once upon a time in sydney...
Feb. 1st, 2007 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seldearIn the days before I got into fandom, I don't know what I did with my time.
I read a lot more than I do now, and I spent a lot of time writing. Of course, most of the writing I did was either crappy attempts at romance novels, or huge, far-flung epic fantasy novels. I was involved with a church, which meant bible study and social groups, and had a score of friends who lived less than 15 minutes away from my house. I had two friends who lived in the same house.
I don't remember feeling discontented with my lot, my life, myself. I was six years younger, and quite possibly immortal in my thinking. There would be time to write that novel, meet the man of my dreams, get done all the things I wanted to do.
In hindsight, I guess I can at least say that I didn't piss those six years up against a wall. (Does that metaphor even work for a woman?) But I have the inexorable feeling that I let fandom suck it out of me, getting caught up in things that I shouldn't have bothered with, instead of moving on and moving up.
And now, at the ripe old age of thirty *ignores the peanut gallery*, I look at other people who are doing the things I'd like to do, and achieving the things I'd like to achieve, and think...well, maybe I don't have it in me. Maybe there's no point in trying to meet someone who thinks I'm worth loving and who I want to be with; maybe there's no point in trying to write that novel - 99% of attempts to be published fail, and I know nobody in the industry and my writing seems to be judged mediocre at best; maybe I should just set my nose to the programming grindstone and accept that my life sucks and always will suck and I'm stuck with it.
Hope is the greatest of all treasures, says Terry Pratchett. I have a little hope. And it goes a long way. But sometimes you wonder if you shouldn't just smother, strangle, shoot it before it persuades you to dream too far, too hard.
There's probably father-issues tied in with all this: my father hit sixty a few years ago and is still chasing dreams. Granted, there's a lifetime's span between thirty and sixty, but still...I look at him, and think of the times people said I was like my dad, and wonder if that's going to be my lot, too - broken dreams and still-slaving away at something that's never going to be more than a pipe dream when I'm sixty.
In a word: ARGH.
I read a lot more than I do now, and I spent a lot of time writing. Of course, most of the writing I did was either crappy attempts at romance novels, or huge, far-flung epic fantasy novels. I was involved with a church, which meant bible study and social groups, and had a score of friends who lived less than 15 minutes away from my house. I had two friends who lived in the same house.
I don't remember feeling discontented with my lot, my life, myself. I was six years younger, and quite possibly immortal in my thinking. There would be time to write that novel, meet the man of my dreams, get done all the things I wanted to do.
In hindsight, I guess I can at least say that I didn't piss those six years up against a wall. (Does that metaphor even work for a woman?) But I have the inexorable feeling that I let fandom suck it out of me, getting caught up in things that I shouldn't have bothered with, instead of moving on and moving up.
And now, at the ripe old age of thirty *ignores the peanut gallery*, I look at other people who are doing the things I'd like to do, and achieving the things I'd like to achieve, and think...well, maybe I don't have it in me. Maybe there's no point in trying to meet someone who thinks I'm worth loving and who I want to be with; maybe there's no point in trying to write that novel - 99% of attempts to be published fail, and I know nobody in the industry and my writing seems to be judged mediocre at best; maybe I should just set my nose to the programming grindstone and accept that my life sucks and always will suck and I'm stuck with it.
Hope is the greatest of all treasures, says Terry Pratchett. I have a little hope. And it goes a long way. But sometimes you wonder if you shouldn't just smother, strangle, shoot it before it persuades you to dream too far, too hard.
There's probably father-issues tied in with all this: my father hit sixty a few years ago and is still chasing dreams. Granted, there's a lifetime's span between thirty and sixty, but still...I look at him, and think of the times people said I was like my dad, and wonder if that's going to be my lot, too - broken dreams and still-slaving away at something that's never going to be more than a pipe dream when I'm sixty.
In a word: ARGH.
