The world is out there

The past couple weeks have been massively intense. I ended up working on the multifandom vid for Vividcon premieres that I should have started last year, knowing it would take a lot of time and effort to acquire so many clips from fandoms I neither know or have access to. anoel volunteered to help me out and killabeez was already enabling me with clips, so I kept on when I probably, if I'd been wise, should have given up on it. Then I got a book in with the usual two-week deadline, for a heavy edit where I basically have to almost rewrite this writer because she's really kind of terrible. (I miss the days when editors edited, and gave guidance and support to writers who needed it, instead of putting the copyeditors in the position of having to deal with stories that need desperate, high-level help.)

But I did get the vid finished, even if the credits are awful (which bugs me primarily because I've worked with designers for most of my adult life and my inability to do things on my own that look good irritates the fuck out of me), and I can work on some of the tweaking stuff over the next few months before it gets posted online. I'm in so much pain, which is pretty much what I expected, even without having to do most of the clip gathering myself thanks to my intrepid friends. My back is in constant agony, my arms and shoulders are on fire. Multifandom vids are awful, folks. They're an ordeal.

It's been an emotional struggle, too, because I feel even less like it's worth the time to create fanworks than ever. But it's the last Vividcon, so. And Steve's 100th birthday is coming up and I have always posted a story for his birthday, but I just…why bother? Why make the effort. (And the artist still hasn't read the fic for her art, and I now know two people whose artists haven't bothered to say boo about the stories, and if you cannot even get your own collaborator to care, what hope do you even have of getting anyone else to care?) I know some of this is the shitshow the world is right now, but a lot of it is just…indifference wears you down. I can make little Steve/Bucky movies in my head and not have to do any research or editing or crafting. I can tell my own little stories in my head. I'm sure I will drag my ass into doing something but...

It was ungodly hot for this time of year here the past week, too. It's cooled down for summer's arrival, sort of how it normally is in Seattle, with overcast skies. That at least makes working on the book easier--when I'm not sweating and having trouble breathing, I can focus on the problems better. I also don't have to chase Blues back in the house because I have to open the doors to get some cooler air in at night--he's been staying close to home most of the time lately but now that it's summer, of course he starts wanting to go outside at night when I don't want him to. He's already killed some critters, which upsets the hell out of me, and last night I stopped him from getting into a fight with a raccoon. The little moron found a way around my attempt to block him, and so I was out looking for him with the flashlight when I heard scrabbling on the fence. Thinking it was him, I shone it up, straight into the eyes of the raccoon, and we had a little stare-off as I tried to shoo him away before I noticed that Blues was at the bottom of the fence trying to do "fight me."

I know from experience how dangerous it is to try to pick him up when he's in fight me mode, but the harder I tried to herd him, the faster he got around me as the raccoon was deciding to come over and chill on the deck. All this at almost 11 pm and I'm trying not to wake neighbors. I really need to find money to get the back door fixed or replaced so I can get a screen door put in, because without air conditioning, it's too stressful. I'd hoped Blues's recent antipathy to going outside anymore would hold throug the summer, but it looks like no such luck. He's such a pill.