Another Turn Around the Sun: Finding Community & Embracing Creativity

As May comes to an end I’ve been a bit more introspective, which generally happens when you turn another year older and think about everything that happened in the last year. I also tend to get introspective and a bit more zen for lack of a better word when all of my spring chaos calms down and I’m looking at a calmer summer. 

I know that those with children feel similarly once the chaos of the end of the school year is done, and I once again wonder if after so many years on a school calendar year that my body is primed to think of the end of May like a calming down, since the beginning of September always feels like a fresh start. Work travel is done for a while, I have no more weddings to think about until later this summer, I don’t have visitors coming, my house is clean, nearly all home chores are done. It seem like for once, I’m on time with most things in my life? Well marginally, there’s still some things to do. 

Reading Revival, Book Club, & Community

This is most prominently obvious in my reading goal, as of me writing this I’ve finished 20 books this year. I once again said that I’d read 52 books this year, a book a week. I’m right on track—well Storygraph is telling me that I’m one book behind but that will get changed this weekend by at least two that I’m in the middle of, so I’m counting that as on track. The better part for me? Is so many of these were new stories! A complete turnaround from last year, which 2/3s or more of all my books were rereads of old favorites. 

Additionally, my pacing has been better too. I know we’ve talked about it before on here but I can see my mental health in how I’m creatively consuming & creating. Last year I dove into a series reread with a friend who reads at a breakneck pace and then had a bit of burnout after, this coincided with overloading my spring work & personally. Meanwhile, this year has been much more steady, I built in breaks for me and I’ve basically been continually reading the whole time, with a gradual increase until this month, where somehow I cranked out nine books? Reading some of Katee Roberts shorter monster books helped a ton!

I’ve also just been enjoying books more again. I’ve had outside help with that as some friends and I are doing a progressive book club, so I’ve had at least one book a month I had to finish. The fact that I have to finish the book to send to the next person by end of the month helps, especially when the book is outside of my comfort zone—I promise this months book is getting mailed on Monday G! It also helps that I then have a built in network to go and scream about each book to, one of the reasons I started blogging a decade ago was because a friend and I kept sharing books and gushing about them to each other, and decided we should do it in person. Nothing ever feels as good as talking about something you enjoyed (or didn’t) with someone else. 

I think it’s been finding a true reading community again, which is different from just the book community I already had—we all enjoy reading and will talk about it, but it hadn’t been pushing me to read or reading with me like I’ve realized I needed—that has helped me dive back in to being a book person. Additionally, in the last year I feel like there has been a revival in reading? Not that there hadn’t been, but not since the early days of bookstagram have I had so any real life friends come talk to me about what they’re reading, or ask me for book recommendations. 

This might just be that we are no longer twenty-somethings and want to fill our time differently. I don’t think I can articulate the amount of sheer joy when on a recent weekend away I was surrounded by friends at the pool and we were all reading our books. It’s been such a refreshing revival of my joy for books and reading. 

As you can see from this blog alone I published more posts in the first two months than I did all of last year. I think part of that was having community that is excited again, and part of it is actually going on vacation and letting myself rest. It’s amusing to think how often I listen to writers say we need to refill our creative well, and somehow only apply that to writing? Meanwhile reading and cosplay and crafting is the same way. I also think it’s like the law of inertia. Because I’ve allowed myself to continually keep in a creative or space due to my community, that I’m constantly looking for more ways to keep things going. 

Cosplans & Creativity

To that end, and shifting toward crafting vs reading. Earlier this year I’d gotten a cosplay done A WHOLE MONTH before AwesomeCon. That probably won’t be happening before DragonCon, but I do have 95% of all the materials to crank out my next two cosplays (Hannah Alexander’s Morpho Butterfly & an 1890s Aziraphale from Good Omens). It’s been nice to be better able to determine how long something is going to take me! Even if I still underestimate that time.

