Day 6 (/7) - Words to Live By

Started my new job yesterday and fell asleep until after midnight and then dawdled around and so a double-post today. From this list.

I find this prompt just a little cheesy even though I am often moved by words. I guess I find it slightly embarrassing to imagine myself as being so grandiose as to have "words to live by." I think that in the past I wouldn't have had an issue with this. Back when Facebook had a "favorite quotes" section that was somewhat prominent, I went through a period where I had it full of quotes from TV shows that struck me as funny or inspiring. When I say that Doctor Who saved my life in some ways, it was the big sort of monologue speeches about standing up for the right thing that stirred my emotions back into a functional range that let me grit my teeth and keep going.

One of my favorite quotes from Doctor Who in recent times is: "Fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly; fear can make you kind."

I even put that on my graduation cap for grad school even though in almost immediate retrospect it made little sense as a graduation cap. It was more just that I didn't do anything to my first one and those words felt like armor to me, because the person I had to sit next to at my grad school graduation had really hurt me.

Anyway, recently (also on facebook during one of my very rare scrolls when I happen to look after sending something to one of my parents) I saw the profile of a girl I went to high school and part of university with. Apparently there's a little tagline you can put under your profile pic now? I don't remember the exact context, but i really liked this quote:

You'll never regret being kind.

And I guess I would like to live that way.

Day 7 - Couldn't Live Without

From this list.

I couldn’t imagine living without…

... air conditioning.

There was a time when this list would have included the internet too. While I very much don't want to live without the internet, though, I guess I have reached a point in time when I don't necessarily feel like the notion of an alternate reality where it was irrelevant would be the worst alternate reality. I care about the internet more for its utility in allowing me to meet some of the people I know than as an abstraction now, and I think that's at least slightly healthier.

Air conditioning is one of those things that I just wouldn't want to do without, though. When I get overheated I am miserable to a point of non-functioning. It makes it difficult to breathe and I often get piercing headaches. I could even manage without heat during the cold months much better than I could with no air conditioning at all. I've been in New England in the summer a couple of times, and people are crazy when they try to live with no means of cooling, not even a good window unit. I don't care how infrequently you need it. Why would you do that if you can afford a place to live??? I don't get it, man.

Oh, and also indoor plumbing. I'm sure that there are worse things to live without, but yeah. Showers are lovely. If I had to live without indoor plumbing, I would at the very least hope toilet paper existed... Not to TMI anyone but y'know. I really like survival stories, but that's one of the fridge horror things for me.

Snowflake Challenge 2020 #4

Challenge #4

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

For a long time now, I have been so out of touch with myself emotionally that it was hard to have goals that felt like they were anything but folly. Thankfully, partly due to more consistent use of this platform, I have started to feel as though making goals is less inherently stupid.

I don't have that many, and I still feel a bit pretentious, but here are a few:

1. I would like to start a YouTube channel by the end of the month of January.
2. I want to finish some fics, especially maybe some longer fic ideas that have floated around my brain for, sometimes, over a decade.
3. I want to find some kind of stable employment/income.
4. I want to make fanvids again.
5. Perhaps not this year, but I would like to be healthy and energetic and stable enough to be able to make decisions like getting and caring for pets without parental consent in the nearish future.