Goodbye to 2018, hello to 2019, and thank you to readers

Richard Armitage while recording Wolverine: The Long Night

For me, most of 2018 was a year of hanging on. In the first half of the year, I taught three sections of two classes I’d never taught before, all in intense seven-week format, and I constantly had the feeling of being just a few minutes ahead of my students. And then just when I’d caught my breath and was thinking about what I wanted to do next, dad had his stroke, and then I was really hanging on for my life, for the first several weeks on an hour-to-hour basis. What seemed like it was just going to be a little thing turned into a bigger and bigger problem, as I gradually became not only responsible for dad’s medical care and health and therapy, but for his legal and financial affairs as well. When the fall term started and I taught F2F for the first time in over a year, things accelerated even more. And I’m about to teach a three-week intensive class I’ve never taught before, and the paperwork related to dad’s affairs has abated only slightly at this point, even if the structure for the next five years is in place. Things are better now than they were in the summer, but as things look now they will not get back to normal for a long time — if normal means the measure of independence that I still took for granted in May. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons this year about who means it when they say “let me know if you need help,” and just how much responsibility I have that no one will take up if I let it fall.

So, as I mentioned, posting dropped off drastically after mid-June, down to the rate of 2012 or so, before The Hobbit gave us so much to talk about all the time. I’ve tried to keep at least somewhat up-to-date on commenting on others’ blogs, but it’s been catch as catch can. So many things I used to do here have fallen by the wayside (although perhaps some readers are happy not to hear so much comment on current catastrophes, I miss writing “slice of life” posts a lot). Why keep posting at all in a situation like this? Especially because in many cases — although I read and think about every comment — I don’t always manage to reply to all of them?

The answer is that knowing the blog is still here and there’s some reason to post on it makes me feel like there could be an “after” of all of this, that I could at some point come out on the other side, even if the earliest possible date for that seems like a long time away just now. As wretched as this year was personally (and politically, and professionally, and financially), somehow the blank page waiting for me makes me think that things could change sometime, and that there might be someone who’s looking for me who wants something other than a pill, a signature, or a decision I feel ill qualified to make. I don’t know how much I have to give, really, but I like to flatter myself that there’s still something left of me that isn’t subsumed in the roles of daughter, nurse, accountant, or professor. This place reminds me of that.

NIFF 2018 — another favorite image of mine from this year.

The question of Richard Armitage has been more complicated again since the week or so before Christmas. Frankly, my feelings there do not fit into the realm of conventional fandom any longer, if they ever did, and they are not especially positive at the moment. So I’ll leave that for now, with the hope that a little more time will heal a few wounds.

So the main thing I have to say to every fellow fan and reader of good will is: thanks for sticking with me through all of this. And thanks for helping me — every time you leave a comment or like a response — to believe that there will be an “after.” That is incredibly precious to me. (And I do have a folder with all the unanswered comments, and I do plan to keep working on them. It remains a real pleasure to me to receive them.)

Happy New Year 2019 (‘nen guten Rutsch to the Germanophones) and best wishes to all of you. Let’s hope 2019 backs off a little on the stress.

~ by Servetus on December 31, 2018.