So those will be my two big projects for the summer, but I’m also trying to add in a few smaller every day ones as well! Last week I patterned out a top, something very easy and very boxy which did not need a lot of brain power for bust adjustments, and I’m so excited to make the final outfit, including a matching skirt because I love the look of a matched set, out of the nice fabric I got from Joanns (RIP). So on the sewing front I once again have too many ideas and probably too little time to make them all, which I why I’m going to prioritize that set and my cosplays.

The cosplays have a deadline, but now they also have company. I have a friend that is after years of a hiatus, going to jump back into cosplay with me for DragonCon and I am so excited. I have always wanted to do a group cosplay. It’s one of the things that I love on social media is when cosplayers find their community (as well as the very fun content they make when together) as they just look like they have so much fun with other people to play off each others energy. Have we found a theme that I need community, and I think that everyone else I better off and happier when they have it as well?  

So now that I have down time, and my creative well feels filled. I’m also looking at what does the summer hold for me? And how do I share these things? This post came out of introspection, but it also came out of a badly filmed but very happy social media video of wanting to share more “authentic content.” So, what is that for some one who is better in putting her thoughts down in written word—as we can see from this over 1,000 word post, kudos to anyone who stayed around this long to see if I even have a point—than she is on camera? 

In the last month alone, I have “influenced” aka gushed enough about books recently read that I’ve loved (For Whom the Belle Tolls and Bull Moon Rising in case you’re wondering) that two friends— real life friend—then went out and immediately acquired the books to read, and another friend is trying to implement a progressive book club with her own friend group. Additionally, at the beginning of the year—fresh of that vacation and with down time before my spring rush—I recorded so much video content that is left there languishing from not being edited together. So, I’m going to try to meld those two realities this summer that constant motion to keep me moving.  

Find your Joy! Make your own [Insert Here] Summer

I’m doing a “Romantasy Summer” with a dear friend. We’ve got a rough list of books that might be fun to read. No one else is joining us so that we can just flit wherever we desire, and it’s going to be mostly happily ever afters and absolutely not set in our world for the full escapism. However, instead of saving up for a big video at the end, I’m going to try and do small posts here and there. I’m also not going to let me get overly focused on the pretty pictures or perfect editing so I’m turning book review around faster. 

…I ended that sentence originally with, to you. As in getting you all these book reviews faster.

But truly? This is for me. It has always been for me, but it’s so easy to forget that. I know I have a small handful of people who do actually read my blog when I post—which I am always so gratefulfor—I hope that it brings you joy or helps you find books in some way! But a lot of this is for me because we deserve to remember the things we love and enjoy and spend time on. I am proud of my cosplays and love gushing about books so I want to share it with a community of folks that are out there, that brings me joy! But I also want to share it to make my joy on these things last a little longer, to stretch the happiness out in a world with so much chaos going on.

I am lucky to be able to do these things and enjoy them, and I want to remember when I did. I had a discussion with a friend the other day that we are no longer “young adults” we’ve been adults for well over a decade now. I can remember so much of it, but one day the details will be fuzzy, this life is so precious and I plan on enjoying every minute of it that I can, and I don’t want the things I love doing to feel like a chore from making them “good enough to share.” I want to be able to look back and remember and reminisce and getting caught up in making it perfect means it might never get finished. 

So this post was an update for all of you on where I’m at, what to expect.

It’s also a to-do list and reminder to me. Of how much I love this, what I love and why I love it. So I can find more ways to find this joy. That means more unpolished, probably just gushing videos. More quick posting about books and creating when I feel like it, and more dedication to creating those moments and making more of them. I want to share this passion, I want to remember these moments. 

I hope that you find the joy this summer and want to share it. I’ve already bottled so many memories I never want to forget, I can’t wait to make more. 

So to sign off, 

To me: Here’s to my creative, crafting, Romantasy summer. I can’t wait to live it.
To you all: Here’s to your [Insert here] summer, I hope you find so much joy.