yesterday I got my copy of this, and - the image there doesn't do it justice. It's an artefact of superb beauty. It's smaller than your usual comic, somewhere between American comic size and manga format; it's hardcover, satisfyingly thick and solid, and - literally - very shiny. Very white paper, very black print, and the artwork 'shrinks' surprisingly well, although some of the smaller bits of lettering and a few details do get very tiny. The overall effect is positive, though, and somehow the composition of many of the pages works better in this format (probably because you tend to look at the whole page at once, whereas with the usual format you tend to look at the top half first, or at least I do.)

It's also superior to the previous version of Sin-Eater in two trades because it also collects the 'lost issue' Fight Scene, plus nine new pages.

I could go on, but I have to go - work calls.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: at work (library)

one of them is that by travelling that way you become truly aware of the distances your travelling, which, although uncomfortable, is a good thing. It makes travelling more real. Or maybe that is just me trying to convince myself that not having a lot of money is actually a good thing. ;-)

Here's some notes I took during the trip:

15:00 Leaving Frankfurt.

16:20 Manheim. Reading 'The Sandman Companion' which I found in the mail just before leaving. Thanks, Anne!

18:45 First stop.

20:40 They begin torturing us with bad German comedies on the board TV. The sound is really loud - inescabably loud. Definitely a strong point *against* travelling by bus.
P.S.: I think we crossed the French border a little while ago. I didn't notice, being totally engrossed in the 'Sandman Companion'.

00:15 For the last 45 minutes I've been trying to go to sleep, an endeavour that was complicated by the the fact that it's virtually impossible to find a comfortable position on a bus seat, and by my generally screwed up sleeping patterns. Besides, I've been having several kinds of angst -- future angst (in the guise of writer's angst), and angst of losing old friends, especially Ebru, whom I haven't seen in too long a while. The future/writer's angst was bestowed on me by the 'Sandman Companion', I think. The last chapter I read was about Neil Gaiman's wish to become a comic writer.

07:30 I've slept through the Pyrenees. Again. Frell.

08:00 In this early morning light the country outside reallz looks as if made out of glass. Truly beautiful. I love Spain.

08:30 Breakfast at Girona. I refrain from brushing my teeth after seeing the long queues waiting to use the two wash basins, and pop in a chewing gum instead, feeling dirty and dishevelled.

09:30 Calling Kadira. The cell phone is frelled up again -- the whole bus can listen to our short and confused conversation!

10:30 Barcelona!