bluedalahorse | Entries tagged with about blue

I went to my first hour long yoga class today (outside of like the occasional session at a camp or something like that.) It ended up being pretty good! Challenging, and I will absolutely feel sore tomorrow, but good. I think I’ll keep going back to the studio I went to, as I have seven more passes for now, and the people there seemed very relaxed and no-nonsense.

This is a big milestone for me because I grew up pretty adverse to gym class and exercise type activities. I’m from a sporty family, so I’m kind of the odd one out. Being able to sign up for a class like this was a little past my usual comfort zone.

Next thing I need to do is acquire a yoga mat, hopefully made from sustainable materials. This is not a thing I have yet.

I also want to get back into my writing routine. I am hoping the exercise will help me focus more, though of course it will need to be more of a regular habit first.

Some bullet points from the last week or so:

Fanfic: All Young Royals, lately. I am working on the epilogue chapters for Heart and Homeland (trying out a new POV) and a one-shot focused on August, Nils, and Kristina. I might give myself until the weekend or so to finish the one-shot, as the quick dopamine hit of having something to post may do me good, and it’s also good for me to practice shorter form things. Right now what I have down is mostly dialogue. And I’m playing with a setting I love.
Reading: I’ve been stuck in the middle of Don’t Want You In A Best Friend Way and it’s fine but I’m also so not in the mood for historic queer romance where there’s a modern view of marriage-for-love lurking in the background. Maybe a more extended ramble for another time.
Television: I’ve watched the first few episodes of Sort Of season 3 and I’m HERE FOR THEM. Still watching Extraordinary and it continues to be charming.
Cooking/Food: The first grape tomatoes of the year came into the farmer’s market last Sunday! I tried something new and blistered them and ate them in a bowl of kamut with Italian herbs and nutritional yeast. This proved to be a good decision. In other news, I put together some smoothie packs with pear, mango and kale. I don’t tend to eat pear and mango on their own, but blending them into a smoothie with lemon juice, ginger, and matcha powder might be a change of pace. Or it might be vile. We’re gonna try and experiment.
Adulting: I am so behind on my taxes and my FAFSA it’s not even funny.
Teaching: We’re studying Iran in my class now, and I decided to drift away from my textbook and research Iranian women’s movements and then share that information out with my students. Our textbook is pretty decent but it tends to give the Pahlavi shahs credit for promoting women’s rights on their own… without talking about what actual women get up to. And I thought, why not change that? Feels like it’s been a good move so far.
Eclipse: It was cool, and also sometimes you work in a school and twelve year olds are trying to pay their friends 50 dollars to look directly into the sun. Yikes.

How is everyone else doing lately?

Answering

thefridayfive’s questions on Saturday morning because I’m going to give this a go! This was kind of a weird one because I’m in the middle of making some dietary adjustments/being more careful about my dietary restrictions and sensory sensitivities. I often found that these issues of accessibility impacted how I responded to the questions more than personal preferences.

I tried, though. Look I’m doing socializing on dreamwidth!!!

1. Rice or potatoes?

Potatoes, especially sweet potatoes, although I hardly ever want to cook them myself. I end up eating brown rice more.

2. Fish or red meat?

Fish. I’m pescatarian, and usually eat vegetarian or vegan, but I still occasionally have fish/seafood (made by family members or restaurants) because it’s part of the culture I grew up in.

3. Salad or cooked vegetables?

This is a tough question because I dislike both equally if they’re prepared with a texture I have a sensory aversion to. Prepared well I think cooked vegetables have a slight edge (roasted-to-crispy and seasoned brussels sprouts can be incredible, and I love a good vegetable soup in the winter.)

4. Cake or ice cream?

Ice cream sometimes has hidden eggs in a custardy way that tears up my stomach. So, cake. Because the eggs in cake have chemically changed in a way that hurts me less.

5. Water, soft drink, wine, beer, or hard alcohol?

Water. Alcohol interacts with my meds so I’ve stopped drinking, and I’ve been moving away from soft drinks too. Although if iced tea had been an option…

The other day I popped up briefly on the other site to let people know I was alive, but that I was trying to reevaluate my relationship to the site in question. I made a list of priorities that’s guiding me moving forward. I thought I’d list those priorities here, in a modified way, to make them “official.”

