𝔞 𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔶 𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔣𝔞𝔯𝔢𝔴𝔢𝔩𝔩 𝔱𝔬 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔩𝔡 𝔬𝔣 𝔓𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔞𝔫𝔞𝔨𝔱𝔦𝔡𝔢𝔰.

Teaching:

Nothing! School's out, and my creative writing workshop series is done. Yay!

Learning:

Didn't do any DuoLingo this week, and didn't attend any workshops or anything either.

Listening:

Nothing really.

Reading:

After a brief pause, I'm back to The Raven Cycle. Book 3! I really love these books. Honestly, I'm kind of whatever about the actual plot, and I'm not even head over heels about the characters, but I really enjoy the world and atmosphere Stiefvater has created here. Plus, I think her writing is just really good "at the sentence level," and I feel like at this point in the series she's having more and more fun with turns of phrase and little stylistic choices. Yeah, this series has been such a pleasure to read. 

Watching:

More BBT. We've made it to the Mayim Bialik era.

Writing/other:

We've been in Paris this week! T. had a conference, and I tagged along for a vacation. I find that traveling is always really overwhelming and overstimulating at first, and this trip was no different, but eventually I got my bearings. We didn't do much touristy sightseeing stuff--T. lived here for a while, so she's seen/done all that stuff, and I can't stand crowds and whatnot, especially in the heat--but we ate a lot of vegan food (some really good, some mediocre) and did some nice bebopping around. The conference organizers also planned an outing to this little playing card museum, which turned out to be really cool--especially the tarot exhibits. It's been a pleasant experience overall, but we're ready to go home. 

One thing that made me really excited though: so a while ago I discovered this RP board set in Paris in the late 1800s. It's the typical supernatural stuff, but I liked the idea of writing in that setting, so I dove in, adapting a couple characters of mine for that world. Unfortunately, the site was pretty inactive, so I sort of faded out after completing one thread and having another two left hanging. But then, after *months* of sitting there unresponded-to, an open thread I started got a reply! Right before we left for Paris! It felt serendipitous, and more than that, it made me really excited to retrace my characters' footsteps around the city. That was really fun, and it also helped me feel kind of grounded in Paris when we arrived. I shared some pics on the Discord server, and got excited to dive back into that world. Unfortunately, I quickly remembered why I kinda quiet quit in the first place. It's still pretty much just two people threading with each other, and very minimal OOC chatter. Just kinda...dead. It's a shame!

Anyway, this small experience made me realize a few things:

I've been *really* in my head about my "creative output" lately. Really feeling like I should be "putting myself out there" more, or at least trying to. I've got all these spoken word poems I've written--maybe I should try to turn them into a little book and get it published. Maybe I should build a website. Maybe I should make a zine.  Maybe I should try to make another webcomic, or pick up the one I dropped. Maybe maybe maybe. But I recognize that all of these impulses are based less in a need to create and share something I feel is "valuable," and more in a deep feeling of inadequacy, a need for perceived legitimacy, external validation, whatever. And I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with wanting those things, and I think everyone who "puts their work out there" has a variety of motivations for doing so...but I don't feel great about the "neediness" of these impulses, and the shame-filled sense that I "should have something to show for myself" as a "creative" person nearing my mid-40s. I don't want to be driven by these impulses, and besides, when I actually think about doing any of the things I mentioned above, I feel kind of...heavy, resistant, gross. I'd like to explore those feelings more, but for now, I'm just noticing them.

On the other hand, when I got that reply to my months-old open thread, and when I got the idea to trace my character's walking routes around Paris, I got *so excited!* It made me think about the kind of creative work, and the kind of creative community, I enjoy and crave. I really like RPing, and I really like the idea/experience of creating something for--but also *with*--a small group of people. There are lots of other things I like about RPing, which I've already written about, but I guess for now I'm just noting the differences in my experiences/perceptions of "sharing my work" in these different ways. It's weird how the idea of publishing something--in a book, on a website, whatever--feels like both a way of gaining some kind of broader external validation and, at the same time, a kind of obscurity (i.e. a dusty book crammed on the bottom shelf of the poetry section in the local bookstore, along with countless others), while RPing, or writing fic in a niche fandom, feels both more obscure (at most, only a handful of people will read what I write) but also more nourishing and fulfilling (having fun, meaningful engagement with that handful of people).

More to think about here--and I sense I'm falling into some reductive black-and-white thinking (obviously trying to publish a book of poetry and RPing aren't mutually exclusive), or else missing/misunderstanding something basic and significant about the idea of making and sharing stuff, but for now, this is where my head is.

Teaching:

Nothing really. Last week of classes, so just babysitting and festivities. I really dislike any part of teaching that doesn't involve just being in a classroom with kids and, y'know, teaching, so weeks like this are always rough. But it's done, yay! 

Also played the last session of the year with the little D&D group. I've been stringing together a kinda chaotic little homebrew thing since this handful of kids expressed interest in playing back in 7th grade...I keep expecting they'll lose interest, but they haven't yet, and they just finished 9th grade. Some players have disappeared, but the core group remains, and they remain fairly invested. It's kind of poignant too because I get the sense that they may not actually hang out too much together at this point, and yet they keep coming together for these games. Anyway, right now we're doing an abridged/modified Dungeon of the Mad Mage thing that I've tacked onto the campaign; it's been a bit boring so far, and I find that in the more dungeon crawly adventures the kids kinda default to video game mindset, just wanting to speed-run and clear rooms, but that's to be expected. I also feel like I haven't been doing a great job as a DM in giving them many opportunities for character development and relationship-building...that's something I want to prioritize next year.

