hey fashion doll

Now, don't get me wrong: my mom is a fucking amazing woman. She basically ran off and threw away all of her parents' hopes and dreams to marry my dad and have my brother and me. She's smart as hell, clawed her way through college and into a six-figure job, works her ass off, and is such a good writer, it hurts sometimes. (She's also more than a little crazy, probably clinically bipolar, and a victim forever, but that's not what we're here to talk about.)

But she's also now 50-something and miserable, stuck working 80 hours a week in a thankless job, and her whole life outside of work is shopping and ordering my stepdad around. She's insecure, she doesn't stand up for herself except when it's safe, canNOT be alone with her thoughts, and she constantly needs validation to feel...well, anything. And I know I don't want that. At all. Ever.

I need to figure out how to figure out what I want from my life. I know I love music, and sound, and learning, and doing, and solving puzzles. But what does that mean? How do I take all of that and make it work with what I've spent the last ten years wasting my life working on developing and growing a skillset in? Does it, even? Does anything besides my understanding of how businesses work actually translate to a more creative landscape? And if so, how do I convince potential employers of that?

I saw "Begin Again" this weekend, and I left it feeling so inspired. But inspired to do what? Nothing. Nothing tangible, anyway; nothing specific. How do you translate inspiration into action? How do you translate inspiration into reality? Somewhere along the way, I lost that. I don't know how to pick it back up. How do I pick it back up?

I feel sad and stressed and completely overwhelmed.
I need like, a whole weekend by myself but can't have one.
I want to write about so many things but can't figure out where to start or find the mental energy.

But now it's bedtime, so I can't figure any of it out anyway.

(But I'll survive, because I always do, because I have to. That's just the way it works.)

Woke up this morning with what I can only describe as a crushing sadness in my heart and spent three-quarters of my shower crying. I know it's because of the dream I woke up from: back in my grandmother's apartment like, now (years after she passed), with my cousin and my mom (of all people), and trying to reclaim some of her stuff that was, somehow, still there, dusty, neglected. (Doesn't take a dream analyst to figure that one out, though I would be curious to learn what the hell my mom was doing there.)

Started crying anew thinking about work, realizing I'm now just over a month from my ten-year anniversary. That's an accomplishment, sure, but only if you overlook the fact that I've wanted to get out for what, five years? That's less an accomplishment than an ode to the status quo and an inability to figure out what I want.

I need to get out of my head today so I can pick myself up and get to work. Sheer force of will can work miracles, lol.

If I'm going to come back and do this thing, this journalling/blogging/emodumping thing I've been putting off for a long time, there are some life updates I feel like I need to provide first.

• El finally lost the fight two weeks ago (today, actually, haha). She'd been fighting and fighting and fighting, and then she went into the hospital about a month ago and there was just finally, truly, nothing more they could do for her. She went home and had a palliative home nurse for a few days, then went into hospice on Monday, then by Wednesday, she was gone. I didn't get to see her, but the last time I did wasn't that long ago, and she wasn't herself before she passed anyway, so it's probably for the best. I was kind of a wreck about it for a few days, but about the way Mom told me and handled it, haha, not actually about her passing. I think I'm only now, thinking about it, starting to really process. Oh, well.
  
• Wow, it's been a really long time since the last time I gave any sort of life update here: I am now an aunt twice over. If you're friends with me on Facebook or Instagram, you've probably seen them both at this point, but if not, there are plenty of pictures to be seen. I will gladly foist them upon you if you're interested.
  
• In that same vein, J's moved up north and we've been living together in NJ since September 2012. We have a ginger kitty named Zak who is a royal pain in the ass, but since he was named after Geoffrey Zakarian, that's probably to be expected. (Poor kitty.) We have hardly been on vacation since we got him because we're afraid to leave him alone, even though he does just fine without us when we do and he's alone 9+ hours a day as it is.
  
