Fandom Sunshine: Be Your Own Light
Jul. 25th, 2019 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithAt this time, we want to encourage everyone to make a post to discuss at whatever length comfortable something they love about themselves. We recognize that this is both very introspective and personal, and that sharing the results can be difficult. If you need to keep your post private, that’s fine! What’s important is that we all take this opportunity to be daring and push ourselves out of our comfort zones in order to be more kind to others, but more specifically ourselves on this one. Reflecting on ourselves and putting it in writing is the goal.
If you are able to share your post in some way, we also invite you to ask your friend list to comment and add things they love about you as well. You may well be surprised by the results.
So this is me being weird again. I have no problem talking about what I do well and like about myself. I have no problem recognizing these things even if other people lie about me. My sense of self is innate, not external. I'm also social teflon. I like appreciation from compatible people, but I don't require it, and I don't care what other people think unless they have the power to hurt me. I believe that self-knowledge is an essential life skill and self-appreciation is an important feeling. So here I am ...
I am a writer by innate talent, profession, and vocation. That's a phrase I picked up from one of my fantasy languages, and it fits. I'm a wordsmith, a bard, a storyteller, a scribe, a hobby-linguist. If it involves words, I can probably do it. I can also do some things, like hacking languages I don't actually speak, which are generally considered superpowers. Funny how this world has such things but doesn't recognize them as such. Frex, my poem "Hanes" / "History" won a Welsh poetry contest, although I have not studied Welsh in this life. You can see it in this batch of scrapbooked poems, which even includes another bilingual poem -- "Shumáad Delineha" / "Space Flight" is a bilingual poem in Láadan and English. The Universe has left my Scribe sign on and total strangers sometimes ask me to read things for them. Sure, I can do that.
I am a fan. I am not a bit sorry. I fly my freak flag proudly. I might as well, because nobody's ever NOT going to notice what a freak I am. I like reading and writing fanfic. I like hurt/comfort in particular, thank you Master Tolkien. I have a college degree in rhetoric, with which I back my stance that some fanfic today is more creative and has more literary merit than a lot of the conventionally published literature; I can point out why a given work is good or bad. (I'm a reviewer and an editor too, and sometimes get paid for doing that.) I enjoy the company of other fans, usually much more than random crowds.
I am quite good at many crafts and skills that are no longer so common. I'm a bifocal cook, able to work with or without a recipe and invent new ones. I hand-sew because keeping a sewing machine going is more trouble than it's worth. I have dug clay, made paint and put it on a cave wall, tanned leather, and knapped flint in this lifetime, although I'm not particularly good at those. Also worldbuilding from the writing side; I love sketching out whole universes, and have oopsed a book more than once with invented languages.
I have loosely nappy hair. It even comes with a kitchen. It can untie itself from knots, pick things up, and channel considerable energy. It can also shatter "unbreakable" hair equipment and fling the pieces contemptuously across the room. Most of a jar of white-people hair gel will not hold it down for long. I love my hair, wild thing that it is. I'm sure if my skin were darker, I would've gotten a lot more shit than I did for having untamable hair, but it still shows that little glimpse of eclectic background.
I am a good packrat: I can find what I need, plus or minus 10%. The latter is because things move around in our house without human assistance. But I can almost always find something that will do a requested job whether it is creating a lever and fulcrum or making a torch.
I am a hobby-scientist. I am fascinated by how the world works and why things happen. I'm into linguistics, biology, ecology, geology, quantum mechanics, astronomy, and xeno-everything. I share a lot of news and discussion about scientific discoveries. I write science poetry and science fiction too. Here's a detailed (and rude) exploration of climate change.
I am the part of the biosphere that thinks logically and has opposable thumbs. I do my best to speak for the trees and encourage others to do likewise. I garden for mutual human-wildlife enjoyment of the land in my keeping. My efforts have been endorsed by nature in that Gaia has started planting things in the yard for me, including wild grape vines, elderberries, and cup plants. My detritus food chain is three days to apex. Twice this year we've startled a bald eagle out of our yard.
I am a throne of birds. Once while gardening, a wren mistook me for a bush and landed on my hat, where it stayed and sang a song. Then it flew down to my braid and sang another song. Then it flew to a nearby bush where it sang yet another song. I am so much a part of the world that the wildlife doesn't always see me as human. That's me, Ysabet Birdthrone.
I am Bridge Crew: Spaceship Earth. I am entirely aware of how small and fragile and isolated the Earth is, how precious and full of life it is, how much we need to protect it. And basically, what he said.
I am Pagan clergy. I interface between the everyday world and the numinous, the material and the magical, the mundane and the spiritual, the mortal and the divine. I am a bridge. I am a little bit of everything and never all of anything. I remember bits of what was, and is, and could become; and I put it all together to steer things as best I can. I design rituals. I teach people how to use their talents. And hey, bragging one's accomplishments is a lauded skill in some religions, so I'm smooth with it.
