jenett | Salon post: December 7

Happy Friday! Welcome to this week's salon post.

I've picked up a few new people on my access lists (and Dreamwidth has seen a lot of people return or check the place out), so here's a quick intro to the salon post idea. (Want to do the same thing in your journal? That'd be awesome, and feel free to drop a note here.)

I started these as a way to get some cross-pollination going in conversations that was more "Hey, I know neat people" rather than a topic-focused community. I put up a post on Friday morning (East Coast time), and people hang out in comments.

There are some tips and house rules under the cut tags below, but basically, it's fine to talk about any topic you'd like (though keeping them Safe For Work is appreciated on my end.)

You don't have to talk about my prompt for the week, and it's definitely encouraged to ask people for ideas or recs or whatever on whatever topic you're poking at.

Topic of the week
Clearly, the topic for the week should be "What brought you to Dreamwidth" and/or "What's a feature or tip you think is nifty" or "What's a thing you're wondering about on the site?" (Support requests are great, but many people among my subscribers have been using the site a long time, and may have useful tips.)

I will also start a quick intros thread - there are a lot of fannish friending memes going around, but if you're looking for people interested in other topics, feel free to add your interests, and maybe find other folks.

What I've been up to
I am moving apartments within my building on short notice (in under two weeks) due to some ongoing heating and other issues. I will be spending my weekend with boxes. Whee?

Useful notes
Consider tracking this post to get notifications of new comments. Select the bell icon (or the words 'track this'). More help over here, and more about notifications in general here.

Comments are welcome whenever you get a chance - even if that's hours or days later. Feel free to jump into whatever sub-threads intrigue you. More discussion is the point of the salon posts!

Got a question you're trying to sort out, or a thing you'd like to discuss? Lots of thoughtful interesting people with a wide range of interests show up here! Feel free to ask about things you're thinking about or trying to solve, as well as other kinds of chat.

House rules:
This is a public post, feel free to encourage other people to drop by, just note the 'if posting anonymously, include a name people can call you in responses' rule.

* Consider this a conversation in my living room, only with a lot more seating. I reserve the right to redirect, screen, and otherwise moderate stuff, but would vastly prefer not to have to.

* If you don't have a DW account or want to post anonymously, please include a name we can call you in this particular post. (You can say AnonymousOne or your favourite colour or whatever. Just something to help keep conversations clear.)

* If you've got a question or concern, feel free to PM me.

Tags:

project: salon

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

jenett

Hi, I'm Jenett.

Most posts in my journal are locked, so I can talk about work and health and other things I don't want on the public internet, but I'm very easy-going about adding people to access (asking's fine, but I basically add anyone who subscribes.) I talk about what I'm up to, mostly, often to sort things out in my own head.

I live in the Boston area. I grew up here, then lived in Minnesota and Maine for about 16 years, before moving back in 2015. I'm very glad to be home. I'm in my 40s, long-since divorced (more than a decade now), occasionally contemplate dating again, and then decide it may not be worth the bother. My cat, however, is totally worth the bother.

I spend my days working at a librarian at a library I don't identify in public space (but which is a really unique collection: there are a handful of other libraries dealing with our topic in the world.)

In my not-work time, I have a small religious witchcraft coven (currently with two students, they're awesome: my tradition is a small initiatory trad developed in Minnesota beginning in the late 90s). I have been writing romance books for indie publication (first one coming out later this month, if you're curious. I'm talking about it in locked posts in my journal.)

I have multiple chronic health issues (over half a dozen and counting!) and I am pretty much constantly looking for more ways to let me do more of the things I want, and deal with fewer issues. Sometimes that even works.

I am moderately fannish, but don't talk about fannish topics often in my own journal. (I spent last year watching all of the surviving Doctor Who from the beginning, and am loving this season). I do Yuletide, and I need to write my story this weekend (it's been gelling in my head.)

