Getting Shit Done, Part Eight

This is what I did yesterday:

- More emails. The only ones left are the ones that require a substantial amount of work, which I've gradually been chipping away at. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

- I edited and posted a 1,200 word piece about FFXV Kingsglaive on my video game blog.

- I went home and sat on the couch and spaced out for a bit while thinking about how awesome it would have been if Constance Wu had been cast to play The Ancient One in Dr. Strange. Why isn't Constance Wu in everything?

- I checked Tumblr to find that people were yelling at me. People are always yelling at me on Tumblr, why is this? In reality I am one of the most consistently positive and non-aggressive people on the entire site, but for some reason I seem to have been cast as some sort of negative stereotype in the minds of certain people who don't actually follow me. Against my better judgment I responded to two of them in a way I hope came off as friendly and respectful yet firm, because I think it's good to enforce the perception that I do in fact have boundaries.

- And then people sent me some Asks that were not evil, which was super nice of them. I responded to one publicly, I responded to another privately, I saved one to post this afternoon, and the rest made me smile to myself.

- Sweet Jesus, Tumblr fandom is exhausting.

- I wrote drafts for about half a dozen comments to leave on people's fic on AO3. I don't actually read that much fic these days, and most of these comments are for stories and chapters that were posted months ago, and in any case I won't post anything until I've edited it, but showing appreciation for the things that have made me happy fills me with positive energy, which I most definitely need right now.

- I finished, edited, and sent the peer review of the translation. This was such a nice experience!

- Another paragraph of the book review. I'm desperately trying not to be mean, but my patience with the author's bullshit is starting to wear thin.

- No fic today. Instead I drew a bunch of thumbnails and drafts for gift art intended for one of my favorite artists on Tumblr. I really want to show her how much I adore her version of Zelda, but I also don't want her to experience any bad feelings because I butchered her design. I've been working on this project for two weeks now, and I think I should maybe settle on something a bit simpler and sketchier than what I originally intended. I mean, no one expects anything from someone like me, right?

Anyway, that's the end of my break from work and the last of these posts. Whew!

The Opportunity Cost of Fandom

As I've been reading over my writing logs from the past eight days, the opportunity cost of my participation in fandom has become apparent. I'm tired just about all the time and I get relatively little "real" work done because I'm devoting so much of my energy to writing fic and meta and making stupid drawings. There are only so many hours in the day, and at any given point I can either be doing [work:paid] or I can be doing [fandom:unpaid], with very little room for downtime if I attempt to do both.

This is why, when people (mostly academics, bless their hearts) talk about how utopian it is for fans not to receive money for their labor, I always want to roll my eyes and ask why it's always female fans (especially minority female fans) whose unpaid labor is being championed. Men have historically had a number of avenues through which they have been able to turn their fannish interests into a career, but women should not be compensated, because fuck capitalism, amirite. Absolutely, let's have men (especially straight white men) produce the mainstream culture that feeds the dominant ideology while women relegate their work to the margins of their lives as they struggle to make ends meet! That is so radical and edgy! How very bold and daring, to suggest that women's work should remain firmly ensconced within shadow economies!

NOT THAT I'M BITTER OR ANYTHING.

In any case, I desperately want not to feel like I'm slowly dying every second that I'm awake, so I should probably try to figure out a way to get money for the work that brings me joy.

I'm considering quitting Tumblr for a bit, and by "quitting" I actually mean "not doing anything except reblogging cute art with cute tags once or twice a day." I subscribe to most of the artists I follow on Feedly, so doing this wouldn't really require much interaction with Tumblr at all. Also, Final Fantasy XV is coming out tomorrow (HAHAHA FINALLY THANK YOU JESUS), so there's that to take into account as well... In the meantime, I think it would be nice to devote this blog to Final Fantasy, because there's no shame creating a safe haven filled with gorgeous monsters and beautiful men and transcendent warrior princesses when the real world is so godawful.