Here’s the list:

I want to spend more time creating. The thing that has always brought me the most genuine joy in this fandom is writing fic. YRS3 ended in a place of possibility for so many characters, and I want to keep writing about them and learning about them that way. One of my goals is to cut down on browsing time significantly so that I spend more time writing, especially so I can finish Heart and Homeland. I think it’ll make me happier.
I want to spend more time helping others create. Some of the most meaningful experiences I had in this fandom involved being a beta reader or hearing out another person’s fic ideas, and getting to live in that space of creation and collaboration. For that reason, I’d like to still make new YR connections on occasion, especially with people who wanna share their writing process with me. The other site may or may not be a place to do that. I’m still figuring out where that all should happen.
I want analysis to be something I do as part of my creative process, and that’s it. I don’t know if this is fully true, but it felt like ten years ago there was more fandom meta focused on what fans wanted to write in their fanfics, and how their interpretations of canon led to them creating cool art. There was some meta that was about how to interpret canon “correctly” but that wasn’t the priority. Now, it feels like—and this is true even outside of YR fandom, so this is no reflection on YR specifically—there is more emphasis on having the “correct” interpretation of canon. About getting it right, and having the right predictions and interpretations. It feels competitive in a way that wears me down. From this point forward, when posting analysis, I’m going to ask myself, is this furthering my creative pursuits and my understanding of the writing process more generally, or am I just trying to win an argument? If the answer is just to win, then I’m not going to post my argument. That runs counter to my goals.
I don’t want to engage in any space where anonymous discourse flourishes. Turns out one of the biggest triggers for my anxiety and shame are extensive, heated conversations where I don’t know who is saying what and who I can trust. Spaces where there’s a lot of anon conversation are probably going to be ones I block and unfollow first moving forward. It just seems like a good baseline for how I engage.

Thanks for reading, reader friends. Watch this space for… well. Hopefully some creative work and or creativity-oriented analysis. And maybe a fanmix! I am close to be done on a fanmix. We still do those, right?

Current Mood: determined

Here’s some stuff going on this weekend:

I made curry yesterday. I used coconut milk and Thai red curry as the base, and added sweet potato, broccoli, red pepper, and cashews. I could still improve on the recipe (it needs ginger) but I’ve got multiple servings in the freezer.
Spices from the brand I like best were on sale, so I got all three curry blends that I saw, an Italian herb blend, and more salt-free everything bagel sprinkle. One of my favorite ways to self-accommodate is to get spices and herbs pre-mixed, because it vibes more with how I cook and saves me time. My goal is to gradually bring together a selection of regional blends from around the world.
Between recapping YR and writing more of our fic, I made heliza24 both laugh and cry yesterday. Truly proud of myself. It’s inspiring me to recap YR S1E3 (my favorite s1 episode!) and write more fic today…
But also, I have grading and planning to do. And I do not want to do it. Ever. We’re going to have to work out a system to give myself motivation. Why must teaching involve so much stuff outside the classroom?

The most exciting news of the day is: I am doing my first ever paid tarot reading today! This is a chance to try it out and see if I like it. I am now at a point in my readings where I feel confident enough that I can do them for money, but I haven’t set up a full side-hustle yet because of the way it involves so much self-promotion and social media marketing and all that nonsense. Also the word “side hustle” gives me hives. But getting to connect with people and talk them through their various Things with the help of my friendly cards? That’s always been fulfilling for me. I like that part.

Biggest! Field Trip! Of! The! Year!

Herding teenagers through situations where they have to talk to powerful adults about their research! Some of the adults holding positions these teenagers very much disagree with!

All that followed by therapy and my important travel-related errands with

heliza24!

AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF WE ARE MENSTRUATING.

I’m actually good, I just feel like it’s funny how much is going on.

Having a date on Valentine’s Day is valid for other people, but the Aromantic Mood Du Jour is hanging out with the bestie, eating salad from the local sandwich place and leftover faculty meeting cupcakes, and roasting a documentary on the Sears Roebuck catalogue from the 1990s.

Do you want to talk old school mail order catalogues because I am here for it.

