SHORTI

This is going to be a whole lot of jumbled thoughts that have been percolating in my brain for a while now. I don't really have anyone to talk to about this stuff and I don't want to burden people with incessant whining which tends to be how these things go. One of the reasons I'm doing this on DW is because I'm pretty sure no one will read it and therefore I'll have gotten it out of my head but won't have alienated anyone I know at the same time.

Critiques/Beta reading: Why do people accept a critique/beta reading request if they have no intention of ever fulfilling it? Or taking months to get it done? I know there are people to accept requests with good intentions and things just get in the way but I seem to be a magnet for these types of people. What gets me is that they don't then have the courtesy to tell me life is happening and they may not be able to do it after all. Maybe it's my fault because I'm not assertive enough afterwards in reminding them to get back to me. It's just frustrating when I write so quickly to be sitting for months waiting on feedback before I can edit.

Neglect of the strongest: This is a phenomena that has happened to me my whole life. Current post notwithstanding, I am not generally a complainer. Or I might comment about how difficult/annoying/impossible a situation is but then I will just get on with it. And because I've never been the squeaky wheel, people tend to dismiss me whenever my insecurities do surface.

At school my teachers actually denied my requests to meet for extra support just before exams. One teacher told me I didn't need help and that they needed to focus on the kids who were struggling. Which was fair enough but a lot of those kids were struggling because they didn't do any work. I was killing myself studying and got overwhelmed. But I sucked it up and go on with it. 

At work I have somehow become that "go to" person who others dump their problems on. I am constantly being battered between the old school workers who are inching towards retirement and conveniently forget how to do things they've been doing for the past twenty years and the new kids who want to progress to management level without doing any hard work. So whilst everyone wants to network, none of the actual work is being done. I know I should wash my hands of it and just let the chips fall but then the people who suffer are the clients who are already disadvantaged, non-English speaking and generally mistreated. So I do the work for them. But I wish I could do it in a basement somewhere so I don't have to listen to other people's self postulating.

At home I am having a "disagreement" with my older sister at the moment. She is your classic victim personality, the complete opposite of me, and attempts to cry bullying to get sympathy from the rest of my family when I don't do what she is effectively trying to bully me into. My parent's, being the traditional Vietnamese parents, want me to "yield" to her because she's older. This is despite admitting that she is a difficult personality to get along with and that she is wrong. But instead of saying anything to her for fear of upsetting her, they just want me to suck it up because I'm the more reasonable one. Needless to say I am spending a lot less time hanging out with my family right now.

Writing Stuff: I am doing camp NaNoWriMo at the moment. I'm a fast writer and I can sometimes bang out 10k if I'm having a good day. But nobody knows what that 10k involves. It means I wake up at the same time as I would if I were going to work and I sit at my desk for 12 hours straight and do nothing but write. I know it's not healthy and everything hurts afterwards and it's a choice so I shouldn't complain. That's not the part that upsets me. It's when I try and talk about my writing insecurities and everyone is like "WTF? What insecurities? Look at your word count." What they don't understand is that fast doesn't equal good. Especially not for someone like me who is already writing from the perspective of an outlier. If anything it's worse because I'm writing quickly with the awareness that despite giving up whole days off, no one will probably want to read what I write because I'm not adhering to tropes and my heroines aren't the fun, damsel in distress types.

The other drawback is that because I write so fast, it's hard to find anyone else who is also just as serious as I am about writing to commiserate with. So writing ends up being a really lonely process with very little reward in the end.

Having said all that, I will press on. Because I have no choice. Because I don't know how else to be. And because giving up is just not an option. 

Is it just me or has it become the norm for people to request kudos and comments from readers in the notes section on fics? I don't know about anyone else but I somehow feel less inclined to give kudos when I see that. The fic should speak for itself and any douchebags who don't usually give kudos probably won't have an epiphany just because you asked.

Just published my first Maria gen fic. Let's see how it does hit count wise without Steve Rogers to bring in the crowd. I predict a quiet ride ahead. Sigh. 

