Snowflake Challenge Day 13

[olivermoss]

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

I have a lot of goals for this year. As I've mentioned a few places, I am doing getyourwordsout with a goal of writing 200k words this year. In addition to writing lots of words, I intend to get enough finished pieces done to add 50k to my word count on AO3. It's going pretty well so far, I am 4% of the way there!

Goals are tricky things especially when you've had the past few years I've had. The things I need most I can't really set goals for. You can't make them happen, you can only try. I have a goal of 6 new galleries up on my photography website, and other some other content for that site. I can make that happen (even though I am having problems with wordpress right now.) If I hit road blocks I can problem solve and keep pushing.

I made a post a while back with some 2019 goals. I just updated the post with my progress. The post is here.

Getting my personal life in order, recovering from almost everyone I know ghosting me after I had a medical crisis, there is just no way to set a timeline on that. I can do all the right things, but I can't make relationships happen, or create people who I'd want relationships with out of thin air. That's life. All I can do is try and hope I am not wasting my time.

I am doing a crafting class next week. It's actually for a craft I used to do on the regular. It's just a thing I am doing to get me out and being more social. I might not gel with anyone there. The class might wind up not involving much talking. People might just show, work and leave. It's a roll of the dice. Trying to get more socially connected isn't something you can make happen, it's just an endless series of dice throws.

My last few meetup type things wound up being hot messes and very unfriendly to new people. Established groups can be like that. They are no longer anything like what they claim to be on paper and have already congealed into social group that is only interested in talking among themselves. I've been to board gaming meetups where only I showed up and I've been to board gaming meetups that made fun of women and lamented that girls wont join the hobby ... with me sitting right there! I could write a comically long list of shit I've run into just trying to join board gaming groups. It's so frustrating because I've been into board gaming for a while. Not to be all hipster, but I was into playing alternative/geeky board games back before the current golden era of board gaming got enabled by Kickstarters. Board gaming is held up as The Way to meet people in this town. Ask about making friends around here, especially as a geek, and everyone sings the praises of the local board gaming scene. Yeah, most of the publicly findable groups aren't welcoming, at least not to me.

Getting yourself out there is a crap shoot every time. It feels like endless rejection and it's hard to take. I've got a lot of goals, but I can't set goals for the most important things in my life right now. Trying to set social goals, especially ones with a timeline, is just setting myself up for the worst kind of burnout.

Comments

[kurgaya]

200k!!! Wowow, good luck! :)

[olivermoss]

Thanks! That's just of word written total, not just stuff that becomes a finished work. Still, it's a lot of writing :)

[kurgaya]

Do you ever take part in NaNoWriMo? I suppose that could add 50k to your count very quickly! :)

[olivermoss]

I do Nano, but never get far. In the past I've used it to try to find a local writing groups, but that hasn't worked out so far.

[coyoteclaw11]

Ugh that's really rough... building a circle is just so difficult, especially after a number of really bad experiences... You can't really plan it out or force it to happen, but at the same time, it won't come if you don't try. I commend your perseverance and wish you the best luck in finding new friends!!

[olivermoss]

Thanks. Yeah, it's important to be realistic about it being hard. Past bad experiences make it hard to keep trying, but well, I've go to.

[stellar_dust]

Building friend groups from the ground up is really hard. Good luck, I hope you find a place that welcomes you!

Also, I really like your photos. :D

[olivermoss]

Thanks! I do know have a few social connections here, but I see them rarely. I can wind up going weeks without talking to anyone.

[silveradept]

Gyah. I'm sorry you're encountering cliques instead of groups interested in having new people to talk to and have fun with.

[olivermoss]

Thanks. Yeah, that just seems to be how life goes once you are out of school. Most people become rigid in their social circles even if they are a meetup.com group.

[mekare]

Oh man that’s harsh. I’m sending you best wishes and good luck.

[olivermoss]

Thanks!

[mistressofmuses]

I'm hoping to add to my total wordcount on things this year, too!

Good luck with your many excellent goals! It is frustrating when you have things you can't quantify or control, especially with how awful it sounds like some of the meetup things have been. (As someone else who has struggled wildly with having any kind of friend group post-college, I really do feel how hard that is.)

[olivermoss]

Thanks!

Once past college it's really hard to get friendship groups, and sometimes if you do they don't work out. Or they ... do what my main group did. I do have some people I hang with roughly once every other month, like I said in my other comment. But overall I am in a not-good situation and trying to get out of it is a lot of time and energy with low chance of success.