with intention

[foreverinasmile]

My birthday was yesterday, and as per tradition, my closest friends and I sat around my kitchen table with wine and good food and solved all the world's problems. And for the record, my husband came very close to topping my Women of the Galaxy gift with a half day at my friend's spa, so that was a double win!

As we talked, I kept coming back to something that I've been thinking about lately, and that is I want to be more intentional in the things that I do. Some of this applies to my personal life, but I am very determined to apply this to my fandom engagement as well. I think that I've started doing this somewhat by commenting more and being active with this journal, but surely there is more I can be doing.

In the short term, I have three goals that I'd like to work towards this week:

1. Finish my first rebelcaptain fic and have the courage to post it. It's been sitting in an open tab for weeks and I keep rereading it and changing it and I think that I need to declare it finished and just go for it.

2. Go through my bookmarks on AO3 and create summaries for them if I haven't already done so. I think that I got into a habit of just bookmarking something to make sure that I didn't lose the fic, but I need to make summaries (and make sure that I commented on the fics themselves!) and remember to do this going forward.

3. Explore Pillowfort more thoroughly. I really, really like DW, but I have neglected Pillowfort somewhat because it's been slower. I want to understand more what it has to offer.

As for now, I have so much reading to catch up on!! I love fic exchanges! So much new, great content comes out.

I think I might declare 2019 The Year of Intention!

Comments

[mosylu]

Yay! Yes, sometimes you just have to say, "this story done" and yeet it toward the Internet. And now I'm not sure if I used that meme correctly, for I am Old. But I do encourage you to just post it, because I'm interested to see whatever you come up with.

Also, happy birthday!

[foreverinasmile]

Thank you!!

And thanks for the encouragement! I think that I may actually do this today (she says while shaking) but I'm excited to give it a try! And I am also of the Old, and cannot understand the yeet, either, but I think that I get it here!!

[callioope]

Happy birthday! Sounds like you had a great one. :)

I never thought about creating summaries for my bookmarks on AO3, that's something to think about! I always just used it to keep track of ones I liked.

[foreverinasmile]

Thanks, I really did!

I thought starting with the bookmarks might be a good way to get into the habit of commenting more. I'm really enjoying commenting as I read, but I've been shy in this fandom for two years, and I want to be able to go back to some of the earlier fics and comment properly, so I thought that this would be a good place to start. I don't bookmark often, I have found that subscribing to my favorite authors tends to keep stories in place so that I can find them again, plus it has the added benefit of emailing me when they update.

[callioope]

Dude, that's a really awesome idea, going back through your bookmarks and commenting. You will make those writers' days when you do! And yeah, I'm not subscribed to very many authors when I really should be, in the past I just relied on checking the first page and hoping I'd catch their work when it comes in. (Result: this is a bad plan lol -- I know I've missed so many good works!)

[foreverinasmile]

Haha..that's exactly how I look for new fics first, just go to the front page of the Cassian/Jyn tag and scroll through! Another thing that I do when I'm looking for something new to read is to go to an author's page that I really like and scroll through their bookmarks. Chances are that because I've enjoyed something that they wrote, that they in turn read stories that I might also like. This is what gave me the idea for going back to my bookmarks to create summaries. A lot of people do that, and it's nice to scroll through and see why this particular person liked this particular story (much like comments, but those can contain spoilers!).

I'm excited to get started on this, but there is so many amazing new stories that it's taking me much longer to get to it than I thought! I'll probably go to my bookmarks page and want to reread the story before I write a summary (which isn't a hardship, I love to reread!) and then I'll likely want to add stories, too! This might be a bigger project than I thought!!

[callioope]

Oh, that's a great idea to check out the bookmarks of authors I like! Idk I've never done that before.

Also, yeah, the idea of catching up on all the fic I missed overwhelms me. There are so many fics! Which is a good thing! But browsing them all... is gonna be tricky.