Sometimes I save the day. In general, I try to make the world a better place. When I'm just doing that as everyday practice, I rely on feedback like everyone else to confirm whether it has connected and accomplished anything. Occasionally people tell me that I've made a meaningful difference in their lives, and I value that a great deal. But in moments of direct action, I have a particular knack for sensing that I have made a difference. It doesn't always tell me what or how, just that I did the job the Universe put me there to do, and sometimes the putting of me can be very conspicuous indeed. So if you want to be a hero, make sure you build up skills useful in an emergency, because you never know when you'll need them.
Ironically I have discovered, after a lifetime of activism starting before I even got into school, that the most effective form of activism is plain old storytelling. Badgering people to solve problems and explaining how to do so has little effect. But writing stories about a world in which those problems are solved, or in which characters solve problems using techniques replicable with extant resources, has the highest conversion factor of any method I've tried. It's the one that makes the most people come back to me and say, "I did the thing." My writing has inspired people to make quiet rooms, take first aid classes, start a hobby, help a troubled person, make an emergency plan, resolve conflicts peaceably, make their hometown more like Bluehill, and so on. Stones. Ripples. Making the world a better place. Which brings us back to where we started...
I am a wordsmith. This is what I do. And I'm damn proud of it.
If you are able to share your post in some way, we also invite you to ask your friend list to comment and add things they love about you as well. You may well be surprised by the results.
So this is me being weird again. I have no problem talking about what I do well and like about myself. I have no problem recognizing these things even if other people lie about me. My sense of self is innate, not external. I'm also social teflon. I like appreciation from compatible people, but I don't require it, and I don't care what other people think unless they have the power to hurt me. I believe that self-knowledge is an essential life skill and self-appreciation is an important feeling. So here I am ...
I am a writer by innate talent, profession, and vocation. That's a phrase I picked up from one of my fantasy languages, and it fits. I'm a wordsmith, a bard, a storyteller, a scribe, a hobby-linguist. If it involves words, I can probably do it. I can also do some things, like hacking languages I don't actually speak, which are generally considered superpowers. Funny how this world has such things but doesn't recognize them as such. Frex, my poem "Hanes" / "History" won a Welsh poetry contest, although I have not studied Welsh in this life. You can see it in this batch of scrapbooked poems, which even includes another bilingual poem -- "Shumáad Delineha" / "Space Flight" is a bilingual poem in Láadan and English. The Universe has left my Scribe sign on and total strangers sometimes ask me to read things for them. Sure, I can do that.
I am a fan. I am not a bit sorry. I fly my freak flag proudly. I might as well, because nobody's ever NOT going to notice what a freak I am. I like reading and writing fanfic. I like hurt/comfort in particular, thank you Master Tolkien. I have a college degree in rhetoric, with which I back my stance that some fanfic today is more creative and has more literary merit than a lot of the conventionally published literature; I can point out why a given work is good or bad. (I'm a reviewer and an editor too, and sometimes get paid for doing that.) I enjoy the company of other fans, usually much more than random crowds.
I am quite good at many crafts and skills that are no longer so common. I'm a bifocal cook, able to work with or without a recipe and invent new ones. I hand-sew because keeping a sewing machine going is more trouble than it's worth. I have dug clay, made paint and put it on a cave wall, tanned leather, and knapped flint in this lifetime, although I'm not particularly good at those. Also worldbuilding from the writing side; I love sketching out whole universes, and have oopsed a book more than once with invented languages.
I have loosely nappy hair. It even comes with a kitchen. It can untie itself from knots, pick things up, and channel considerable energy. It can also shatter "unbreakable" hair equipment and fling the pieces contemptuously across the room. Most of a jar of white-people hair gel will not hold it down for long. I love my hair, wild thing that it is. I'm sure if my skin were darker, I would've gotten a lot more shit than I did for having untamable hair, but it still shows that little glimpse of eclectic background.
I am a good packrat: I can find what I need, plus or minus 10%. The latter is because things move around in our house without human assistance. But I can almost always find something that will do a requested job whether it is creating a lever and fulcrum or making a torch.
I am a hobby-scientist. I am fascinated by how the world works and why things happen. I'm into linguistics, biology, ecology, geology, quantum mechanics, astronomy, and xeno-everything. I share a lot of news and discussion about scientific discoveries. I write science poetry and science fiction too. Here's a detailed (and rude) exploration of climate change.
I am the part of the biosphere that thinks logically and has opposable thumbs. I do my best to speak for the trees and encourage others to do likewise. I garden for mutual human-wildlife enjoyment of the land in my keeping. My efforts have been endorsed by nature in that Gaia has started planting things in the yard for me, including wild grape vines, elderberries, and cup plants. My detritus food chain is three days to apex. Twice this year we've startled a bald eagle out of our yard.
