Thursday Wrap-Up Post

One thing I'm going to be experimenting with here is how much or how little to post and share.  Given that the Mary Sue project is one of my primary motivations, and by it's very nature it's all about the day-to-day-ness of life, I suspect that posts like this one are going to be a big, meaty portion of the content.  Not the only content by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm sure I'll experiment with what the daily wrap-ups contain, and undoubtedly I'll miss days here and there, but hopefully I'll make them somewhat entertaining all the same.  Positive, constructive feedback is welcome!

On Thursdays We:

• make coffee make our husband make us coffee because it's his day off
• go to work, like all good little worker-bees
• eat leftovers for dinner (hooray! no cooking!)
• blog

Aaaaaaaaaaand since I'm not in the company bowling league, that was all that was on my agenda for the day.

Except that's all the boring stuff, right?  Now for the good great parts:

I got my latest order from The Bar-Maids today.

A full-sized Lo-Lo in Hookah Girl, smaller Wild Rose and
Ella Mint, a Cuticle stick and a tester of Eve's Folly

Things Heard, But Not Seen:

I'm making my way through the back episodes of "Stuff You Missed in Hisotry Class", which is a fabulous, fabulous podcast that's exactly what it says on the tin.  The hosts (there are several, since the podcast has been going since around 2008) take you through obscure or just under-explored moments in history.  The audio quality is excellent, and so far all the hosts are extremely engaging.  I've made myself a playlist of all the episodes under 20 minutes and I'm listening to those first, so I'm going through quite a few in a day.

• Was There a Female Pope?
• Sir Roger Mortimer: Who Was the "Greatest Traitor"?
• The Death of Mozart
• Who was King Tut... Really?
• The Curse of the Koh-I-Noor Diamond
• The History of Chocolate
• 10 Historical Animals You Should Know, pt 2
• A Jewish Pirate's Life for Me

Things Seen, But Not Heard: 

I didn't get much reading done today, just a handful of articles here and there.  I've got a slew of comics and novels I want to bump to the front of my mental queue though.  (Meanwhile, Brian is powering through the entire Anita Blake series in about a week and half.  Yes, you read that right.  It'll probably take me about five or six times longer.)

The best bits by far to come across my dash today were:

• Simon Pegg Will Co-Write the Next Star Trek Movie
• How French Fashion Helped Change the Mind of 18th Century Anti-Vaxxers
• How is a Mathematical Proof Like Frodo's Journey in Lord of the Rings? 
• Have a spectacular (though unfortunately fan-made) Lego Smaug (I WOULD PAY GOOD MONEY FOR THIS SET, LEGO!)
• Funko Pop reveals for their Age of Ultron line-up (spoiler: no Black Widow, but we finally get Hawkeye!  There was a great one of Natasha from Winter Soldier though.  Methinks a purchase is in my future...)
• And last but not least, Rachel (of Rachel and Miles) will be X-plaining X-Men Evolution each week along with all their other usual features.

No knitting was harmed (or attempted) in the making of this day.

The end.

That Mary Sue You Thing

A friend of mine on Ravelry posted the following cartoon one day:

Wondermark » Archive » #1076; The Hero You Observe

I had an immediate THAT'S IT! moment.

I started really thinking about the idea of "writing fanfiction" of my life - not so much in the most literal sense, but dovetailing it with multiple productivity articles I've read over the years (thank you, Lifehacker) about visualizing how you want things to go in order to improve your confidence, energy, and how you approach the situation or day.  I've known for years that if I have reasonable expectations about how a day is going to go I handle things better - it's the difference between knowing when I leave the house in the morning that I'm going to have to go to the grocery store after work and expecting it as opposed to realizing at 4:30 that I can't go straight home and I have what suddenly feels like "ALL THE ERRANDS" to run.

The last few years I've felt like I was adrift, only reacting to instead of acting on the world around me.  Now, I don't mean to imply trying to exert a hyper-obsessive level of control on the world around me.  I do mean thinking about the person I want to be, and imagining how she would go about her day.

