December Daily: time machine

[resonant]

kass asked, "If the you of 10 years ago could see you now, what would surprise her most?"

Hm. In 2008, the kidlet was in third grade at Montessori. I had lost my job and my mojo, and I wasn't yet working again. Apparently I was writing SGA, HP, and Hancock.

Probably we'd first have to allow quite a lot of time for 2008!me to be astonished at college!kidlet!

She'd probably be astonished that I've gone so long without writing.

She'd deeply envy my solitary room; in 2008 I was still a loud snorer trying to share a bed with an insomniac, but it took us much longer than it should have to get over the whole "married people must sleep in the same bed" thing.

She was in such a low point, career-wise, that I think maybe the biggest surprise would be that I have managed to get a job at Teranerd, where I work on spreadsheets all day long and people trust me with pricing millions of dollars worth of high-tech work that didn't even exist in 2008. Boring as the job is, I think she'd view it as a reassuring vote of confidence.

Also, she'd get to meet two cats she's never met before!







1 -- goss, "VENOM! Why do you think it's been such an instant hit with Fandom, and what are some of your favourite fanworks so far?" and nestra, "Any Venom recs?"
2 -- anitac588, "How do you relate to different fandoms? Do you revisit them? Sometimes I find it difficult to go back to reading stories in 'old' fandoms after discovering new OTP."
3 -- marginaliana, "what is your favorite physical non-living thing? Not a person or a pet, but it could be something you own or a piece of art, etc."
4 -- cesperanza, "I'll ask an HP question, actually, because I wasn't really ever in it and I'm interested in the reactions of people who were. It seems to me from the outside so spectacularly meh now; like, it was the fictional equiv of Lost (which I also didn't watch) where it was fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination. Am I wrong?"
5 -- teigh_corvus, "Your thoughts on James Joyce and Ulysses."
6 -- kass, "If the you of 10 years ago could see you now, what would surprise her most?"
7 -- jjhunter, "What do you carry with you?"
8 -- mific, "Sounds like you commute to and fro still. How do you pass the time traveling? Music? Audiobooks? Something else? Any reccs? :)"
9 -- torch, "favorite advent songs!"
10 -- princessofgeeks, "How did you go about changing fandoms? Was it, historically, something you did or something that just happened? Did friends lure you? Did you find new shows to watch?"
11 -- reginagiraffe, "(It's MrGiraffe's birthday so...) Have you ever written a birthday themed story? If not, what couple would have the best/funnest/easiest birthday story to write and why?"
12 -- laurenthemself, "What are your thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok? I know ya boy Steve wasn't in it but did you have any shippy feelings?"
13 -- allheadybooks, "13. What's your least favorite thing about splitting your time between two houses? (My wife and I are also in a commuter marriage at the moment, and I get so frustrated every weekend when I have to go grocery shopping AGAIN because I thought I had eggs but that was at the other apartment!"
14 -- schneefink, "how about your field of study/work/specialization/hobby and how a book/movie/series/canon got it terribly/hilariously wrong?"
15 -- china_shop, "What hooks you into a fanfic? Is it banter, characterisation, tropes, or...? Is it different from what hooks you into original fic?"
16 -- muccamukk, "Describe a long fic you always wanted to write, but never have and likely never will."
17 -- ride_4ever, "rec two due South fanworks: a favorite that you created and a favorite that someone else created. (Anything! Triggers and squicks not a concern for me.)"
18 -- kass, "What have you read recently that you've enjoyed?
19 -- jjhunter, "What are five words you like or find especially meaningful + 1 word you despise? Why?"
20 --
21 --
22 -- mekare, What would Ben Fraser do in 2018?
23 -- marina, "What was the last book you read that wasn't fanfic and that you intensely loved, and why."
24 -- wychwood, "Something about SGA! What's the one fic you're sorry you never wrote? What was your favourite episode? Do you still love John/Rodney? How gay WAS John Sheppard? Where in Atlantis would you live if you could pick any room you liked? Pick one or a topic of your choice."
25 --
26 --
27 --destina, "how has your relationship to fandom changed over the years? By which I mean not just participation in it, but your level of tolerance/interest for the cyclical things about it, the way old arguments never really stop or die, etc, but also the ways fandom changes and new ways of doing fandom evolve. (And old ways evolve out, and terms evolve, etc.)"
28 -- kass, "What do you like best about where you live?"
29 --
30 -- china_shop, "Your favourite book you read this year."
31 -- wolfshark, "what is your favorite story to reread of your own stuff? what was your favorite story to write?"

Comments

[sara]

Oh jeez, 2008. I was so unemployed then too. At least there was a lot of that going around. But it was still super depressing.

[resonant]

... Do you know, it never occurred to me to connect my employment woes with the state of the economy at that time? How weird.

[sara]

Oh, I think even if you had a job then you were scared to leave it, because there was so little available -- I have watched even the people I know who were employed then put up with some pretty terrible workplace dynamics out of fear. I have myself put up with a lot I shouldn't have, out of fear of going back to that.

[grammarwoman]

Pardon the drive-by comment, but... 'in 2008 I was still a loud snorer trying to share a bed with an insomniac, but it took us much longer than it should have to get over the whole "married people must sleep in the same bed" thing. '

THANK YOU. I feel so weird about my husband and I having different bedrooms (he goes to bed hours after I do, and he loves a hot room whilst I need cold); it is very comforting to read someone else in the same situation.

[resonant]

Oh, man, not a night goes by without me being sincerely and profoundly grateful for my little twin bed. Menopause would have been a nightmare if I couldn't have chilled the room down to arctic levels and then flung the covers off any time I wanted to.

And this way the spouse gets to read himself to sleep without bothering me.

He got the queen bed that was a wedding gift, and it's hilarious to look at it -- he never makes it up, so the covers are sort of piled in the middle like whipped cream on a dessert, and around the edges are books and magazines and notebooks and pens and scribbled-on envelopes.