Outside of school, did another creative writing workshop at the Artsy Personal Development NGO this weekend. I was sort of dreading it, but I felt good and satisfied afterwards.

Learning:

Slacked off on my DuoLingo Romanian this week, and didn't really read or listen to anything in Romanian either. Did go to another session in the somatic movement workshop series, though, and those are all in Romanian, so I guess that counts. The workshop was fun, and again, brought up some little insights here and there. At one point we got sent into breakout rooms with partners and we were invited to dance, on camera, to a song of our choice. I thought I'd feel much more nervous and uncomfortable with that than I actually did; I enjoyed it, actually. I chose this song. Again, I feel like some Gender Stuff is coming up for me in these sessions, and I'd like to sit down and try to process that a bit more, or, ideally, talk about it with the instructor, but that feels a little dicey--you never know how people feel about that kind of stuff here.

Listening:

Didn't really listen to much music this week, though did put on a Stars of the Lid album as I was reading on the balcony a couple times.

Listened to a bunch of episodes of this podcast Botanical Studies of Internet Magic. As the name suggests, it's a bit twee and woo-y, and it doesn't 100% resonate with me, but it's given me some things to think about in terms of my relationship to my creativity--specifically in terms of how and why I share my creative work, or don't. Maybe I'll write a longer post about it when I get caught up.

Reading:

Finished Doxology. It felt like a *very* cynical book overall, and I was pretty uninterested in the plot that developed in the last quarter or so, but I still enjoyed reading it overall. Like I said last time, I feel like it explores the cultural/ideological differences between Generations X and Z in a pretty thoughtful way. I also really appreciated the dialogue, and the fact that most of the characters seemed to speak in a similar way, with this strange mix of irony and earnestness and referentiality (and often, unfortunately, crass misogyny or ableism) that I found most touching when it seemed like some kind of coping mechanism. It sort of reminded me of this line from Chris Kraus' I Love Dick: "The Ramones give 'Needles and Pins' the possibility of irony, but the irony doesn't undercut the song's emotion, it makes it stronger and more true." And yeah, that all feels very Gen X.

Just about done with Jenny Erpenbeck's novel Kairos. The plot itself is kinda unremarkable: Hans, an older guy with a wife and kid starts an affair with a 19 year old girl, Katharina; they're both infatuated with each other, etc., but then she hooks up with a guy her age and Hans goes berserk with jealousy etc. Except it's set in East Germany in the late 80s, so like T. keeps saying, it feels like there's a metaphor in here somewhere. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the history of post-War Germany to really get it. I do see that the way Hans starts interrogating and surveilling and abusing Katharina, and his obsession with her deceit/betrayal/impurity/selfishness/etc. feels very...Nazi/Stasi-like, and I guess maybe there's something here about all of that cultural conditioning poisoning people's minds and their relationships etc...plus, Katharina's performance of submission and obeisance and contrition, plus her apparently genuine love for Hans, plus her secrecy, etc., feels somehow reminiscent of, I guess, the behavior/mentality of the mostly powerless individual in a totalitarian system etc...but I don't know, I feel like I'm missing something. 

Watching:

More Big Bang Theory. The sexism is still pretty hard to get past, but even so, I find myself developing a kind of fondness for this show, and I've actually started looking forward to watching it with T. at dinnertime and bedtime...

It was film festival week here, and I marked a whole bunch of movies I wanted to see, but only saw one: Embrace of the Serpent.

I probably wouldn't have seen it on my own, but my Poetry Buddy invited me, so yeah. I had a bit of a better feeling about it after listening to the director speak during the Q&A afterwards; he said some things about the importance of listening to indigenous voices, and the relevance of the story to contexts like Palestine and Tibet, and so on. I guess the main question the movie asks is how/to what extent can/should indigenous peoples/cultures "heal" the white supremacist imperialist capitalist nightmare system. But yeah, bleak.

Writing:

Wrote a few RP posts, that's it. I also wrote a post on here venting about some family drama, but quickly deleted it. I just don't feel right sharing that kind of stuff here, for a number of reasons. To be honest, I don't even feel totally right sharing *this* kind of stuff (what I'm reading etc.) here, and I constantly question my motivations for doing so. I feel like I keep coming across stuff online (such as in the abovementioned podcast) that celebrates sharing art and ideas, and almost presents doing so as some sort of imperative...especially in the age of A.I. and platforms, the argument seems to go, sharing messy/imperfect/"human" art and ideas, especially on one's own website, or in oldschool paper zines or something, is super important etc. And the impulse to withdraw, to hide, to be quiet, to not share--or to only share in this very closed way, as in a 1x1 RP--seems almost pathological. But this impulse is very strong in me--and I don't think it's *just* because of some neurotic fear of being "seen" or "known." Anyway, more to reflect on as I continue listening to that podcast, I think.

Other stuff:

As I alluded to above, I actually did some social stuff this week! I was really grateful that my Poetry Buddy invited me to the movie; we got ice cream and chatted for a while afterwards too, so that was nice. But related to what I wrote above about sharing things online, I'm feeling a really strong pull right now toward withdrawal from a lot of different areas of my life.