I shared the idea with the rest of the Hive Mind, and all three of us are experimenting with this idea in different ways.  Right off the bat we realized there needed to be a few guidelines, though.  First and foremost, our "Mary Sues" can't be fundamentally different from us as we are now.  Things like health constraints (I'm diabetic, for instance) that we can't change have to be a part of who Mary Sue Me (or You) is.  All three of us are married, and none of us are contemplating divorce, so none of our Mary Sues can be footloose and fancy free single ladies hitting up all the clubs on a Saturday night.  It's about figuring out and hopefully growing into the best version of ourselves, not about giving ourselves impossible goals that we'll just beat ourselves up over for not being able to reach.

For me, blogging is a really important cornerstone for this approach, and this is what ultimately settled me on starting to blog again.  It's easier for me to channel myself into that better, wish-fulfillment version of myself when I'm (at least a little bit) on a public stage.  Carrot, stick, I'm not sure which, yet, but there you go.

Project Mary Sue You and Rebirth of the Blog

I've been a blogger for years, albeit an inconsistent one. My husband pointed out to me one day that when I do blog, regardless of the subject matter, I seem to be happier and more stable, and he's right. Reporting on, and by extension having to be aware of and accountable for my time and activities seems to help me make more deliberate decisions about what I do *and* I pay more attention while I'm doing it, rather than succumbing to the "staring off into space how did it get to be 10 PM already what?" phenomenon.

Well, most of the time. (A little bit of space-cadet is inevitable, right?)

When I was thinking through whether or not to start blogging again, I took a long hard look at where I wanted my blog to go.  Most online resources weren't ultimately helpful, because over and over what I found were sites explaining how to manage, promote, and make money from your blog.  Which is totally valid, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't what I wanted to be doing.

What did I want to be doing?

Well, good question.  I'm still not sure I know the answer to it.  That means this incarnation of my life online may not have a clear format or direction, at least not at first.  It means I may, by turns, talk about utterly mundane minutiae of daily life, or about knitting, or about fandom, or cooking or religion.  Maybe all of that at once (I like to multi-task, you know).  Or maybe I'll just post pictures (see also: the Instagram feed below).

Where all of the above comes together is the Very Experimental Mary Sue You project that the Hive Mind and I are trying out.

To sum up:

What You Will (Probably) Find Here:

- Knitting (occasionally crocheting or other needle crafts, but mostly knitting.)

- Attempts at grain-free baking

- Attempts at (pseudo) locavore and “primal” cooking (but can we not call it that? My inner anthropologist twitches when we call it that)

- The Cult of the Fitbit (but no running)

- Fandom musings (included, but not limited to: Avengers, Leverage, Jane the Virgin, White Collar, Criminal Minds, Reign, Constantine, Harry Potter, X-Men, etc., etc., etc. Really, a lot of the things. I have a lot of fandoms, okay?)

- Attempts at that amorphous state called "being an adult"

- Heretical thoughts about at least three religions. Maybe more.

- Did I mention knitting and fandom? Because that's a thing.

- Fanfiction (I write it and read it)

- Shiva Nata

- Art (sketching, digital art, paper crafts such as quilling and origami, model painting, and other random things I decide to try out. Oh, and in the springtime? Pysanka.)

- Pictures of food. And yarn. And artwork. And possibly my house.

- Things I like.

What You Will (Probably) Not Find Here:

- Preachy "you must eat/do or not eat/not do this or that thing for whatever reason" messages.  I'm not an expert of much of anything, and I'm certainly not a scientist or medical doctor or other health practitioner.  I have opinions.  I have things that work for me.  They may or may not work for you, and that's okay.

- Conventional ideas about health and wellness

- Conventional ideas about religion

- Fandom wank. I am not ruling out speaking plainly about what I think about a fandom I love, but first and foremost, I watch/read/think about fandoms because I like them. And I like to focus most of the things that I like about them, not what's wrong with them.

- DC (as a fandom). I'm a loyal Marvel girl. (There may be exceptions made for seasons 1 and 2 of Arrow.)

-Things I don’t like.

So that's that.  Welcome, come in, pull up a chair or a cushion or curl up in the sunny corner of the couch and enjoy!