2023: Course adjustments

[schneefink]

Fic I wrote:
Infinite Amethyst Sounds, Young Royals, 1.8k of snapshots of a MCYT!Simon AU, written for DD
Voices From Beyond Life's Limits, Limited Life, 2.2k of Clockers-centric last episode content and my first time writing Life series/Hermitcraft. The amount of comments and kudos I got was fantastic encouragement to continue.
Crow Feathers, Dream SMP, 2.4k of post-canon Kristin/Philza, written for the H/C-exchange
Memories Of A Life Not Lived, Limited Life/Hermitcraft, 2.4k of post-Limited Life Cleo&Etho
Best Friend Summoning, Hermitcraft, Grian&Mumbo drabble
Preparations for a Perfectly Normal Diplomatic Visit, Hermitcraft, 2.7k of a Cleo-centric (pre-Cleo/Gem) fantasy&royalty AU, written for FIAB
Loop One Alliance, Double Life, 8k of Impulse going through time loops and having feelings about Bdubs, written for FIAB and definitely the story that stressed me out the most this year.
Dreaming of a Rainbow, A Day of Fallen Night – Samantha Shannon, 1.2k of Nikeya PoV snapshots, written for Yuletide

I posted over 20k words this year, feels good, and I'm happy with most of it. And also with the feedback I got, which is very nice. I participated in three exchanges, my record, tied with 2019.

I watched several movies (I especially enjoyed Dungeon and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), barely any TV shows (I can only recall Young Royals and One Piece rn) and read a few books but not that many either (among my favorites were Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty, and Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky.) I played a lot of Minecraft (mostly in the same vanilla singleplayer world I started last year), the only other game I played was Afterimage, which I enjoyed a lot. I didn't really feel fannish about any of those.

Instead, my main fandom this year was Hermitcraft/The Life Series. Still MCYT, but a different corner of it, connected through events like MCC and others. I'd heard about Hermitcraft, some of the Hermits were on MCC teams I watched etc, but last year I was still too occupied with the DSMP and other servers. But already in early February of this year I made post on hermitcraft saying "I don’t watch Hermitcraft yet [but this castle looks super cool, could you tell me where to start, just like, in theory]" so it really only was a matter of time. Then in March I watched Third Life, which features half Hermits, and then the other Life series seasons and then Limited Life while it was ongoing, and after that more and more Hermitcraft too, and though it took me a while to admit it, by summer I had fully fallen into Hermitcraft/Life Series fandom and was having a great time. I haven't posted much especially about Hermitcraft on my own DW journal but I watched a lot. "Normal" Hermitcraft, then for several months so many Decked Out 2 streams, I watched a dozen PoVs of Secret Life every week when that was ongoing recently… No wonder I had less time for TV shows etc., there's so much canon.
My favorites were and still are Scar, Grian, Mumbo, Cleo, and Etho. I also like Bdubs and Cub a lot, and Pearl, and Tango, and Doc, and Gem… I'll have to cut down on how much I'm watching once I'm working again probably; currently the server is on break anyway, we'll see.
Along with Hermitcraft/Life Series I still watched MCC when it was on, I watched other (mostly) Minecraft content by Hermits (older Etho series, Team Canada, some GIGS Phasmo etc.), I followed the QSMP mostly via osmosis and only watched less than a handful of streams, and occasionally watched various other Minecraft events/videos/streams (like speedrunning.)

I was glad to discover that there was a hermitcraft comm on DW and I helped revive it, which I'm proud of. It's not much but there's some regular activity now and I enjoy it. I'm a mod now, too, which is thankfully not that much work considering it's so tiny, and we're discussing what we want to do this year.

Speaking of things I want to continue this year, I succeeded in my goal to make at least one rec post each month, well done self. I think over half of them were for MCYT fandoms so they didn't have much of an audience on my flist and I somehow didn't think to crosspost, but people have been very nice in my recent post, that was very encouraging and I definitely want to do that again. Hopefully with crossposting this time, even.

