My decade

[nonionay]

Yeah everyone's doing it, but it was good for me to review my life.

2000
The millennium was low-key, with me and my roommate, Heather, and my dearest friend, Ilsa, sitting in my tiny, tiny living room watching something on tv. Probably a movie, since we didn't get any stations. Just before midnight, Ilsa left to walk home on her own, presumably to open the new millennium engaged in her own thoughts.
That was my first apartment. That year I went to Ireland (twice. Once with Heather, and once with Ilsa.) I traversed western Europe, partly by myself, visited Rome for the Jubilee. I dated someone for the first time and discovered I despise interpersonal drama.

2001
All I remember about 2001 was that September 11 changed me. I became harder and suddenly interested in politics. I watched C-SPAN. I started paying attention to the world.
Wait, I remember! 2001 was the year I met plunderpuss! And, I helped found the second ever bdsm discussion group on a public university campus.

2002
I graduated and got a boyfriend and probably talked way too much about my sexuality in public. Thanks to inspiration from Sän's writing, I started the story that launched The Big World and my current work.

2003
I kept working as a maid or janitor and other subsistence-living level jobs. It was the poorest time of my life. I got a house with J and kept dabbling with my story and online critique groups.

2004
My relationship got complicated (but still good, until it got bad) and at the end of the year, J left, just as Sän convinced me to do Nanowrimo and I discovered that maybe I should actually try to write seriously. I met kehrli!

2005
After J left, I really started to focus and discipline myself. This where I really started to change from INFP to INTJ. I became hard. I realized I needed a new social circle, so I started hanging at The Black Drop.
I lived on my own, worked the swing shift as a janitor. I dreamed up my stories while working, and wrote them down when I got home. Sän and Keffy and I would all stay up until 2 or 3am reading our work to each other. I decided my next step was to go to a convention, and so I did. At Foolscap, I discovered Writers Weekend. And so Sän and I went to our first professional workshop.
I got a For Real Full Time Job With Benefits.
I think this was when Keffy became my roommate.

2006
Kept writing, kept going to cons. Watched Keffy play Final Fantasy.

2007
Was this the year we met kaerfel?
Still writing, still going to conventions.

2008
Got a house with Keffy, Chelsea, Chloe and our newly imported roommate, awriter. I acclimatised myself to cats.
I finally healed the wounds left by the breakup with J.
Still writing, still going to conventions.

2009
This year, I met a whole bunch of people at Radcon, and that seemed to mark a turning point in my social life. Suddenly I was part of a circle, and this year has been about me integrating myself into that circle. I've got a collective sense of identity, but I don't do well in big groups, so my adapting has been a big thing for me.
World Fantasy over Halloween marks an even bigger change for me, for all sorts of reasons, mostly social.
Also, I discovered I can write short stories and poems.

I'm not much richer than I was in 2000, but I'm way, way wiser. I still live like a college student (roommates, not much money, everything I own is second hand) but I like it that way. At least my house isn't full of holes like all the other ones. It is grown-up house!
I started the decade full of self-hate and social awkwardness, but now I feel pretty confident. I never imagined I could be a writer, but here I am. I do worry about my finances (mainly for when I'm old. I don't have a 401K or anything. I think I've got 300$ in savings right now.) But I've still got time, right?

My immediate goal is to get Green Night polished and ready to send out by the end of the New Years weekend. I finished the first draft last year at New Years. I can't believe it's taken me this long to polish it. I know I took some big breaks to do other stuff, though. I have no idea if its any good, but dammit, it's going out into the world. So far, I've only sent novels to agents and editors if I actually met them at cons. Green Night is going to go out to complete strangers.

Comments

[awriter.livejournal.com]

I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed for Green Night. <3

[kenscholes.livejournal.com]

A lovely snapshot of your decade. :)

[spencimusprime.livejournal.com]

Does this mean I have to read Green Night by the end of the New Year's Weekend?

[criada.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't do that to you! No, it means I need to have it ready to send out to you by the end of the weekend. You will ideally have it read by the end of January.