I have a strange inability to hold onto stamps.
Whenever I realize I need to send a letter, the first thing I do is go to the envelopes. I think, This time I must certainly have put the stamps with the envelopes where they belong, right? No. Well, I rummage through my purse, I look in all the little side pockets. I discover old receipts and candy wrappers and things that I can no longer recognize as anything at all. And I don’t find any stamps.
I go through our ridiculously crowded tabletops. I discover CDs that I didn’t realize I had. Gift certificates left over from our wedding. Dust bunnies the size of gerbils. No stamps.
Eventually, I ask my husband to go out and get more stamps. He’s very kind and does, but I know he’s rolling his eyes at my chronic inability to keep the stamps I have. He really shouldn’t buy a whole book. Two will suffice.
This is a bit of an overdramatization, as this time the stamps were actually in my wallet and it didn’t come to that, but I would just like to blog here and now, for posterity’s sake, that this time, I put the stamps with the damn envelopes.
Our family has a small problem with putting things away after we’re done with them. Currently on our kitchen-table, in addition to a two-day-old mug of tea, an empty can of root beer and an empty glass of water, as well as the two letters that I’m trying to send out with those aforementioned stamps, are:
The manuscript to my novel. A Dress Barn gift certificate. A binder clip. The cable bill. My Nintendo DS, plugged in to the wall. A pot holder. A calculator. A set of four whiteboard markers. A grid for tabletop gaming that’s turned into our permanent table throw. A CVS bag containing highlighters and page tags that I bought for editing my novel and have seen very little use. A bound printout of a PDF of a game manual. Two six-sided dice. (Amazingly normal for the dice in our household.) A receipt from Cold Stone Creamery. A pad of graph paper with several pages sticking out. And what appears to be a miniature mecha with a guy riding in it, sitting on a black circular disc, a la the trophies in Smash Brothers. My jacket is draped over one of the chairs.
Our family needs to get its act together.
It takes two computers to run my life. This is because I’ve had the most amazing computer since about 2000, but that means it runs Windows 2000. It’s a wonderful computer on which I can do anything I want… except sync my iPod. I got a cute little iPod from my uncle after my original, old-as-the-hills, Mummy Returns of an iPod bit the dust. It’s a cute little iPod in the best shade of blue ever– Sonic the Hedgehog Chao blue — so we named him Omochao, after the only NPC that actually throws a fit if you abuse it. But it requires Windows XP to sync. So in order to get my butt to the gym in the morning, I have to do a bizarre back-and-forth between two computers, making sure all the right podcasts are downloaded and are synced, while running to the next room to get whatever I meant to online before the bus comes so I can get Omochao and me to the gym on time.
Needless to say, we use a lot of electricity in our household.
Here’s a little trick I do oh-so-well.
I sync my iPod. I disconnect my iPod. I get my coat. I go into my bedroom to get gloves and hat, since it’s getting cold out. I come back out. Cannot find my iPod.
Two seconds after disconnecting it, I cannot find my iPod.
Deciding that this stupidity is epic and worth blogging about, I look for the digital voice recorder I just stuffed in my purse. Can’t find it.
I put my hands in the pockets of my coat in distress.
Ah. There they both are.
Honestly, I’m too stupid to live. I am surprised I haven’t gotten run over by a bus.
Why am I here? I think I need to tell you.
I’m here because for a long while, I was part of a little corner of the Internet known as fandom.
You might think you know what fandom is. Being a fan, right? That’s easy enough. Except there’s a whole lot more to it. You might have heard of fan fiction, too.
Fandom is interacting with a fictional universe. Taking something you love- a TV show, a movie, an anime- and adding your little piece of reality to it. In addition to fan fiction, there’s fan art. There are fan videos. There’s meta, that bizarre amalgamation of commentary, analysis and creative contributions that makes such entertaining reading. But more than that, fandom is a community. The fan community is a warm, wonderful, intimate place, until you sow the seeds of your own destruction.
We’re a bunch of artists, at heart. There’s unspoken rivalry, competition, backstabbing, attention-grabbing, and merciless vendettas. Just like at any performing arts school.
Now, if you’ve followed me here from that corner of the net, you’re probably waiting for me to go on about all the people who made my life miserable there, and how they came down on me so hard and trashed me and forced me away. But that’s not why I left.
I left because of a comment I got that crystallized it all for me. Saying, “None of these people had it in for you. It was you, your need for attention and your whining, that made your fandom experience so horrible. You did it to yourself, and you alienated people who would have otherwise enjoyed your writing. You brought it on yourself.”
That person was right, except for one thing.
My fandom experience was not horrible.
My fandom experience was, for the most part, a wonderful, creative, energizing part of my life.
But it’s not the right place for me to be right now.
So on this blog you can pretty much expect me to continue to post my reactions to the latest episode of Heroes or the latest anime I watch. I won’t be writing any fanfic, though. Instead, I’m going to try to find my voice and see if there’s a reason for me to be talking out loud.
I’ve always had a very strong conviction that I have a voice worth hearing, that I have something special to say to the world. I hope that’s true.
Thanks for listening.
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