I am generally geeky about history, have an ongoing interest in both astronomy and astrology, and spend a lot of time thinking about how information works and how people learn things.

Anything else, feel free to ask! If you have access to my journal, I have a longer intro post which desperately needs updating (but see above about moving in under two weeks), which has more data on most of the above.

Edited (added next to last para.) Date: 2018-12-07 01:29 pm (UTC)

From:

rmc28

Hi, I'm Rachel. I post a mixture of public and locked, depending on the topic. I live in Cambridge (the UK one) and work for the famous university as a software developer. I have two children, a spouse, a lot of books, and insufficient time.

I had leukaemia three years ago and am very nearly(!) finished with follow-up care. I am still working to get back to something like a normal level of fitness for pre-cancer me. I also juggle a couple of other chronic conditions, mostly by "lifestyle management" aka not doing all the things I want to.

I grew up in a politically-active household and was fairly active within the Liberal Democrats until my illness; I still pay attention to politics but am minimally active.

I am fannish about many things, some of which I may even have listed in my interests. I am incredibly grateful for the existence of the AO3 and of Yuletide.

I love learning new things, listening to music, seeing live performance, urban living, public transport, solving problems, improving things, and all my friends.

Edited Date: 2018-12-07 04:41 pm (UTC)

From:

finch

Congrats on being almost finished with treatment!

What does the public transit system look like in Cambridge? I used to D&D with an urban planning geek and now I like learning how transit works in different places.

From:

rmc28

Public transport within Cambridge itself and nearby villages is mostly buses: a near-monopoly by the company Stagecoach, with a few routes run by a local company Whippet. Traffic jams are frequent and buses can be late or just not turn up sometimes. Everything seems to route via the (congested) historic city centre and thus take much longer than if it went around the outside.

However, we do have two train lines into London, which allows for commuting (doesn't help the congestion and house price issues) and relatively easy access to London theatre, museums, other cultural attractions, protest marches, etc. A few years ago we got a second rail station, Cambridge North, and people are now campaigning for a Cambridge South near the "biomedical campus" which is the fancy new rename of the big area around the teaching hospital where a bunch of biotech and medical companies are setting up.

We also have a fairly active cycle campaign and a lot of cyclists (partly driven by university rules on car ownership); through great effort on cycle routes and bus lanes, the city grew 10% in ten years while keeping congestion roughly the same. There is still enormous room for improvement in cycle / walking / public transport provision, and there's a "Greater Cambridge Partnership" doing its best to avoid being too radical with a large pot of government money to address same.

From:

finch

That's pretty cool! Being able to take the train into London sounds great, and I'm super impressed that they're managing their growth so well. (My city is, well, not.)

From:

jenett

That is the best description of "lifestyle management" I've seen in a while, yes.

From:

rmc28

Thank you! I have just run up against my limits again this week (a conference trip for work left me absolutely shattered) and was fairly resentful of same.

From:

ilyena_sylph

Hi, I'm Yena!

I vary between public and locked depending on what I'm talking about because I am a somewhat anxiety-ridden mess. I do like talking to people though!

I live in the bluest city in Missouri and work at its land-grant university, so that's definitely a thing. I've never lived outside of MO, though I finished HS in IL. I'm in my mid-thirties, and partnered deliriously happily with

senmut, together we have a teenager and a cat.

I am a polyfannish mess of 'ooh, shiny!'-chasing. I write, sometimes, when the brain works.

From:

finch

Hi, I'm Jack! I've been here nine and a half years, somehow, even though it doesn't feel like it most of the time. I came here because my not-yet-ex at the time wasn't here, and because I was growing uncomfortable with LJ. I switch a lot between public and locked posts, depending on my paranoia at any given time, and I've been out of the habit of posting but I want to get back into it. I post about magic, writing, parenting, being trans and queer, sometimes about being neurodivergent and separately mentally ill, and the odd assortment of health issues I've collected over the years.

