End of Year Stuff

[olivermoss]

I may yet get more done... but honestly I am so into organizing my projects right now it's unlikely.

* Photography: Recently I searched through my own photoposts for the year because I was looking for an image. There was a lot. I did a lot of photowalking, did a lot of very long walks, went the extra mile (or five) lots of times. Even if towards the end of the year a lot got in my way of getting fresh content, I used that time to organize or do other useful things. On my photo-a-day tumblr one of my posts just hit 5k reblogs. So, yeah, feeling good about this photography year overall. Also, from the skill share class I am doing I have a lot of specific ideas about things I want to do next year.

* Writing: I did not meet my set goal... but I also published a lot of chapters, wrote drawer fic for working through the Ursula K Le Guin book, have a lot of planned projects and fixed a lot of things that I had struggled with in writing. I have not met my stated goal, but I can't actually feel too bad about that because this year has outstripped last year and the year before that by so much. Honestly, just getting The Light Ahead longfic out and done makes this year a win, and I did a lot more than that. I just realized that the Word Of The Year project I did at the start of the year helped me a lot, but putting a pin in that for a second.

* Art and Design. I actually forgot that some of my art projects were from this year. I also did a lot of really cool planner layouts. I still have a lot of projects that I need to get done mostly so I can move on from them. Moving them from 'wanting to do this for years' to 'done' would be a huge relief and lessen my mental load. I do have some of this project ticking over, but I am not really an artist so... yeah.

A few layouts, Leverage MerMay art and one of the comics I did

I do still have doing some sort of bujo content creation like a blog or something ticking over. I don't think a blog would get any hits without being associated with a YT channel, but I do want to get these projects done and out.

* Life. Not going to get into detail, but in some ways things are a lot better for me... but also if you'd told me on Jan 1, 2022 that this is where I'd been when my year ended I'd have had a meltdown. Anyway, there is a lot to unpack there I am not unpacking it right now.

* Word Of The Year... oh I'd forgotten I'd done this and other pages in my planner at the start of 2022. I tried to work on that stuff in the first few months of 2022 and it just kept not working out. But looking back, taking a wack at it knocked more loose than I thought. What I'd tried was setting a theme year ala CGP Grey... honestly doing the CGP Grey theme thing at the start of the year made me frustrated, but... I think it got me moving in the right direction on things. So, I am doing a theme year again.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

Congrats on all that you got done!

Your photography stuff is always fantastic, and I love to see it. And I'm really glad that the tumblr has met with some success!

It sounds like it was a very good writing year, even if it wasn't exactly what you'd been aiming for. Getting things complete and out the door is a wonderful thing to have done!

Those are some fantastic layouts. I adore jackalopes. And airships!

Fistbump on life as a whole.

[olivermoss]

Thanks! Nothing but that one post has come close to even a thousand notes, but having one do really well does up my exposure a lot. Hopefully, my other posts will continue to trickle around.

Writing I could be upset about, but I have definitely leveled up and need to keep going.

Thank you!

[mistressofmuses]

Hopefully a few people see the more popular posts and click through for more! Tumblr is nice that posts can have a long lifespan. You aren't screwed if something didn't get a ton of attention within the first day or so.

It's definitely worth celebrating the things that went right with writing! And keeping up the persistence.

[olivermoss]

The slow nature of tumblr is really good for content makers. The flash in a pan nature of other sites is all about constant engagement grind and incentivizes theft.

[mistressofmuses]

It's definitely one of the things I like best about tumblr. It is a share-based platform, but it really allows for creators to have longevity of their work, rather than having to churn things out as a content mill. (Which definitely winds up rewarding theft more often than not.)

[olivermoss]

The slower ecosystem really is better in so many ways... as weird as it is to be talking up tumblr as a good platform for anything but losing yourself in endless scroll

[mistressofmuses]

It IS fucking weird to be talking about tumblr in a positive light, lmao. WHY DO YOU (facebook, twitter, discord) MAKE ME DO THIS???
And like... I DO like tumblr, it's the closest thing to mainstream socmed that I've stuck with because I DO like so many aspects of it, but come on, the jank of the site is well known.
AND YET. It's one of the only sites that hasn't changed to prioritize the content mill and constant churning production, and most people are delighted to see posts from months or years or at this point a DECADE ago still circulating.

[olivermoss]

A lot of why Tumblr works these days is because of changes Wordpress made, restoring the ability to view tags by recent, etc. I am only discoverable to the established blogs that curate aesthetics because of sort by new. But yeah it's weird because at times tumblr seemed like the worst blight on the internet. But then other sites went 'hold my beer'.

[mistressofmuses]

That's true - for all the wankery and panic at the time, a lot of Wordpress's changes were good ones that improved functionality. I hope they stay that way.

It's really kind of dismal to think of how tumblr used to be kind of bad as a space, and now it is nearly just as bad, yet that has somehow still moved it to the top because everything else is so much worse now. There are ways in which I know that people have sort of made tumblr into the space they wanted, even if it wasn't really set up that way on purpose, but... it remains a sad commentary on just how BAD socmed has gotten as a whole.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, things really have gotten bad. It's still so weird to me. I remember when fandom spaces were so focused on building good spaces, and obvs there were still problems, but spaces and resources and ways to filter content etc... Evergreen content not just flash in the pan stuff like Insta...