As for platforms, I spent a lot of time on DW still but also a lot more on Tumblr and eventually on Twitch due to my new fandom. I even managed to talk to some people! I found a friend on Tumblr I'm now regularly talking about HC with on Discord, it's great. I only lurk on Twitter though because I'm not touching Twitter MCYT fandom with a ten-foot pole. MCYT is still a strange fandom in several ways for me, it's very different depending on the sub-fandom and platform, many places are obsessed with "creator boundaries"… I'm still getting used to it.

I also did some other crafting! Most notably a very simple Scar cosplay for Vienna Comic-Con, but I still had fun with it. I might do that again. Speaking of cons, I want to go to VIECC again but most importantly I'll be going to Worldcon 2024 in Glasgow, I really look forward to that.


As for non-fannish things, this year another war started not very far away, and with that and other things it's really hard not to become pessimistic. I'm trying.

Personal life things: I quit my job! Finally; I'd been thinking about it for many months. In spring I had my official graduation ceremony for the bachelor degree I finished the previous year, and I also switched to working full-time, i.e. 40 hours. However, even though I didn't have to study for any exams anymore, that soon proved to be exhausting, and in summer I went back to 30 hours. Then after a wonderful and relaxing summer vacation in Corfu with D at some point I asked myself "do I really want to stay at this office for another several years?", and when the answer was an immediate "definitely not," I decided to quit before I would start the official tax advisor exams. I stayed until the next deadline and then took my leftover vacation days. I'd quit without having another job lined up, but as expected finding a new one wasn't difficult. I agreed to start in January, so with that I ended up having three months off work in total. That was nice.

I continued regularly playing "Black Cat" aka cat D&D, and this year that went from "the group of friends I play cat D&D with" to "my friend group I play TTRPG with and regularly meet up with to do other things," I'm very happy about that. Games nights, movie nights, other trips and events - I even organized a birthday party for myself!, for the first time after several years of not bothering and also not really knowing who to invite. Me asking D at LB's birthday party over two years ago if I could join his new campaign was one of the best and luckiest things I've done.

I also had a crush on someone, for the first time in, uh, I don't remember? Actual "do they like me?" butterfly feelings and all that. It eventually went away but it felt good that it happened, if that makes sense. Later I signed up for a dating app again and so far early results are promising.

DD had first a family and then a personal emergency this year and stayed with her family for several months twice. I lived alone for longer than I have in many years – ever, maybe, come to think of it? – and I didn't like it very much. I especially hate having to cook for only myself, I'm usually too lazy to bother with anything "fancy" if it's just for myself and it's just a lot less fun. I started to get used to it eventually, at least a little.
DD only confirmed that she was moving out on January 2nd of this year, technically, but I was fairly certain it was coming a few weeks earlier.

I managed to stick to my New Year's resolution of going running once every week, except for the weeks when I was sick and a couple of weeks in summer when I substituted swimming, and in the second half of the year I even managed to go more than once for a while. My dad retired around the same time when I quit my job and until I finally caught Covid for the first time in early December we met up once a week to go running together, that was very nice. Regular physical activity was definitely good for me.


2024 started with some big changes: DD moved out, and I started a new job. It'll definitely be an exciting year! I need to figure out what to do with my apartment, and I'm planning to do the first of the tax advisor exams in fall, fingers crossed for that.

For the past several years one of my New Year's resolutions was to go on at least one date, and I never succeeded; but this year I already went on two dates, go me. I'm not going to go on a second date with either of the people but I still had a good time, so my plan is to go on a few more dates, fingers crossed.

I also want to continue and ideally increase my regular physical activity, I want to continue doing regular things with friends, and I want to figure out a chores routine that works better for me.


Thank you so much for being here for this past year. Virtual hugs, and all the best to you and your loved ones for 2024.