I live in Portland and I love it too much to leave even if it's getting stupid expensive. I used to live in Phoenix, and grew up on the east coast. I'm a bank teller at my day job. I pretty much always have things I'd like to be doing more of. I don't watch as much fandomy stuff as I used to but I like the new She-Ra and Steven Universe and comic books and fantasy novels and I'm one of those people who will read fanfic for fandoms I'm only nominally familiar with. I also needlecraft and make jewelry and repair dolls in my laughably small spare time.

From:

jenett

Oh, and it occurs to me I should mention other places I have stuff.

I do a links of interest + roundup of blog posts in public places newsletter every fortnight on Wednesdays. You can sign up over here.

I have a website/blog called Seeking, which is an intro to Paganism and more specifically religious witchcraft. People seem to find it handy for that thing (and I find it handy for teaching stuff in that area), and I'm focusing on adding more content to it between December and March. (So if you had topics you hoped I'd write about, now is a good time to tell me.)

I have a tiny research consulting side business called Seek Knowledge, Find Wisdom. I'll help with any topic I'm willing to search from my home computer (no question too weird), but I've got a particular interest in helping with esoteric topics and other related things you may not want to ask your local librarian. I post on the blog there every two weeks with something research or productivity related.

From:

finch

I love that "no topic too weird" is basically your slogan.

From:

jenett

I was very pleased when I came up with that! And it's true! I do have limits, but they're mostly about legality or bigotry, not "this is awfully out there."

From:

finch

Librarian-for-hire is such a neat business model. How's it treating you?

From:

jenett

Not very well as a business, alas. (I've done one donation of services, and a couple of small questions that are mostly trades with friends)

But I live in hope.

(I feel like it's one of those things people don't know they need. And it's hard to demo "This thing that you have been beating your head against a wall for hours, I can solve in 10 minutes because I have specific skills and knowledge.")

From:

finch

I feel like this is totally the sort of thing that should be useful to lots of people but, yeah, people don't know they need it.

From:

jenett

The actual originating "Wait, this might be a thing" incident was actually that series of posts on The Cauldron about someone trying to track down a reference for literally years (so he said) and I peered at it, went "I'm pretty sure that's a manuscript collection number", typed three words or so into Google, and found a listing for it at the Bodleian. It took me 30 minutes to write up the 'how I found this' but about 2 minutes to actually locate it including page load times.

(I mean, I have put tons of experience points into reference and esoteric trivia over the years, but still.)

From:

silveradept

That sounds like a very familiar story of apparent magic, but we've both experienced them enough in our professional lives that they're fun anecdotes of the secret super librarian powers.

From:

jenett

Absolutely! I think that most of what I do anyone who had some of the same skills could do.

(I mean, I do have a secret superpower of getting things out of Google that does not seem to be easily duplicated.)

But a lot of it is, y'know, spent twenty years developing skills and knowledge and picking things up, and that is something that can't be duplicated without a fair bit of time and applied focus.

From:

sporky_rat

There have been times before when I would have cheerfully paid a librarian to find that nugget of knowledge that I *finally* found after two weeks of practically sleepless searching.

You'd've found it probably ... eh, ten minutes. (I had to borrow a university's log in, pretty sure you wouldn't).

From:

jenett

I do not have university access anymore! But I do have some tricks that sometimes work.

From:

davidgillon

Hi, I'm David. My posts are almost universally open (I think there've been two locked in total). I mostly talk about life as a disabled person - I'm a neurodiverse wheelchair user with Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder, Chronic Pain Syndrome and Dyspraxia - disability activism, diversity, SFF and the process of writing, and the intersections of all of the above. I'm not published, but beta read for one or two people who are and went through the Pitchwars mentoring programme in 2015. I'm just in the process of contemplating a new writing project.