And I'm rambling, sorry

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah... it's sad to me just in general how much of fandom has moved to curated social media spaces, which will basically always be at odds with the things that fandom itself is best served by. I know it's very "old person yelling at cloud" of me, but... robust filtering! curated spaces! feeds that show the content you specifically asked for! tagging and searches that are at least moderately functional! appreciation for good content regardless of how new it is!
No space is perfect, because people aren't perfect, and competing needs is a very real thing in some cases. But the stronger and stronger pushes toward algorithms and advertiser-friendly content and sponsored posts... it's just EXHAUSTING.

No apologies for rambling! I think we're preaching at each others' choirs here, but I have feelings about it!

[olivermoss]

Fandom built so much in the early days, but when it got disrupted almost nothing got rebuilt, or when people did projects no one cared. Ao3 is awesome and amazing, but everything else just fell apart.

I don't know how people put up with the stuff they do, the unwanted content, ads, autoplaying videos, etc.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah... when things finally went down due to lack of interest/funds to maintain it, or a host vanished, or there was infighting that caused an implosion, things just... went away, never to be replaced. AO3 is frankly amazing and inspiring, and I love that it exists... but it really is a single island.

I hate ads more and more the more every time I wind up seeing them. There's a post about the garbage popup nonsense covering recipe sites, and how a decade ago you'd think it was some virus-ridden scam site, but no, that's just "normal" now. It's even more egregiously terrible imo when it's fucking NEWS sites. Half my local news sites are unreadable in anything but firefox, because otherwise the laggy popup ads and auto-redirects and articles collapsing after 30 seconds so that you're forcibly shown the ads at the bottom and have to scroll back up and click on a read more link to finish the article...
And that's off-topic from all the social media shit we were talking about, but GOD. I try my best to avoid ads and autoplaying videos and such, which makes me that much more resentful when I DO see it, ugh.

[olivermoss]

I do not know how people put up with auto-playing video and tabs that are just allowed to me whatever sound they want. Sidebar ads use flickering meant to grab our attention based on survival instincts.

I have light and sound sensitivity, seeing that all the time would wreck me, but I think even for other people it effects them and they just don't realize it. Also food ads trying trigger people's hunger response? I literally can't imagine dealing with all that. Ao3 must be such a relief for some people, a rare chance to focus.

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh, same. Sometimes I realize I *don't* notice that stuff, because I have my phone volume muted all the time, and then I'll forget to re-mute after watching something on purpose, and when I scroll for ten seconds on FB suddenly have multiple videos immediately BLARING. I hate that shit nearly as much as I hate ads that block more than half the screen when I try to read an article.

I definitely agree that I think a lot of people think they just tune stuff out, but really probably don't. There's a lot of insidious stuff that happens with ads, and even if you TRY to ignore them, it's likely that they still have an impact. (That flickering based on survival instincts catches me - I'll set my phone down after opening tumblr/an article to read/etc., and then a video loads, and it absolutely grabs my attention immediately.)

I appreciate spaces like AO3 and DW so very much for being spaces without ads, regardless of what device I use to view them. I'm using firefox on my computer for more, because I don't want ads... and it makes me that much more aware when I can't avoid them.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I really think people are effected by all that and just don't realize the mental strain of it. They deal with it so much they think it's normal or just like from just reading the articles or something. If I had gobs of money I would absolutely run trials on whether putting up with all that is causing mental stress and hurting focus. People have a right to insulate themselves from all that.

[mistressofmuses]

People do have a right - or SHOULD have the right! - to insulate themselves from that, for sure. There's a LOT of really insidious and sinister shit that goes into advertising. It got talked about in psych classes I was taking more than a decade ago now, so I can only imagine the ways in which it's gotten even worse now "behind the scenes". (Particularly with the ways in which advertising starts to try to NOT look like advertising... quirky brand accounts with savvy tweets, and sponsored posts that LOOK like the thing you're interested in.)

I know that seeing blinky banner ads, or having to scroll past page-breaking ads (again, often videos) multiple times per news article or op-ed, having an often unskippable ad play before every article I try to read, video I try to watch, song I try to listen to, etc. ABSOLUTELY harms my ability to focus on things. It's also stressful, even if it's in minor ways. It's often frustrating enough that I give up on the content I was actually trying to look at, so I didn't even GET the thing I wanted - I JUST got annoyed.
It would be kind of nice to have a real study with real numbers about it.

[olivermoss]

I can't even image what all that would do to my focus that I've worked so hard to rebuild. It would be shattered by all that.

Fortunately, I can mostly do stuff from desktop which gives me a lot more control. Most of the time I'm photo walking I am carrying an old phone without a sim card. It's just for time and music synced via dropbox.

[mistressofmuses]

I feel like there are SO many people who struggle with focus... it doesn't seem like a wild theory to think that the omnipresence of advertising could be part of what's to blame. Even if it doesn't CAUSE focus issues, it definitely exploits them, and seems like it could be part of why so many people struggle to manage their focus issues on their own.

Yeah, I've discovered how much of a difference it makes when I use my laptop as opposed to my phone. I'd gotten so used to doing 90% of my computer stuff on my phone that it was a bit of a shock how much less advertising I'm forced to see... thanks, firefox and ublock. And I DID notice it on my phone - it was just less escapable.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I think it's like one of those ever-present things that people start to think of as their normal state and don't even realize. Insulating yourself from them can be hard, and we are pretty much raising kids to be social media addicts.

[verdande_mi]

Thanks for sharing your photography here :D

Some great layouts there as well!

[olivermoss]

Thank you!