I am a throne of birds. Once while gardening, a wren mistook me for a bush and landed on my hat, where it stayed and sang a song. Then it flew down to my braid and sang another song. Then it flew to a nearby bush where it sang yet another song. I am so much a part of the world that the wildlife doesn't always see me as human. That's me, Ysabet Birdthrone.
I am Bridge Crew: Spaceship Earth. I am entirely aware of how small and fragile and isolated the Earth is, how precious and full of life it is, how much we need to protect it. And basically, what he said.
I am Pagan clergy. I interface between the everyday world and the numinous, the material and the magical, the mundane and the spiritual, the mortal and the divine. I am a bridge. I am a little bit of everything and never all of anything. I remember bits of what was, and is, and could become; and I put it all together to steer things as best I can. I design rituals. I teach people how to use their talents. And hey, bragging one's accomplishments is a lauded skill in some religions, so I'm smooth with it.
Sometimes I save the day. In general, I try to make the world a better place. When I'm just doing that as everyday practice, I rely on feedback like everyone else to confirm whether it has connected and accomplished anything. Occasionally people tell me that I've made a meaningful difference in their lives, and I value that a great deal. But in moments of direct action, I have a particular knack for sensing that I have made a difference. It doesn't always tell me what or how, just that I did the job the Universe put me there to do, and sometimes the putting of me can be very conspicuous indeed. So if you want to be a hero, make sure you build up skills useful in an emergency, because you never know when you'll need them.
Ironically I have discovered, after a lifetime of activism starting before I even got into school, that the most effective form of activism is plain old storytelling. Badgering people to solve problems and explaining how to do so has little effect. But writing stories about a world in which those problems are solved, or in which characters solve problems using techniques replicable with extant resources, has the highest conversion factor of any method I've tried. It's the one that makes the most people come back to me and say, "I did the thing." My writing has inspired people to make quiet rooms, take first aid classes, start a hobby, help a troubled person, make an emergency plan, resolve conflicts peaceably, make their hometown more like Bluehill, and so on. Stones. Ripples. Making the world a better place. Which brings us back to where we started...
I am a wordsmith. This is what I do. And I'm damn proud of it.
I'll have you know...
Date: 2019-07-25 11:44 pm (UTC)Bit like Life's I Am that way. :)
Re: I'll have you know...
Date: 2019-07-26 12:24 am (UTC)Thank you!
>> Bit like Life's I Am that way. :) <<
"In Life's name and for Life's sake ..." ;)
Sunshine ☼ Challenge
Date: 2019-07-26 02:29 am (UTC)There's so much power in knowing who you are and knowing you don't need to apologize for it.
Re: Sunshine ☼ Challenge
Date: 2019-07-26 03:52 am (UTC)I can't be not-me though. Even at maximum effort, I can only pass for normal for a few hours at a time. It is unpleasant and exhausting. So most of the time, I just be myself and let other people worry what to go do about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-26 11:59 am (UTC)That’s amazing that you have all those skills, I’m in awe of you (and wow, seeing an eagle in your yard! That sounds incredible!) you really are such an awesome person for all of that
Thoughts
Date: 2019-07-27 12:42 am (UTC)Yeah, I have a linguistic coprocessor in my brain, that does all kinds of far-out tricks with language. Conversely, I don't have some of the human-standard software. Imagine that I got the shareware version of face recognition instead of the factory standard.
>> That’s amazing that you have all those skills, I’m in awe of you <<
*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service. I like developing skills, they're fun.
>> (and wow, seeing an eagle in your yard! That sounds incredible!) you really are such an awesome person for all of that <<
We are all asquee about seeing an eagle. Since we spotted it twice, I suspect it has a territory somewhere around here. They are native to the area but not common. Occasionally they are still seen, usually around waterways. This area used to be marsh or wet prairie, so the drainage ditches may have attracted attention -- or somebody's pond.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-26 01:42 pm (UTC)I've friended you because damn.
Thank you!
Date: 2019-07-26 07:47 pm (UTC)I have friended you back.
Some of these are topics that rarely come up, but others are ubiquitous. I post my writing, nature activities, and science tidbits routinely and activism as it comes up.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-26 08:13 pm (UTC)Thank you!
Date: 2019-07-26 09:18 pm (UTC)I expected this to be a hard challenge for most people, so one thing I wanted to do was just show folks what it looks like when someone doesn't have that very common problem. Diversity is good.
Also, thank you for hosting the Sunshine Challenge. It has been great fun, and I really look forward to doing it again next summer.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-17 08:50 am (UTC)There's no point hiding my love of h/c either :)
You provide so many good resource posts and links of interest and discussion points along with amazing fiction and poetry that anyone following you will always find something to enjoy each week :)