I'm from the North of England, but have spent my career in Kent. I worked for Evil Aerospace for 20-odd years, developing flight control systems, until they decided they didn't like my disability. The out-of-court settlement is why I don't refer to them by name (NDA :( ) That was 10 years ago, and I don't really miss it, my specialist had already been telling me it was time to give up work.

From:

silveradept

Hello everyone! I'm Silver Adept, a username that comes from a time before the suck fairy visited the source material. These days, I tend to go just by Silver, and it works. If you want to refer to me with pronouns, I use the they/them/theirs set.

I'm terrible at writing introductions to myself, because I want them to be customized to the person reading so that they can figure out in a hurry whether or not they want to spend more time on me or not. R good thing is, since 99.9% of my entries are public, you can take a look and make that decision for yourself fairly easily.

I work as a librarian in a public setting, focusing my attention on the under-18s, partially because I'm paying it forward from the librarian that helped me get resources when I needed it, and partially because there are only a few outlets for doing work when there's a nonzero chance that you would have benefited from a four-letter diagnosis with an H as the third letter.

My fannish identity can be summed up by the sentence "I have approximate knowledge of many things," which turns out to be handy when you primarily write for exchanges. I also tend to be a themes and tropes discussion person rather than a ships and squee person. (Not that I can't enjoy squee, but I like long threaded discussions more.)

Outside of that, I still have wide interests in reading and writing, so approximate knowledge applies here, too. If you find one of the list of links posts, you can get a sense of it, but I tend to aggregate and package more than I focus on a single topic.

Much like a cat, if you put out bait for me and you're okay with comments from people who you may not know, I'll arrive eventually. I suspect more people know who I am because I've commented there than because they've read my writing, wherever that writing may be.

Maybe people who know me longer/better can contribute to who I am.

From:

havocthecat

It'd probably help if I did a friending meme or two, but I kind of suck at getting around to it and also I haven't been good about getting out of my safe space right now. It's been a rough few months. Which I probably won't talk about until they're over.

I've been in fandom actively and online for, oh, two going on three decades now (I am old, whee?), starting with Forever Knight and The X-Files and moving on through things like Highlander and BtVS and the Stargates and Farscape to Leverage and dabbling in MCU and Arrowverse and so many other things in between. I'm multifannish, a knitter, a baker, history is one of my favorite non-fiction subjects, folklore is another, I write original fic, and I'm a belly dancer (amateur).

I also have multiple chronic health conditions! Fuck that sort of thing, where are my replacement clone bodies that they can transplant my brain into?

I don't know, chat me up?

Edited Date: 2018-12-08 02:41 am (UTC)

From:

crystalpyramid

Hi, I'm Jillian. I post mostly locked things at this point, because I work as a high school teacher and live with substantial (undiagnosed because that takes spoons) anxiety and need my blog to be a safe space for me without having to think about it too hard. As things have gotten quieter on DW I've gotten more relaxed about posting things to all-friends though.

I'm at the tail end of that transitional cohort who grew up with dial-up and limited internet access and discovered LiveJournal and the rest of Web 2.0 in college. (At the tail end because while Facebook was invented while I was in college, I'm sure I have peers who grew up with more money and had LiveJournals in high school. People a few years below me seemed to consistently have them.)

I've loved the long-form blogging-under-lock model, where people can drop in and read what they want to and comment if they want to. I've got a Twitter account under the same name and I just can't do the rapid pace and brevity thing over there. And Facebook is just as bad only even more public. While my involvement in fandom is limited to the occasional Bujold fic binge or trip to Wiscon, I followed more involved college friends in creating a Dreamwidth account as a bolthole if LJ went south, bought a seed account because I believed in the people doing it, and jumped ship after LJ got sold to the Russians.