Probably shouldn't  aggravate myself further by looking at the results of the Kiss, Marry, Avoid poll on instagram involving: Steve, Sam, Natasha and Maria huh? 

Work

So I got into work yesterday to find that five out of the eight people in my team had called in sick. My team leader has been on unplanned leave for almost two weeks now and as 2IC everything gets dumped in my lap. Everything usually gets dumped in my lap anyway but at least with her around, I can pretend there's some kind of support structure. Aside from the inconvenience of reassigning work, it was kind of nice. No one to come up to me every five minutes asking questions they should know the answer to. I should find a job with no human contact. I wonder what you have to do in order to become a ghost writer?

Garden

At this point I'm not sure if the garden belongs to me or the dog. Everywhere I turn there are signs that she's nibbling on things. In some cases (my cabbage danging by a single root over the side of the styrofoam box) there is decimation. I don't understand where she's gotten this yearning for vegetables from but it's getting out of hand. She's attacked my peas, bok choi, broccoli and strawberries too. I fear for the blueberries that are starting to flower. My husband keeps saying we need to fence the garden off but I have this phobia of mice (which we've had in the garden thanks to unsanitary, chicken keeping, neighbours) and don't want to restrict her access in case she needs to be predatory. Which is unlikely in any event because she's the most useless guard dog in the world.

Winter will officially be upon us in seven days which means the barrage of mail order catalogues are coming almost every day. I really should ring and stop them from sending to me but that would be like cancelling my library card. I have zero room left amongst the many pots in the backyard but somehow I've ordered a dwarf apricot, a quince, two Japanese maples and three bare root roses. Can't seem to decide whether I'm predominately a vegetable or flower grower.

Am in two minds about yanking out all the nettles that are popping up all over the place. I need them to add to my supplies of nettle fertilizer but in order to get a good enough crop I have to let them grow bigger. Which is a hazard because they sting like nobody's business if I accidentally brush up against them. This all organic lark is really the pits sometimes. The weeds are completely out of control now too. It's dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home so I haven't had much time to get out there and neaten things up.

On the bright side the daphne is bushing out nicely and the cutting I took on the weekend away of the purple sedum is sprouting new leaves. I'm not sure what to make of the new leaves being green but am hoping they change as they get older. I'm looking at taking some long service leave in June to work on my writing so I'll use that time to get the garden ready as well.

Writing

I should just leave this topic blank because it'll be an accurate reflection of the progress I've been making on my writing. It's not that I don't have the time to write but that my mind is so busy these days. My OCD is acting up really badly and I keep waking up at random hours during the night and thinking about life stuff instead of writing stuff which is what I used to do. I've also taken on two developmental editing projects for friends which leaves very little mental capacity for my own works at the end of the day.

This just cannot go on. Am going to try to refocus over the course of the next week because June is Camp NaNo prep month and I have no idea what I'm writing for it in July.

I have three Maria fics on the go for the Maria Hill Comment Fic Fest because I just thought of another okayish plot but none of them seem to be wrapping up the way I want them to. I'm great at starts but horrible at finishes. I fear I may have peaked with Eye Open, Sleeping Beauty. Speaking of my series, I have ideas for that too but just can't seem to hash it out. The problem I think is that I want a HEA for Maria/Steve. But neither of them are cooperating with me and I don't want to write anything too OOC.

I just managed to add in a smidgen of Robin Sparkles to Maria's origin story though, so that'll be fun for the five people who are likely to read the fic when it's posted.

*trying not to be cynical about the world again* I don't think it's working.

If my history on other social media sites is anything to go by, I probably don't even need this post. I'm more of a stalker than I am a sharer but the blank page is just mocking me so I might as well post something.

Essentially, I'm here for the Maria Hill fic fests. I'm going to assume if you're reading this then that's how you've met me. Hello!

My life outside of fic is pretty run of the mill. Day job, husband, dog. I spend my free time either writing fic or my novel, reading or gardening. If there's anything that I'll end up posting on here it'll be all the trials and tribulations of my garden that no one anywhere else wants to hear about :)