Things I accomplished:

Created this Dreamwidth.
Met with my book club.
Ate Ukrainian food for the first time. Honey cake <3
Did a scary thing and started taking my blood pressure again with the help of my roommate bestie. It’s gotten better for the moment.
Met my Sunday grading goals.
Uploaded so many project documents to my course management site.
Went to the farmer’s market.
Took a walk.
Worked on fanfic.
Mashed up some chickpea salad for rice cake sandwiches and batch-cooked buckwheat in my pressure cooker for later in the week.
Checked in with my dad on his birthday.
Started reading the March book for my book club. I don’t like it very much right now but I’m learning from it.

Things I hope to do in the coming days:

Roast some beets, red onions, and garlic. Then, shave some Brussels sprouts. Serve all of those with the buckwheat.
Batch cook another whole grain so I can freeze it for the future. Brown rice? Kamut?
Continue the habit of taking my blood pressure so it isn’t so scary.
Get more fanfic written.
Meet my grading and planning goals again without ruminating too much.
Survive my upcoming big field trip.

It’s truly weird to know how to begin one of these blogs again, because typing the first entry just feels like getting old muscle memory back. I suddenly got flooded with all these old memories of creating RP blogs and doing a “test post” with song lyrics or some other in-character in-jokes. Remember when?

Looking at the interface here, it’s easy to forget that the internet looked this way once, and that the pace of everything felt a little bit slower. And I think that’s why I’m here. I’ve been trying to get back into blogging about my fandoms and fanfic-writing life, but the way everything is dominated nowadays by constant flashy visuals and instant hot takes can be emotionally overwhelming. Now, don’t get me wrong, I remember how the livejournal era had its own dramas. I don’t want to cloud my brain with nostalgia. But I also know I want a place that lets me slow down and better filter my experience while also continuing to do the geeky deep dives I love.

So… we’re here I guess. Hello, Dreamwidth? Do I introduce myself? I can try.

Blue isn’t my real name, but it’s what I’ll be using in public entries. I’m a late 30s human from the east coast of the US, and I’m asexual aromantic with a side of like… poly-flavored relationship anarchy I guess. I have always been passionate about reading, writing, and storytelling, particularly coming of age stories, and I’m in an MFA program for writing kid and teen lit. While I have had many fandoms over the course of my life, the current one is the Swedish television series Young Royals. (I fully expect season 3 to wreck my life in a good way.) Over the past two years I have been co-writing a very long historical AU fic called Heart and Homeland and I’m rather proud of what we’ve done. Outside of YR, I also like AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, countless books, multiple historical eras, figuring out how to cook different types of whole grains in my instant pot, and doing tarot readings. Among other things.

Here are some filters I anticipate setting up if I can keep this blog going for more than a hot minute:

Personal life and health: I expect I’ll talk about my life on this blog from time to time, but the most personal details will be filtered. I’ve had some recent struggles around health I’ve been trying to figure out, and I’ve also been recently diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and unspecified anxiety. Among other things. I’m coming to terms with thinking of myself as disabled and I may need a place to unpack all that.
Education and career: I’m a middle school teacher in my day job. I have a lot of thoughts about that, and about education as a system in general. Some of those thoughts are occasionally a rant.
Fandom dynamics: I have been in fandoms long enough that the sociology of them is interesting to me, and I like discussing that.
Sargust brainrot: Wilhelm and Simon, the golden couple of Young Royals, are very dear to me. Unexpectedly, however, it is the relationship between Simon’s sister Sara and Wilhelm’s absolute crap second cousin August—sargust, as the kids say—that sunk its rusting iron claws in me and refused to let go. Sara and August are complex individuals who do both good and bad things, and I will mostly be measured about them on main, but may need a space where I can be a little bit feral about them to a group of close, understanding friends. That may change depending on the events of the third season, who knows.

Other filter ideas may emerge later. Like, it’s possible I’ll end up doing something on my tarot practice or my MFA Creative thesis or similar. I may do a politics filter because I can get political. But for now we are just thinking we might try having a dreamwidth.

One final thought: Pretty wild to think I had undiagnosed autism all through my teen years and early 20s, which definitely included mild alexithymia as part of the package, and yet I almost always had something to put in the little “current mood” blank. Was I just making it up based on the bouncing gray kittens? Yes. Yes I was.