I love language — I've studied but am varying degrees if not fluent in French, Russian, and Latin, which probably pegs me as an American for thinking that's a lot. I also love science and majored in physics in college after hitting my math ceiling when it became all proofs. I think the ways people learn things are fascinating and I've realized that if I'm not learning new things, I'm not happy. I play the cell phone game Ingress fairly seriously — I got into it during a time when I was unhappy at work and it met a need for community and challenge, and it's grown to absorb a lot of my time and executive function. I also love reading science fiction, especially feminist stuff with good worldbuilding that helps me learn about our world and its people or envision possible futures based on current situations. The most recent books I've read were Cat Valente's Space Opera, Cixin Liu's Three-Body Problem, and a book called The
Elusive Dream about how race affects places of worship. I try to be a good intersectional feminist and urbanist, anchored by genderqueer family and a transit advocate spouse.

I mostly don't write about those things because I've participated in the big wave of Millennials reproducing this year and am currently on my last month of a twelve-week maternity leave. My journal had fallen pretty silent before I got pregnant but I picked it back up ten months ago because I wanted to make sure I'd have a written record of this period of time. So I've mostly been writing about pregnancy and new baby lately and I imagine related themes will continue to dominate. I'm glad to be back and hoping I can manage to stick with it.

I love semicolons, m-dashes, participatory singing, and stubbornly walking from rail stops in places where the cars don't expect people to walk, to remind the cars that humans exist.

Most of my writing right now is on mobile sometimes one-handed so typos are a thing and I apologize in advance. I've edited this three times and doubt I've caught them all.

Edited Date: 2018-12-09 03:54 pm (UTC)

From:

julian

Hm. You're not a Bryn Mawr person, are you?

Ah. After checking your interests, nope, but I was close. Good to know my antennae for liberal arts colleges with deep community aren't atrophied.

Edited Date: 2018-12-10 02:41 am (UTC)

From:

crystalpyramid

Ha, maybe in another life. Weirdly enough my closest female friends in college and just after were Mawrtyrs not Swatties, even though I was so convinced I wouldn't make any friends if I went to a school with all women.

Edited Date: 2018-12-10 02:44 am (UTC)

From:

julian

I knew a bunch of people who went to Haverford for just that reason, too. I avoided going to a girl-only high school partially because of that, for that matter. (Though there was more to it than just that, I say, in retrospective justification.)

From:

jenett

I have known about Dreamwidth since approximately 5 minutes after

denise posted the idea to her then LiveJournal. (I was a volunteer on the LiveJournal Terms of Service team early in her days as manager there, and we've been friends ever since.)

I very much subscribe to her ideas of spaces that should exist on the Internet. D's and Mark's desire to create a space that was a stable, lasting small business rather than seeking continual expansion (and instability) really appeals to me.

I host my own blogs for topic related things, but Dreamwidth has been the place I consider my online home since it opened for new users.

From:

davidgillon

I'd been active online for a long time, and had even had an LJ account (but had never really worked out what to do with it - neurodiverse and needed a bit of a clue), then I met Kaberett at Loncon, and they mentioned they could be found online at Dreamwidth, which at that point I don't think I'd ever heard of. So a couple of weeks later I tracked them down, and they were doing a friend meme. Alea acta est.

From:

rmc28

I don't remember quite how I heard about Dreamwidth, but I remember clearly deciding to "take the leap" on a holiday in Wales in the spring of 2009. I know for sure that what attracted me was the centering of users as customers, not as ad-targets.

I stopped crossposting to LJ at the start of 2011; I did restart for a while in early 2015, I think to try to keep up some level of community there, but I stopped for good when I killed my LJ account in April 2017.

(and digging through to see when I stopped and started and stopped crossposting has given me a walk down memory lane, gosh)

From:

ilyena_sylph

Dreamwidth has been my home for ages, though it took me ages to actually get an invite code. I was lucky enough to survive strikethrough intact, and boldthrough, but I needed an elsewhere to be, and DW was that place, has been ever since.

