Earth & Tea

Doing that thing again where I feel sad and lonely about fandom and online communication. I miss feeling connected to people through fandom but I don't have any interest in any active fandoms... and the minute there's more than about 20 people being loud about something I get frightened back into a silent space anyway.

Friendship and connectivity is strange nowadays - I'm not sure exactly what I'm lonely for in that sense. It's not the soulstruck emptiness of feeling neglected or unwanted or ignored. I've got good friends, I've got my best friend, I've got my mum and I've got my partner. I don't feel like there's a hole to be filled any longer, but I do sense something lacking and I can't put my finger on what exactly it is, other than (probably) fandom space. This might be the longest I've been floating without at least one person to be actively involved in fannish creation with, whether the fandom in question was popular, current, or of our own invention. I miss collaborative writing. I miss the excitement of passing the story back and forth, or building worlds and whole people up from minor characters with three lines in canon - I miss the joy that comes with being in that bubble and how it spills over into everything and everything inspires it.

How do I get involved with something and talk to people about fandom when I don't feel inspired by fannish spaces of late and reaching out to anyone in a non face-to-face environment is so terrifying? I always see things about how communicating online is so much easier than in person and how the screen gives you the mask to get behind and feel safe in sharing, but that's the complete opposite of my vibe. Talking to someone where I can see their face and hear their voice is always more comfortable than sending a message into the ether not really knowing who the person is that reads it or how my tone will come across. Posting something on a platform with a large audience is completely nauseating, but I don't know of any other way to make those kinds of connections.

Maybe I don't even really want them. Maybe I'm fooling myself.

King of Scars is out tomorrow, anyway. Perhaps there will be some noise about that?

In other ways, I think I'm doing better. The light is growing, slowly. I haven't felt too superfluous or exhausted to get out of bed for a couple of weeks, so that's good. Winter without medication is harder than I had hoped but not so hard as I had feared. And January is almost over at least.