Long time, no blog. Most of you should already know that I am still, in fact, alive, seeing as I do occasionally update my Facebook and Instagram pages. (Good grief, I didn't even have an Instagram last time I posted, did I?) Lots of reasons not to blog, chiefest being that after a certain point giving an overview of what I've been up to all this time got rather daunting... second of which being that my computer was ancient and cranky and REALLY did not like doing anything involving... well, anything, but the Blogger interface and Word were chiefest among them (closely followed by anything containing video, or, apparently, accounting). So really, ALL of my internet outreach was limited to what was easy to do with a phone for like a year and a half.
But! I got a new computer, it's very shiny and streamlined and full of apps that do nice things like play podcasts for me, so now it is once again possible for me to edit a document as fast as I can type/click if I so choose, and enough time has passed that I figure I can be super vague about my whereabouts with minimal guilt. I bring you: the time since my last blog, mostly by month and a few other arbitrary intervals of time, trying to mostly keep to short single-sentence list-form but progressively failing more and more as the list goes on:
June 2015
Second and third weekend of Log Jam - not a financial success, but I reconnected with a couple old friends, met some new cool people, and learned a few things about setting up a vendor space, so overall I'd call it a positive experience.
July 2015
Death of beloved pet bunny rabbit, Squirt.
Freefall 9, first Freefall with new event organizers (turned out great, still sorting some bits of canon, but they love the LARP and are really good at handling high-attendance events).
August 2015
Death of beloved pet bunny number two, Bubbles.
GenCon, helping run the Here At The End LARP demo.
September - October 2015
I swear something happened here, but... honestly, I don't seem to have any clear memories of noteworthy things. Start of busy season at work, cleanup from summer fun, prep for TeslaCon.
November 2015
TeslaCon - weird headspace for this one, I was super behind on the new costume pieces I was working on for the con, and spent most of the time sewing (both at my parents' house delaying our arrival at the con every morning, and actually at the con while I supposed to be having fun), and also was very mirgaine-prone the whole weekend.
December 2015
Grandfather dies a week before Christmas - I responded by going full tilt Elf Mode in an effort to hold the holiday together.
January 2016
Grandpa Bob's funeral, immediately followed by death of David Bowie - Bowie is worth mentioning because his work is a major part of my psyche/coping mechanism, and getting that news as I was falling asleep after Bob's second interment ceremony was a straw+camel sort of devastating, but also Blackstar (followed by select portions of Ziggy Stardust) then turned into a major tool for finally getting around to mourning & subsequent mental recovery.
February 2016
Another round of Deeplight vending.
March - April 2016
Artemis Armada 2 - I got to build sweet sweet space opera costumes for a LARP integrated into the home convention for the awesome bridge simulator game! I really should get photos and stuff posted about this on my website, I'll edit in a link when I get that finished.
May-June 2016
Again, I'm... not actually sure what I did all last summer? Like... I know I did some small landscaping and gardening projects. Worked on a commissioned piece (see August 2016 for details). Got a nice hooping routine down and made good fitness strides. But these were more just quiet habitual things, spread out over a long period of time, so it feels an awful lot like I did nothing... which really describes most of 2016 (another factor in not picking the blog back up), but it's really glaring for these months, because I can't pinpoint any events or milestones to punctuate the grind.
July 2016
Freefall X!
August 2016
Finished a kick-ass custom warrior princess dress for a friend to wear at Burning Man (an awesome process that began when I was posting progress shots of the Armada build, which is a nice reminder that social media presence does help). She got some great pictures of it in the wild, should be adding them to my website soonishly.
September 2016
Somewhere in here (maybe in August, maybe in October), I rejigger the Etsy listings for my leg wraps, triggering a general-purpose sales boost, which is awesome. Think it only averages out to like, an order a week, but it's a semi-steady stream, which is great. Hopefully, I'll be able to do much the same to my other listings soon, now that my computing power is on point.
October 2016
NrdMobile One, a 2001 Chevy Cavalier we got for $150 and a lot of elbow grease/parts, breaks her hip and needs to be put down. NrdMobile Two is an $800 2001 Ford Taurus that is mostly mechanically sound, but the floor is rusting through.
Also I turned 30, and still haven't decided whether to have a crisis or begin approaching my life with newfound clarity and maturity.
November 2016
TeslaCon! First year getting a room at the con hotel, rather than driving from my parent's house, and it was wonderful (although it did cut down on socialization time, because we didn't spend as much downtime just sort of lingering in public areas). Also I sprained my ankle fairly badly at the Saturday night masquerade ball, which sucked, and threw off my hooping game to an insane degree (took like 4 months to regain full range of motion).
December 2016
I do not remember this December. It is lost to the tide of lingering understaffing fatigue at my day job (skeleton crew staff AND busy season at the same time! For more than two months!) and an overambitious attempt at handmade Xmas gifts.
January 2017
Previous computer reaches such a level of obsoletion and decrepitude that it destroys entire days of productivity. Almost immediately upon deciding to get a new computer, the lid/hinge breaks, and I spend a week or two using a laptop that is held together by novelty flying pig duct tape.
February 2017
Moved into a keyholder position at my day job. It's nice, I got a $1.10/hour raise, schedule is a little more predictable, and I don't have to talk to as many people/be in Customer Service mode all shift, so it's a lot less exhausting. Although it does mean that during seasonal changeover (ie, now) and other busy times, I'm a lot more likely to put in a 5-day week, which is frustrating and exhausting.
March - April 2017
Second verse, same as the first... at least as far as bullet-point descriptions go. If I'd been actively blogging at the time, hoo boy could I have told some stories about Armada 3, but trying to go back and reconstruct it seems unnecessary. Suffice it to say, there were some hiccups, but overcoming them was really triumphant, overall a great time was had, and we have many fiendish plans for next year.
Spring & Summer 2017
Having a similar organizational problem to summer 2016, in that a bunch of stuff is/has been happening, but I'm already having a hard time pinpointing exact important moments and when they occurred.
Attended a couple really helpful hoop workshops, Freefall 11 happened and was great, my partner/manfriend/I-haven't-found-a-good-term-that-doesn't-make-people-ask-when-the-wedding-is started a band over the winter and I'm their sound engineer (first gig was Freefall).
Went on a stupid strict diet to track down some low-key food allergies/intolerances and now I feel (physically AND mentally) the best I've felt since... roughly when I graduated college? But the meal prep and food caution required to keep that feeling going takes enough time and energy that my time management capacity is fried and basically everything else I do (except, somehow, laundry?) has been extremely neglected.
Made a very grownup business decision and paid a graphic designer to rework my logo (result still pending, but I'm very excited to see what they come up with).
I really whiffed a deadline for a commissioned project - a custom trapeze bag for a very awesome circus performer that practices at the space I do my hoop stuff at. The penultimate step, basically the last element that actually needed designing before final construction, went so sideways that it stopped making sense to me, and I had to set the project aside for a few weeks before I could look at it without my mind twisting itself into knots. Have made some sense of the situation, and am back to work on the project... hopefully I'll have it done before the client needs to travel with her trapeze again.
...And now you're all caught up. My current state: very busy. Hopefully, I'll manage regular-ish small updates from here.