My favorite little-known feature has to be the <a href="https://dreamwidth.org/latest>Latest Things</a> page, where you can see what's going on at any moment with the site. For the first time in probably 5 years it's impossible to keep up on, which is like the most amazing thing. Closely followed by the paid feature Network, where you can see what's up in the followings of the people you follow!

From:

finch

Ooh, I think it's been long enough since I reupped my paid account that I'd forgot about the Network option, but that was my go-to when I wanted to find something new for a while.

From:

ilyena_sylph

damnit i failed at end quote... +makes embarrassed face at broken code+ UGH.

From:

jazzyjj

Hi and I'd like to say a warm welcome to all the newbies. I'm Jake, and no I don't mind giving out my real name. This place called Dreamwidth is well, dreamy, lol. I actually found out about Dreamwidth a few years ago, in 2014. Allow me to back up slightly. The MacBook Air on which I'm typing this was a Christmas gift in 2013 from my parents. Actually it wasn't much of a gift I guess, because a sister and I were with our parents at the time at an Apple store in my area, just north of Chicago Proper. This is the very same MacBook Air that I tried out at the store. Well, I have had blogs or journals or whatever we're calling them these days, on Windows. But I wanted one that worked with the on-board screen reader manufactured by Apple. How I came to Dreamwidth was a recommendation on a gaming-related website, from another guy who is visually impaired. I haven't seen him lately around here, so either he's been very busy or he's run off somewhere else or something. But I love it here. Technology has become one of my passions in life, if not the main underlying one. I have attempted to weave that into my journal on here, along with some other random bits and pieces. But as of late I've been more or less caught up in the social scene off line. I write whenever I can though. The powers-that-be have really managed to make this place as accessible and user-friendly as possible, at least where I'm concerned. So a big shout out to them.

Edited (added my given name.) Date: 2018-12-08 04:01 am (UTC)

From:

brainwane

I posted some in this thread, collected from a session at WisCon.

From:

redbird

Hi, I'm Vicki, or Redbird (I've been using this handle since a friend asked me for a username for LambdaMOO [so about the Cretaceous in Internet time]; I've been on DW since quite early (and have a seed account), after being an early adopter on LJ. And I still miss Usenet, but time's arrow seems to only run in one direction.

I try to post about books, ideas, and interesting things, but a lot of my posts are somewhat boring (health and medical stuff that I'm recording so I can find it later); there's also a lot of politics, because that seems to be my life the last few years.

I've been varying levels of active in broadly-defined/old-fashioned science fiction fandom, but don't really have specific book/movie/etc. fandoms.

I post some things protected, but grant access to most people who ask; I also add people who seem interesting in their ocmments on other people's journals, and in friending memes and such.

My hands aren't in great shape right now, so responses may be slow, but I do want to talk to people.

From:

finch

Hello, fellow bird-named person! I feel like I've seen you around quite a bit.

From:

redbird

Hi there. I subscribed and granted you access.

From:

sporky_rat

I'm Sporky. I live in South Mississippi with the Husbandthing, four cats, and a stubborn determination to make this house a home come hell or high water.

I was on LJ back in the day as an early adopter. As soon as D announced Dreamwidth's beginning, I kept an eye out to get in on the closed beta and started volunteering for the Support board.

I haven't been posting much lately (thanks, depression) but when I do it's rarely access (and when I do it's because there's a filter of access people who've asked to be on that filter.

From:

silveradept

I'm pretty sure I came over to Dreamwidth on a post-Strikethrough "hedge your bets" idea. Once LiveJournal demonstrated they weren't above banning content in an arbitrary manner, it was a security move, because who knew if I might be targeted in the next wave.

The importer and crossposter allowed me to keep a foot in LJ and stay relatively in contact with the people who were there and not moving, but I made Dreamwidth my primary home not too soon after those things were working. And then when SixApart got sold and the censorship possibilities really started happening, I let go of LJ. It's a very nice place, and the people in charge have demonstrated they put actions to their words and philosophies, so they get my money.

