I'm back, I'm bad.

I'd just like to mention that I have managed to work out the competing impulses in my brain (divided between, basically, sew! write! read! everything else!) and figure out the timetable they are on.

Doing this has allowed me to write a WHOLE LOT in the last few weeks. I have +/-30K to go on my first draft. Sort of creepy, really. It feels a bit like, you know, the ground just slid out from under me.

Yes, jkivela, when I start posting new stuff, you'll be able to read it. *g*

In the mean time, I am on an organisation kick. So this is me organising.

I'll put up another post today in which I start keeping track of the books I've read for the year, because basically I do a lot of reading (some of it of tripe that would make your eyes bleed, believe me, but enough about work) and I never know what I've read at the end of a year (...or a week...) and I want to start getting through the backlog of books I own but have never read. Conveniently, that's around a hundred books. Assuming I can tolerate mostly non-fiction on subjects ranging from the Intifada to the physics of dreaming to feminism to religion (my god I have a lot of religious books, why?) that should be, like, a couple years to read, assuming I could conceivably manage one book a week.

At this point, I am struggling to finish Kim, mainly because I read one page and pass out from exhaustion. So that two years of reading is overly optimistic.

Also, as you all know, I never finish anything, so I figure I'll put a link to the list on my userinfo page just so I can see how little progress I've made.

And the other part of my organising: things to rant on. Not entirely sure what to put here except that I had a brilliant idea and now it's gone. So the two that remain are being an elitist and why Virginia is not part of the known world. Also, there's a work rant in there too, but that would devolve into actual violence right now so we'll just say that I'm leaving that one till I'm done with my current project which is making me break out in Gnats.

I think I'll be breaking my writing streak real soon, though, given that I have a new urge to go home and wrestle with my coat and with my corset. Not necessarily a happy plan, given that I want to finish the first draft by the end of April at the latest (and right now thirty K feels like a sneeze, considering that there's one hundred and thirty K on the other side of it), but mine own, so there it is.

I really never want to do sewing as a business, I think. Not that I wanted to before this, but the experience I'm having with sewing is something that's solidifying my lack-of-interest in making a living at things that I enjoy (granted, I love my job, but there's definitely a world of "I wouldn't read this except for the money!" in there). But most people hear that you sew and think that means you repair things.

No. If it meant that, I totally would not have holes in the toes of almost every single pair of socks I own. I totally would not have ripped the lining out of a skirt because I didn't want to sew it up again and the only reason I did that was because the tear hung down past the hem of the skirt. I totally would sew ten goddamn hooks on my coat that I started over a month ago and ONLY need to do three things to to have an entire outfit completed. I would totally not have shirts that I put on and think "Oh, right, I meant to fix that hole"...forgetting that it's been there since I bought the shirt and was, in fact, the reason it was a buck at goodwill - someone opened the box with a boxcutter.

I do not repair things. I create things. I am happy as a pig in shit sewing new stuff.

Most people do not want new stuff. They want old stuff repaired (even if it's totally not worth it) or they want it altered. Alteration I can almost handle.

Being given a pair of pants that were too tight when purchased and told that it "only needs a quarter of an inch" (not according to my tape measure, dude) to fit? Not my idea of a good time. I have to take off the entire waistband, which will then not even fit onto the trousers because you can't just magic a quarter inch out of nowhere! I am not readjusting the goddamn seams all the way down the damn leg just so you can buy pants that don't fit!

Being given a dress with a tear in the underarm seam (by another person!) and asked to fix it? Not my idea of a good time, either. I don't WANT to have to deal with re-serging the dress, then sewing it, then hoping to crap that it holds together. Buy a new dress, since that one only cost fifteen dollars!

So that's the thing for me.

And that's what very few people seem to get. I'd get more joy out of fighting with a pattern to make someone an entire finicky outfit than out of spending the ten minutes to fix your damn seams.

And that is why I will never a) tell anyone that I sew and then allow the comment about doing "sewing" for them (for I have learned that this means "alteration" or "repair") and b) run a business of sewing in an environment where people can just ask me about it.

Before you ask, the only reason I am doing alteration/repair work for one friend is because, basically, he's saying that he wants to get something made, which I am happy to do. The other was...well, it was complicated. But never again.

And I'm totally giving the pants back without working on that waistband if I can't move the hook (unlikely). It's not worth it to try to get the damn material to cough up that "quarter inch". I'd rather make a new pair of pants. From scratch. By hand.

*****

So far I've picked songs pretty much at random - stuff that might be interesting to people. Or at least that I am not prepared to share the sekrit code on. But these are ones I've been listening to a lot lately. It's a fun ride in my life!

Bonus: You get lots of songs.

Sometimes I have a great notion / Jumpin' in into the river and drown

I'm just waiting on that dream / Because the fast ones always ride for free

In their '62 Vette / Sharing one cigarette

And the faders move / And the music dies / As we pass over / On the arc of time

El-Funoun: Tulbah

Lost / it slowly went away / was gone without a trace / I'm tired and I can't remember

And ever since I figured out / That I could control other people / I've had trouble sleeping / With both eyes closed

If you weren't so wise beyond your years I would've been able to control myself

Hey, you know what?

I'm really fucking sick of being part of communities who decide that they are omgsofuckingspeshul, with shiny shit all over the top, that anything related to the topic at hand (ie, in this case, someone asking for help on a sewing project they had not yet started - the horror!) is deemed Off-Topic And Must Be Burninated With Fire.

What.

This is not me saying that you should come to my rp communities and spam with your love of rice vinegar. This is me saying that if you actually wish to involve people in the communities that you maintain, when they are posting something perhaps one degree Off Topic (ie, asking for help on a project they had not yet started, but if they had said "Dude, here's a picture and here's a receipt for some fabric, and now I need to know how the fuck to make this and by the way I'll post every single day for the next two weeks going 'ZOMG FUCKING CRISIS AND THE CAT ATE MY BABIES ANYWAY!'" it would miraculously be on topic)...that is in the category of Things That Make No Sense.

YOU love X. I love X. Someone wants help with X. This community exists to provide HELP with X...but only after you've sacrificed a calf. WHOOPS POST MUST BE DELETED.

And it wasn't even my post.

I think the thing that really makes me laugh is that this is a comm that sees about two or three posts a week - and the last eight have been from the same person. Who is, amazingly enough as these things go, not the mod.

Also, contradictory userinfos crack my shit up. As I told the mod, saying in one breath this is not the place to ask for advice, then in the next this is the place to ask for advice on *sewing* projects is what is known as "a contradiction in terms".

I realise that Bush is president. That does not mean that we can forget everything we ever learned about anything having to do with a) Logic or b) Grammar.

Also, in the categories of things that are also hilarious, this is the mod, if I recall correctly, who will say "You can leave the post up to get a few more answers, but then it must be deleted." Way to enforce topicity!

And it all reminds me of the wank that cropped up when zomgfuckingnoes some of us who belonged to a BDS comm would not put our birthdate in the userinfo. I have been tempted since to reapply (my ass was banned because I would not lie and tell them I was over eighteen! We all know that userinfos are magical invocations of truth and justice and apple pie and mom!) with a birthdate of 1927 and see if they believe that a, um, 80 year old is really reading badly-written MacManuscest. Ironically, I was honest about why I refused to put up my birthdate (I really hate autogenerated birthday reminders from people who have no other contact with me) and stated that my attestation of my legal age was in my userinfo. But no, I had to follow the Dark Powers Of Compulsion, which would not let me enter a false birthdate EVAR, and put in my actual birthdate!

in sum: comms are silly, but asshatted mods are even worse.