aha haha ha...
20/3/13 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neveralarchHave people gotten tired of daily posts yet? Spring break is about half over, soon I will go back to posting once a month or so, don't worry.
Two pieces of news: I've just read all of Zen Cho's work that's available online and it's wow, incredible. Prudence and the Dragon is my big rec, but I love it all.
Also Congress just decided to eliminate NSF funding for political science unless the NSF head provides written testimony that a given project is vital to national security, ahahaha I'm so screwed. Everyone is going to get crunched for funding all of a sudden, and I have no idea what will happen with a travel fellowship I applied for last month.
So that's awesome.
The rest of this post is also kind of negative, I am going to talk about fencing. Tomorrow I will post fic, I think! Something to look forward to.
So I haven't been talking about fencing much since I started grad school. I mean, I mentioned going to a couple competitions, directing high school fencing (obviously I am looking through my own fencing tag right now), but as you head into this time last year, wow my fencing tag is bleak. A little more than a year ago I fenced in my last varsity competition and bruised my hand punching a wall. Haven't done that recently! But things are still Not Great.
On the one hand - love my new team, love getting to fence, love the fact that I pretty much know everyone who fences in Minneapolis now. On the other hand, I am never as fucked up as when I'm fencing, haha. I've stopped all the minor self-harm stuff I was doing during senior year, but it's a serious effort of restraint every time, literally every practice and every competition. I feel bad because my new team (and the two clubs I go to) are all very laid back and I am obviously not.
Fencing is frustrating. I understand what I do wrong and why I lose points (but I can't fix it), and I understand what's messed up with my emotions (but I can't fix them). Basically, I feel bad when I lose touches that I could have won, and feel basically nothing when I do well, so a perfect practice/competition just results in me feeling like I haven't done anything special and even a mediocre practice/competition makes me feel terrible.
I was doing counseling this time last year, but I'm totally fine whenever I'm not fencing. I've never been big on emotions, so my gut feeling is that this is just how I am when I'm actually invested in something. On the one hand - glad I'm invested in something with pretty much no everyday consequences. On the other hand - really wish I was invested in something that I was actually good at.
Bluh bluh bluh. I don't want to stop fencing, I fucking love fencing, here is a blog I've been updating for almost three years now to testify to this fact. When I'm not fencing (like during the summer), I sit around thinking about how I could be fencing.
ANYWAY, word dump over. I'm going to go work on my uncoventionalcourtship fic some more (5k and counting, I'm pretty sure it's going to be twice that). If anyone wants to ask me questions about fencing/life/just questions in general to distract me HAVE AT IT, otherwise thanks for being an f-list, you are very good at f-listing :)
Two pieces of news: I've just read all of Zen Cho's work that's available online and it's wow, incredible. Prudence and the Dragon is my big rec, but I love it all.
Also Congress just decided to eliminate NSF funding for political science unless the NSF head provides written testimony that a given project is vital to national security, ahahaha I'm so screwed. Everyone is going to get crunched for funding all of a sudden, and I have no idea what will happen with a travel fellowship I applied for last month.
So that's awesome.
The rest of this post is also kind of negative, I am going to talk about fencing. Tomorrow I will post fic, I think! Something to look forward to.
So I haven't been talking about fencing much since I started grad school. I mean, I mentioned going to a couple competitions, directing high school fencing (obviously I am looking through my own fencing tag right now), but as you head into this time last year, wow my fencing tag is bleak. A little more than a year ago I fenced in my last varsity competition and bruised my hand punching a wall. Haven't done that recently! But things are still Not Great.
On the one hand - love my new team, love getting to fence, love the fact that I pretty much know everyone who fences in Minneapolis now. On the other hand, I am never as fucked up as when I'm fencing, haha. I've stopped all the minor self-harm stuff I was doing during senior year, but it's a serious effort of restraint every time, literally every practice and every competition. I feel bad because my new team (and the two clubs I go to) are all very laid back and I am obviously not.
Fencing is frustrating. I understand what I do wrong and why I lose points (but I can't fix it), and I understand what's messed up with my emotions (but I can't fix them). Basically, I feel bad when I lose touches that I could have won, and feel basically nothing when I do well, so a perfect practice/competition just results in me feeling like I haven't done anything special and even a mediocre practice/competition makes me feel terrible.
I was doing counseling this time last year, but I'm totally fine whenever I'm not fencing. I've never been big on emotions, so my gut feeling is that this is just how I am when I'm actually invested in something. On the one hand - glad I'm invested in something with pretty much no everyday consequences. On the other hand - really wish I was invested in something that I was actually good at.
Bluh bluh bluh. I don't want to stop fencing, I fucking love fencing, here is a blog I've been updating for almost three years now to testify to this fact. When I'm not fencing (like during the summer), I sit around thinking about how I could be fencing.
ANYWAY, word dump over. I'm going to go work on my uncoventionalcourtship fic some more (5k and counting, I'm pretty sure it's going to be twice that). If anyone wants to ask me questions about fencing/life/just questions in general to distract me HAVE AT IT, otherwise thanks for being an f-list, you are very good at f-listing :)
no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 01:41 pm (UTC)this is how i feel when i play board games and i don't even have the adrenaline of physical exertion to justify it.
i think you're right that basically what this is is... being invested in something. a lot. and partly perhaps because you are so chilled out in the rest of your life (based on the brief time we've spoken or whatever in real life). it's possibly quite good for you to have this outlet... which sounds kind of patronising, but i'm more just thinking about it and writing down some thoughts - feel free to disagree with them or whatever.
and if it makes you feel really happy in the abstract then... overall you're not just getting really angry or not feeling anything. overall, fencing is good. and better than other stuff.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 07:16 pm (UTC)I think you're right about fencing being an outlet - a couple people have suggested that before. I mean, ideally I wouldn't have any negative emotions, but that's kind of unrealistic, so I guess this is better than repression. I just feel like my fencing is suffering because of how worked up I get, and I also feel like it's a disruption to my team sometimes. If I need an outlet, I'd rather it be something where my performance wouldn't suffer as much from being upset - or something where I didn't care about my performance as much. But I guess that's why other things don't work as an outlet, because I don't invest much emotion in other things.
I feel like being habitually chill has left me without a lot of coping mechanisms for being upset, and the coping mechanisms I do have are not good for me/not appropriate for the sport. But I haven't figured it out yet :/ I'll keep trying! I just needed to type all of this out and remind myself that I do have a lot of positive feelings about fencing, they just tend to get pushed to one side when I'm in the middle of being unhappy about a particular bout or whatever. (I have a competition on Saturday, I am trying to get my head together for that.)