From:

jjhunter

Salvete, I'm J.J.! Elsewhere around the internet I also go by

Idhren, because preteen me thought Tolkien elvish was the very height of panache for selecting a username.

(I do still like the meaning of idhren, pl. idhrin: thoughtful pondering, wise. I just quickly discovered that it gives people pause when they try to pronounce it, and I couldn't assume someone would know how to spell it if they heard it.)

I came to Dreamwidth coming on close to ten years ago (holy cow, definitely major occasion for reviving the anniversary

three_weeks_for_dw fest this spring!), because LJ was increasingly not the kind of platform I trusted to support what I care for, and I liked the chance to start over with a semi-clean slate and participate in shaping what Dreamwidth might become.

I've liked being here so much that the very first comm I ever started was

dreamwidth_haikai, tagline 'Celebrating Dreamwidth One Syllable At a Time'.

I'd love to start posting there again more regularly, actually, so one project that I would definitely appreciate help with is prompts for particular DW features or aspects of the culture, etc. that you love!
No prompt for DW delight too small or large, I've previously written haikai in ode to expandable cut tags, dw_news posts, tag merge, and dw support, among others.

As for me, I generally post mostly public with some access- and more restricted-access posts. When I'm especially busy with work or generally low spoons, you'll see less meta and more occasional thematic linkspam posts, 'How Are You? (in Haiku)' posts, etc.

I live and work in Boston doing Operations for cancer clinical trials. I like figuring out complex systems and how to make them more functional for people, and that's basically when I do for work (with lots of variety!) in my current niche of translational science support.

Outside of work, I'm a voracious and eclectic reader; I like making art; I try to do my bit and a bit more toward sustaining and building my various communities, on- and offline; I'm getting back into parkour; and I love to explore, metaphorically and in the wayfinding, flaneur -kind of sense.

I'm neuroatypical, most likely somewhere on the spectrum (very high functioning autistic? Some of the more recent news coverage of how autism presents differently in women has definitely hit some chords for me) - I tend to describe myself as an extroverted introvert who occasionally hits social overload and needs to go recharge in a quiet space for awhile. When I'm in an overloaded state (because of social or work stuff, or just sufficiently sleep-deprived), my word filter goes a bit askew - I'll use lots of words where few would do - and I have an easier time with numbers and excel formulae than writing. I love learning. I still have a lot of traumatic anxiety around academic writing that I'm trying to chip away at. (I can't believe I'm actually considering picking up another degree on the side while continuing working full-time? Finishing my BA took me almost ten years and two significant leaves from college.)

I've got family and personal history of depression ("and 'history of depression' means there's no defense /perfect enough to keep it from coming back"), but that's been sufficiently stable long enough for me that these days I mostly need to just mind my brainweasels (aka anxiety), make sure I get enough sunlight + vitamin D supplements, and do the usual basic self-care-if-you-can of regular sleep + food + exercise.

Anyway, I had a bit of a rough summer this year on the brainweasel front, but things have been better lately, and I'm really enjoying being more active on Dreamwidth again and having so many other people be more active too!

Edited Date: 2018-12-08 01:43 pm (UTC)

From:

sanacrow

HiYa! I'm Sana, or Sanacrow. ::waves::

I was an early adopter on LJ, then moved here a paycheck or two after it opened. I haven't been around much in the last while because... well, life happened and I haven't been much of anywhere. (There are Sanacrow accounts on Twitter and Tumblr, but there's not much there other than reblogs.)

I figured that with some recent job changes that should free up a bit of time and brain and spoons, that I should be more active again. Plus, I missed everyone here. A lot. The profile is horribly out of date, but most of the interests are accurate. Professionally I have done accounting, social work, research, academic library tech, and now academic and clerical management for the Dance program at MTSU Personally, I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world, and we have 3 adult children and a few grandkids.

I look forward to seeing ya'll folks around!

