Just a Sci-Fi Kid Like Me

About to go to my first in-person conference since before the pandemic--flying out Wednesday and back Sunday. I will get to see beloved friends and colleagues. I will give the most disorganized paper of my career, and it will be fine. One way or another.

Friday night I got the new covid vax and spent all of yesterday in bed with fevers and chills. I am glad my immune system is working, but man. So today I am tiredly doing all my chores while feeling incredibly sore.

I am so overwhelmed, but no way out but through.

 It says.... something ... that the first conference panel I've seen in YEARS made up of all white men is at a Star Wars conference.

 cw warning: academic anxiety and blather

Things have been delightfully boring recently, and gods all willing that will continue.

Today I had some downtime and started working on a conference paper I'm giving next year. I belatedly realized that, for a number of reasons, I haven't been able to write anything I've actually *wanted* to write in ages, and it was just **lovely** to loosen up and do something I actually enjoy.

 

Sent the diss to my committee.

I have to write up an informal-ish talk I give as an introduction to my defense next month, but otherwise I am "done."

Filled with restless anxious energy, I baked banana bread to take to work tomorrow, read through George Takei's graphic novel memoir, and am listening to the  BBC4 adaptation of In Search of Lost Time, which I tried to read many years ago and which I could not comprehend. Listening to Derek Jacobi and a cast of other famous English people, I'm still not sure I comprehend. But given that we have a significant Proust collection at work, I feel as if I have to try.

 Got back from the conference yesterday, and since then, chores and sleep. I worked up such a sleep debt while I was gone, largely as a function of an exceedingly uncomfy dorm mattress--I am officially Too Old For That Shit.

The conference was itself....a thing. I enjoyed it more than I was expecting, and had some good conversations and so on. A LOT of people thanked me for the work I was doing, and how it was so great to see someone enthusiastic and with a love for the material. On the other hand, there are elements of elitism that are such a struggle and that turns me so off. I just felt really ambivalent and frustrated all week, and still do.

I think it's the intellectual equivalent of the "if you don't like the person, why are you friends with them?" thing, only....I do like the material, it's the people I often can't stand. Versus being in fan studies where we all take delight in one another, you know?

Anyhow, I'm home for a week, and then next week is going to be much looked forward to V A C A T I O N . I plan to only read for pleasure, write for pleasure, sleep, loaf about, and generally do nothing. I am so excited!

I sent my dissertation revisions to my chair on Sunday afternoon. She is pleased and off on a research trip, so she won't get actual comments to me until the end of the month. In the mean time I need to write some emails to my committee to start organizing my defense. This is like a ten minute thing I need to do that I haven't done because of a combination of anxiety and exhaustion. 

I am ridiculous and I know it and yet also helpless to do otherwise.

But HEY at least I get Thursday off! 

The little bib that could got
a rare honorable mention for the MLA Prize for a Bibliography, Archive, or Digital Project. It's extra exciting because the actual winner is this huge international opus, and then there's us with our feminist rage, can-do attitude, and shoestring-budget-via-digital-storefront.

Snip from the press release:

The Women in Book History Bibliography represents everything that is best about book
history and associated fields at the present moment—openness, inclusiveness, and a
willingness to protect and recuperate the past—while looking forward to a future for the
discipline that is comprehensive in its representation of the book and all those who
contributed their material labor to its many makings. The editors, Cait Coker and Kate
Ozment, have extended the culture of inclusion and openness within the field by
supplementing the resource with several forms of social engagement and responsiveness,
allowing the important recovery work of the project to evolve with the field and
reinforcing the fact that recovery work is necessarily ongoing and discursive.

I am damn proud!

1) Amazon is in talks to save Lucifer and my fingers are crossed SO HARD.

2) My Academic Sister and I sent off a book proposal a few weeks ago and we heard back--they are "delighted" with the project and want to see the mss when we have it. Huzzahs!!!

3) I got a chapter for a forthcoming collection back for only minor edits, which was an immense relief.

3b) I SO overbooked myself this summer with deadlines and such. I don't know how I always do that, except that I always do. (Pretty sure it's my inability to say "no." But still.)

4) After much leeriness, I bought Moira Greyland's book The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon, an abuse survivor's memoir of her parents, SFF author Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband Walter Breen. It's a harrowing read, and I'm glad to have it to read against Bradley's work; I still love her books, but I think art with problematic artists has to be in dialogue with one another for the reader/viewer. (Also it helps that the money goes to Greyland and not MZB's estate.) That said, while I am in sympathy with Greyland as a survivor, I think it's problematic af that she conflates all queer people with her abusers, and waaay too often she goes into anti-feminist and fat-phobic rhetoric when talking about her parents, SFF culture, paganism, and so on. But I also get that it comes from a profoundly fucked up place in her head as a survivor, so more than anything I just pity her.

I've been wanting to write a post on various things going on, but have put it off because there just always seems to be too much. Anyway, here's a bunch of random things:

We were worried our car had died and were fretting because Now Is Not The Right Season to figure out getting a new car, but luckily, the autoshop diagnosed a problem with the engine and alternator, and it only cost a couple hundred books and they promise there's plenty of life in the old girl yet. 

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I finished my first proper fic in ages for space_wrapped !! fritz42  was such an awesome beta and cheerleader and I am so happy! Will be posting on Dec. 23.

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[Insert disjointed incoherent thoughts on how stressful and difficult holiday shopping and preparation is.] 

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Was so astonished and relieved about Doug Jones's Senate win last night. Was texting with Todd, who said that his brother texted him to say "This is proof that God exists and God hates Roy Moore." Todd wrote back "Maybe this is proof that God is a fourteen-year-old girl."

Another political note: I am so fucking tired of all of my [white, straight] friends complaining about sad and tired politics makes them. Bitches, how do you think everyone ELSE feels? But that's why you have to just keep fighting. [N.B. These are the same people who will share BLM stuff on social media but don't appear to have any actual POC friends. Both of which require a whole lot unpacking, mental acrobatics, whatever.]

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Outlander season finale feels: OMG I love how they fixed the Willoughby plotline, and I hope the next season(s) can similarly fix the issues with race in the translation from books to screen, because I don't think I can handle white people shrugging off the genocide of Native Americans and slavery with a shrug of "well what can we do, nothing's gonna happen in 70 years anyway." I've already had a couple arguments with people about this on social media where they use the whole "men of their time" argument that never fails to piss me the fuck off, because it does such a disservice to everyone who was "ahead of their time" and, you know, ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY.

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Ongoing in Our Weird Old House: We're working on the master bathroom--will be doing most of the work--ourselves--and discovered that the previous owners had at some point converted a full bath to a 3/4 bath. So...that project just became a bit more complicated, but it's still kind of a cool thing to find.

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A while back I got a job rejection letter that basically went, seriously, "You are so qualified and very impressive, but we're not going to interview you. Good luck with life!" Which, *flail* so I'm going to try to volunteering with my local library just to try to get a toe in the door and also hopefully build in some opportunities so I can renew my CA in a few years. I had a good meeting yesterday with the admin who coordinates thing and will likely be doing social media stuff for them for a bit. So, here's hoping.

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My diss. I'm trying to finish a chapter and....it is so hard. Why is it so hard? Still continuing on, anyway.

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Will have some sort of year-end post for year's end, hopefully.