Fandom Snowflake Challenge (Day 1)

[talkingtothesky]

Day 1

In your own space, talk about why you're participating in Snowflake and, if you’ve participated in the past, how the challenge has affected you. What drew you to it? What did you take away from it? What do you hope to accomplish this year?

I'm participating in 2018 because fandom is very important to me. I've made some amazing friends, who are ridiculously talented and generous with their time and effort and craft. I'm also in a place now where I feel more secure on Dreamwidth as a platform, I visit it every day, I'm getting better at commenting on other people's posts. New connections are growing through holiday_wishes and yuletide.

I participated in 2015 and 2016. When I look back through my snowflake tag, I can see that I've been quite hard on myself in some posts, but proud in others. I'm still using Habitica for habit tracking, and with it I have a whole two years more experience at creating new habits and - most importantly - forgiving myself when I fall behind. Adjusting my goals to make them more realistic and quantifiable instead of giving up in a huff!

What it boils down to is...Be kind to yourself. Whether that's by inviting people to praise your work through self-recs, or by exploring your fannish identity so that you can look back on it in future years and go...huh, those were my priorities. I've changed, or I haven't changed. Or, I overcame my shyness, if only for a day. 

That's why I need this challenge. :) Thank you for running it.

Comments

[smallhobbit]

This year you've encouraged me to take part. Although, probably inevitably in my case, the idea of messing up my regular blogging was too much, so today's is on a word doc, ready to be added later in the week.

[talkingtothesky]

Oh yay, I'm glad you're taking part! Whatever schedule you're comfortable with is absolutely the best one.

[mekare]

What a great post. Especially the last paragraph. Also, I’m going to check out that habit app. :-)

[talkingtothesky]

Yessss, good, I really hope it works for you! Habitica has made me better in lots of tiny, huge ways.

[teigh_corvus]

You know, I've had a very similar experience, though for me it's been about working with a physical planner and developing that tool to help with routines and habit-building. I've found that sort of thing is a dance, and yeah, you have to forgive yourself if you misstep, and just keep moving.

[talkingtothesky]

Props to you for staying organised on paper! Completely agree, keeping moving is the important part.

[spikedluv]

The connections we make and the sense of community in fandom are so important!

I'm also going to check out that app!

[talkingtothesky]

Hurray! <3

[sunlit_stone]

Three cheers for increasing kindness to oneself, and to moving towards the future.

(And an extra for a PoI icon! Go Root.)

[talkingtothesky]

Your PoI icon is astonishingly pretty also <3

[sunlit_stone]

Thank you! I got it from here, if you're interested.

[silveradept]

Yay, Root icon. (Priorities.)

Also yes to the idea of chronicling yourself and seeing where you have been and how much or little things have changed. I just looked at my rough wordcount for 2017 and went "...that's a lot more than I thought I had written."

[talkingtothesky]

*hugs Root icon* I love her so much, okay.

Congrats on writing in 2017! I've been grumbling to myself like 'should have done more' and then I told other people and they were like YOU WROTE HOW MUCH??? And I realized I should probably be proud of myself instead. :D

[silveradept]

Root made an already interesting show just that much more interesting.

Totaling it all up made me realize that even if the individual things were only a couple thousand words each, combined, they could add up fast. Nothing like realizing you might have put in over 100k words in this small bits done regularly. That's probably a thing to be proud of.

[jinkyo]

I'm excited to hear that you are more comfortable with Dreamwidth. I read here and twitter most days and hope to see you on my Reading page!

Also - this was a great reminder to get my Day 1 post up, so thank you!