From:

julian

Hi, I'm a Kate.

As for what brought me to DW... Well, I was on LJ (since 2002), and then LJ shat the bed several times, and then Dreamwidth happened, and I got a code. I didn't buy a seed account but I did buy a paid account? I think. (From the original FAQ, I can't tell if it worked that way at that point, but I think it did.) I still cross-post to LJ because I'm stubborn, but the commenting is not happening there.

Mostly, I write about my life, sporadically. (South of Boston; just moved from Actual Boston.) I'm queer and live with my female partner; we're leftish and enjoy Massachusetts thereby, except when we don't.

I used to not post locked at all, but sometimes I do now. Occasionally.

It's mostly me-focused, but sometimes there's some about What's In The News, but Twitter's kind've taken over for that. I'm fannish adjacent, read a bunch (fantasy and SF in terms of fiction, history-and-biography in terms of non-fiction), and am enjoying ramping up exercising (basically from a standing start of being fat and sedentary). I've joined a chorus again after years of not being in one, and it's the best thing. The move from Boston has put me outside the range of public transportation for the first time in awhile and it's weird.

I finally graduated with my bachelor's at age 45, and am applying for grad school for fall of 2019, knock wood. (In counseling, expressive therapy sort-of subset.) ADHD and depression being major contributors to how long that took, as was my job -- newspaper reporting for a small weekly paper takes up a surprising amount of attention.

Edited (details) Date: 2018-12-10 02:31 am (UTC)

From:

crystalpyramid

Your interests list is really fabulous. Xeriscaping, Lancaster county, and humming! Would you like to try being friends?

From:

julian

Xeriscaping, because when I was a baby reporter, the local water district had an Executive Director who was trying to find ways to help residents conserve water, so she researched, hit on the Denver Water Department's general ethos, and created a garden of Massachusetts-native plants on water district property. (And used other principles of xeriscaping as well.) And then she enthused at me, and I absorbed as much of her enthusiasm as possible, researched it a bit myself, and wrote about it for the paper.

For a long time I really hated most of my job, but I kept that in my interests to remind me of why I loved it in the first place.

(Once I own my own house, I definitely want to create gardens/help the land with the general ethos in mind.)

Lancaster County, because my mom's from there, and I have ties there still, and also it's gorgeous.

And humming, well, I'm in a perpetual state of humming, it seems like. (But sometimes I'm whistling. Or singing.) Perpetual state of music, I suppose.

Anyway: Sure!

From:

crystalpyramid

Cool! I learned the word xeriscaping when my husband briefly lived in Las Vegas (before we got married) and some of the houses there had grass lawns and it was horrifying. I've given up on yards and lawns myself at this point but it was neat seeing what people did that respected the climate.

From:

julian

Oh, man. Yeah. There's parts of Arizona that's full of that. Grass lawns in ways that makes no sense for the native landscape, and which require metric boatloads of water.

(I took a trip around the US in 2002, and there was this section of interstate in Arizona where I could see for miles around, and the lawns in question just stuck out like a sore thumb.)

From:

finch

Congrats on finishing your degree and good luck with grad school! What kind of exercise program are you using? I'm looking for a starting point too.

From:

julian

Thank you!

It's... not really a program, all things considered.

Basically, I swim for anywhere from 25 mins to an hour. (I try and keep it longer.) I don't yet do consistent laps because I hate them and they're boring, plus my crawl stroke isn't very good anymore, though it's getting better. (I'm trying to ramp up to putting up with them more, though, because it's better cardio.) So currently I do a bunch of underwater swimming, and various karate-type kicks, and play around with barbells (the styrofoam things that look useless are, in fact, quite useful), and tire myself out quite nicely, and then do an official lap or two and hang out briefly in the hot tub.

This results in many sore muscles, all the time, and that pleasant post-swim lassitude.

Edited Date: 2018-12-10 06:24 pm (UTC)

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