Snowflake Challenge: Introductions
Jan. 7th, 2024 06:31 pm
Challenge #4
IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself.
Hello! I am
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gabolange but if that is a mouthful, you can call me fish. I have been in fandom, in some shape or form, since about 1997. I started on AOL boards and independent sites, graduated to Geocities and archives, found my way to LiveJournal, and have been playing platform roulette ever since. I can be found under this pseud on all the things, but am most active on Tumblr and Discord.In my fannish life, I write fanfic. I write it slowly and infrequently, but I pride myself that when I do write, I take the time to make it really fucking good. I have been writing with the same beta since 2007, and we still do the old school tear it apart and build it back up thing, at least when warranted. My fic is all housed at AO3.
My first fandom before I knew what fandom was was Star Wars. I first read fanfic for X-Files, the first show that I consider having been in fandom for is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the first show I ever wrote for was Star Trek: Voyager. I have along the way covered many bases, but the most meaningful have been Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Leverage, Call the Midwife, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Babylon 5, and Wheel of Time (TV). Babylon 5 is the show of my heart.
I am a lifelong Star Trek fan currently head over heels in love with everything Strange New Worlds chooses to be, and I adored each and every season of Star Trek: Picard (Seven is my captain). I have never written fic for Farscape, but I lurked back in the puppy pile days and consider it my first LJ fandom even though I was too scared to actually join the fandom. (What can I say, being 20 is weird.) At the moment, I've just started watching For All Mankind and have fallen hard and fast (but will never, ever forgive Ron Moore for BSG). I co-mod a queer Wheel of Time discord, where I occasionally LARP as a talking fish.
I love space opera and strong women. I am a lifetime shipper and a canon whore. I am more of a lurker than not, mostly because in my real life I have a corporate job that takes up too much time, to which I add chronic illness (EDS/POTS and related complications and management), fitness to help offset the chronic illness, attempts to read books (literary fiction primarily), a very serious travel habit, an equally serious theatre problem, occasional interactions with other human beings, and a cat.
I met my person and many of my closest friends in LJ comments, and so I'm trying to get back to DW and this community just a bit. Most of my journal is f'locked, but I welcome any friends who want to talk about any of all of this. Hi!
I am not really doing the Snowflake Challenge (or am I?), but I do like the idea of setting 2024 goals. In no particular order:
1. I turn 40 in April, and I have one stated goal for this: to be able to deadlift 100 lbs. I am well on my way -- I started working with a personal trainer on strength training about 15 months ago, and as of today, I can deadlift 75 lbs. Onward!
2. I have only one proper resolution for the year, which is to suck less at work lunch. Once upon a time, I used to bring my lunch to the office like four days a week. Since returning to the office 3+ days a week, I have landed on a lackluster diet of chicken fingers, grocery store sushi, and frozen meals, and it's honestly sort of gross. My progress against this right now is to...buy a prepared meal service to provide about one meal a day. It feels like giving in to, I don't know, being the overworked, single, middle-aged product of corporate America that I am, but on the other hand, it isn't chicken fingers. A week in, I am cautiously optimistic.
3. At work, I have a *really* big project to deliver. And we're gonna do it, and it's gonna be great.
4. I don't set reading goals, because I have flashbacks to getting in trouble for not reading enough when I was a teenager. But I do want to read books I enjoy, and do so with intention. I would love recommendations--the books I loved most in 2023 were "A Memory Called Empire," by Arkady Martine, and "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," by Gabrielle Zevin, but I appreciate recommendations across genre with the key exception that I refuse to read books with fake maps.
5. Writing! ICYMI, I wrote *one* whole story in 2023, a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds story I am immensely proud of. the wheel of the headlong year is Marie Batel in the aftermath of "Hegemony." It's a story of grief, and trauma, and loss, and love. It took me five months.
So my writing goal is...write. Not write more, if there isn't more. But to write what I can, when I can, with as much love and attention and care as I brought to this story. Because writing with love--not for obligation, not for kudos, not for anything other than the joy of it--is the best thing ever.
6. I want to do a better job commenting on stories this year.
7. I want to post here more. Perhaps a goal of once a month! (And look, January is done!) And with that, I would like to connect more with people here -- I have wonderful Tumblr and Discord communities especially, but I miss the slower and more thoughtful pace of the old ways.
8. I turn 40 this year. I want to rest well, and enjoy the small things, and slow down sometimes. I want to snuggle the cat and hug my friends. I want to see new places and revel in the old ones. I want to enjoy my aging, challenging, wonderful parents. I want to thrive.
1. I turn 40 in April, and I have one stated goal for this: to be able to deadlift 100 lbs. I am well on my way -- I started working with a personal trainer on strength training about 15 months ago, and as of today, I can deadlift 75 lbs. Onward!
2. I have only one proper resolution for the year, which is to suck less at work lunch. Once upon a time, I used to bring my lunch to the office like four days a week. Since returning to the office 3+ days a week, I have landed on a lackluster diet of chicken fingers, grocery store sushi, and frozen meals, and it's honestly sort of gross. My progress against this right now is to...buy a prepared meal service to provide about one meal a day. It feels like giving in to, I don't know, being the overworked, single, middle-aged product of corporate America that I am, but on the other hand, it isn't chicken fingers. A week in, I am cautiously optimistic.
3. At work, I have a *really* big project to deliver. And we're gonna do it, and it's gonna be great.
4. I don't set reading goals, because I have flashbacks to getting in trouble for not reading enough when I was a teenager. But I do want to read books I enjoy, and do so with intention. I would love recommendations--the books I loved most in 2023 were "A Memory Called Empire," by Arkady Martine, and "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," by Gabrielle Zevin, but I appreciate recommendations across genre with the key exception that I refuse to read books with fake maps.
5. Writing! ICYMI, I wrote *one* whole story in 2023, a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds story I am immensely proud of. the wheel of the headlong year is Marie Batel in the aftermath of "Hegemony." It's a story of grief, and trauma, and loss, and love. It took me five months.
So my writing goal is...write. Not write more, if there isn't more. But to write what I can, when I can, with as much love and attention and care as I brought to this story. Because writing with love--not for obligation, not for kudos, not for anything other than the joy of it--is the best thing ever.
6. I want to do a better job commenting on stories this year.
7. I want to post here more. Perhaps a goal of once a month! (And look, January is done!) And with that, I would like to connect more with people here -- I have wonderful Tumblr and Discord communities especially, but I miss the slower and more thoughtful pace of the old ways.
8. I turn 40 this year. I want to rest well, and enjoy the small things, and slow down sometimes. I want to snuggle the cat and hug my friends. I want to see new places and revel in the old ones. I want to enjoy my aging, challenging, wonderful parents. I want to thrive.