• I'm coming up on 10 years with the firm, and I'm still in the same job I have been forever, with the same boss, same team, same everything. I have a new boss' boss, though, who after a single conversation moved me out of our primary office and into a hoteling situation where I'm in New York part of the time and the much, much closer office near J's work the rest of the time, so my commutes are generally much better and I'm less miserable most of the time. Clients still suck, and boss still sucks, and coworkers still kinda suck, but I don't have to deal with them directly nearly as much as I used to, and I'm getting to do new and interesting things. And at the very least, my commute two or more days a week is less than five minutes long, so I'm getting to spend much more time at home than I used to.
  
• I am the co-lead of the firm's local pride chapter, and as part of that, I get to do a bunch of cool things, but mostly, right now at least, I get to try to convince myself that telling at least a part of my story to people in July would be a good thing.
  
• I've been a part of the partners working group for the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference, and it's been somewhat of a hassle, haha. But seeing what goes on behind the scenes is making me really think about trying to come up with a workshop of my own for next year's conference. There's a lot of need for partner content, and if no one else will do it, why can't I?
  
• I've also been considering starting/writing blog posts about my transition as J's transitioned, but I'm not entirely sure where I would start. "The beginning," you say, and that sounds all well and good, but the truth is I've already forgotten the beginning. I'm also still having all the same issues around ownership I've had throughout this whole process, which at some point I may get into, but not right this second. I posted this on FB and am sharing it here now for those of you who haven't seen it, because it's pretty dead on, except for the fact that J's always said I should feel free to tell whoever I want, lol.
  
• This newfound interest in blogging is at least in small part attributable to the fact that my teenage cousin is now a HuffPo Teen blogger, and I am both jealous and in awe of her maturity and articulateness. I'm also kind of stalking her a little bit on the internets, but only in the best, non-creepy way. Kids these days, I tell you what! But seriously, only partly attributable. The rest is a combination of a great many (truly not-at-all creepy) things. But you should still read her blogs anyway, because her latest one is about anxiety and I know a lot of people who used to read this here have at least a passing interest in the subject.
  

Anyway. That catches us up for now and are the key things that should be helpful if/when I start posting again regularly.
~a

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload/link) 5 songs you love that begin with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

I can't resist a meme that enables the stealing sharing of music, so I asked sarken to prompt me. She gave me an M.

M IS HARD, OKAY. I LOVE ALL THE SONGS. And so, as per usual, I will break the rules of the meme just to be ornery.
However, KNOW THIS: I am deliberately leaving off Munich (Editors) and Mutiny, I Promise You (The New Pornographers) because they are already on ficmixes and you all know them both already. (And if you don't, you can comment and I'll post them anyway. :P)

Monday Morning Cold & My Hips (Erin McKeown)
The first: my Monday morning anthem. (7:50 I'm stopped behind a school bus filled with pubes
Wouldn't it be funny, I think, to sell the little fuckers 'ludes? WORD.) The second: a song about being a woman.

Mood to Burn Bridges, Margaret vs. Pauline, and Middle Cyclone (Neko Case)
Three very, very different songs from Neko. The first one is fun and funky, while the second two are moodier, prettier. And "Middle Cyclone..." i can't give up actin' tough/it's all that i'm made of/can't scrape together quite enough/to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that i need love. I...yeah.

Marrow and Modulation (Ani Difranco)
"Marrow"'s chorus just gets me every time, while "Modulation" makes poetry from music. Yes, you read that right: poetry from music, not the opposite.

Marry Me a Little (Company)
Ugh, I LOVE this musical, and this is one of my favorite songs. Cynical, romantic, and completely dysfunctional all at the same time.

Mood Swing (Luscious Jackson) and The Moneymaker (Rilo Kiley)
Two (sexy) dancing songs. Just to balance out all the srs bsns above.

Well done. Truly. I finally figured out how to quit you.

I just turned off my automatic payments and have no intention of giving LJ another cent ever again. I'll crosspost personal things for a while, since at this point, RL people are the only ones who don't have Dreamwidth accounts, but comments (as you can see) won't be open on LJ, and all fannish posts will be exclusively on DW.

I have a bunch of invite codes for anyone who wants to leave LJ and its just shoddy business practices behind, and I'd be happy to ask for more if I run out.

Seriously, guys, management over here kicks all kinds of ass, and it's just better.

ETA: I've also frozen all comments on my LJ until LJ comes up with a solution that lets me keep people from crossposting. Everything that's on LJ has been imported over to DW (along with several other journals from long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, hint hint!), so if there's something you're looking for/looking to comment and find you can't, feel free use this post to ask where it is over here.

Well folks, prompts and the battle post're both up for oxoniensis' Porn Battle X, so let the porning begin!

I've pulled out pundit (& politician) prompts below for anyone who might be interested. If I missed anything or if there's any related fandoms that should be included and aren't, let me know.

( Pundit Prompts )
( Crossover Prompts including Pundits )
( Politician Prompts )

Your eyes aren't deceiving you -- there are pretty much no fake-news prompts (or really PRT prompts, for that matter) this time around, which makes me sad. I may not be as active in fake-news fandom anymore, but it doesn't mean I don't still want them to play.

So even your writing muse has taken the month off, or hell, never existed in the first place, I wish each and every one of you a stroke of inspiration. Go forth and porn!

I, for one, do not share sarken's ambivalence about announcing thosestoriesplus. In fact, I'm pretty damn excited about it.

For those of you who've seen me snark on Twitter, my frustration with the frequent...shall we say "clubbiness" of fakenews_fanfic is pretty well-known. I mean, while the community's not unfriendly to the real news world, it's understandable that a community originally designed as a home for fake news fandom would have, you know, fake news as the focus of most of its postings, comments, members, et al. But that same focus has left some of us who love real news as much as (or more than) fake news feeling a little cold. And as the fandom's grown, its increase in size has created not a little bit of friction in what should be a happy, safe place for all, but especially the people who came to a fake news community expecting to find fake news fandom.

That's where thosestoriesplus comes in.

Simply put, I see thosestoriesplus as the real news counterpart/complement to fakenews_fanfic. It's not by any means intended to replace it; it's just a place for real news-specific discussion & fanworks to live and breathe. When I first went looking for real news fandom, it was almost impossible to find -- and, personally, without oxoniensis' porn battles, it never would've occurred to me to look to fake news fandom to find it. So all we're really trying to do is make a home that can be found more easily by writers, artists, vidders, podficcers, meta'ers, reccers, snarkers, lurkers, and whatever-else-people-are-doing-that-I-can't-think-of-right-now'ers.

If this interests you, stop by and say hello. Our (mostly standard but very flexible) policies're up for your viewing pleasure, and we're taking a poll to hammer out a few logistical things. If you don't like what you see, comment and tell us why -- there's almost nothing set in stone right now, and the more input we get, the better.

Finally (and only slightly pathetically), if you like what you see, pimp it. I know there are dark little corners of the internet I'm missing out on where there're awesome fangirls and boys making awesome things, and (to quote an unfortunately bad action movie anthem,) I don't want to miss a thing.

Thanks for reading. We now return you to our regularly scheduled...hell, IDEK what channel I'm on anymore. So here, have some dykey KStew and the cutest kitteh EVAR to tide you over until I figure it out.

ETA 06.23, 00.30: We've syndicated the feed on LJ, too, for people who spend most of their time on LJ but don't want to miss out. You can friend it at thosestories_dw.

As usual, I was much more excited about the idea of signing up for kink_bingo than I am about actually having signed up.

( Card & discussion lie within. )

Suggestions and thoughts welcome, as always. ;)

I actually have a real entry in me somewhere right now, but I have to find the quiet time to get it out. So for now all you get is this. :P

Title: Dream of Quiet Songs
Fandom: RPF
Pairing: Ana Marie Cox/Rachel Maddow, Ana Marie Cox/Chris Lehmann, Ana Marie Cox/OFC
Rating: PG-13.
Word Count: ~2550
Summary: Three times Ana came out, whether her partner wanted her to or not.
Notes: Written for lgbtfest, prompt 241: Any fandom, any character(s), one partner wants to be 'out' and one doesn't think that's important. Many thanks to jamapanama for the hand-holding and a million and one read-throughs.

Disclaimer: All copyrighted material referred to are the properties of their respective owners. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual. In other words: I mean no harm, please don't sue.

( In hindsight, maybe dedicating 'I Want You' to a cheerleader in front of the entire school wasn't such a good idea. )