#especially since I've been invested in this story for 14 chapters

[koolkat9]

AO3 is a gift to God's green earth. Just read a fic on ff.net and I was slapped in the face with major character death without warning after 14 chapters. I'm not okay.

[aimmyarrowshigh]

14. What have you been finding frustrating with writing this chapter/fic?

Complain a lil bit at me. I love me some complaining. Brains are the absolute worst, honestly, there has to be a better way to have a consciousness.

GAH, well, since you asked for complaining, haha...

I HAD written all of Lent From Tomorrow. Or, well. I had written fully-fully the first 3/4 of it and had a robust outline and chunklets in the last quarter. So I felt safe to start posting it. I KNOW myself. I am BAD at posting WIPs. I am bad at it. My track record of my entire life illustrates this.

So I started posting it and things were going swimmingly! "Yes!" I told myself. "I'm successfully posting a WIP!"

But then I pulled a WandaVision and went, "oh, dear, everyone consuming this story figured out my red herrings much faster than anticipated, I must CHANGE THE STORY" but not in a "screw the audience over" way like WandaVision, just in a "this reveal comes much sooner than I had written, because otherwise I'm worried it will come across like beating a dead horse to keep dropping hints when y'all already know."

So... that completely undid the back HALF of the story, and I started writing it chapter-by-chapter as I posted, and I was doing okay. It wasn't the weekly update schedule I'd had with the prewritten chapters, but that's fine. It's fanfiction. People go years without updating sometimes, especially me, because I AM BAD AT WIPS. But it was still going okay!

And then April and May happened, and I'm ngl, literally every day of April, something cartoonishly horrible happened in my real life and I did not write a word for the entire month. Or do much of anything. I don't even think I read any comic books. I did zero. And then May was... not much better. Like, maybe something cartoonishly horrible happened every three days instead of every day, but it was still way too much.

I actually wrote more in May than I've written in that same time span since 2024 started, which I'm really proud of myself for -- I wrote 14,000 words (plus like 800 words of unpostable noodling) in three weeks, and that's not, like, Impressive or Enough but it's better than I've been able to produce in a while. I told myself just focus on the drabbles and tiny ficlets that were coming out of the prompt/pairing list I'd set up for myself for MLMay, and I tried not to freak myself out, and words happened, and it was nice! And then the last week of May also happened and we're back to Very Bad Brain Times.

So... I know what happens in the last quarter of Lent. I WANT to be writing it. But my brain is just not "together" enough right now to slip into the mindset for such a heavy-duty, plotty, researchy, emotional longfic, and I'm just spiraling and making myself feel even worse by getting more and more anxious about how long it's taking me to write it.

I know, logically, that it's not a huge deal. If people are gonna stick around to read what comes next, they will, and if they don't, they don't, and that's fine. That's how posting serial fiction works. I mean, that's even how TV used to work in the before-streaming times, and it's not like I worried about the feelings of a showrunner if I got behind on a show or decided it went somewhere I didn't care to follow. That's just serialized art! It's fine! I know logically that it's fine!

But reader, Emotionally, It Is Not Fine. I love this story so much, and I'm so invested in actually finishing something for once and I've stupidly pinned like... a lot of my beliefs about my Worth As A Person on "whether I can finish and successfully post an entire longfic," which, I get it, that in itself is not the biggest issue at play here, but whatever. Baby steps. And I just... it sounds so stupid. And I KNOW that it's small potatoes.

I just want people to like it.*

And I know that every passing day that I don't update, fewer people are going to read it and/or like it, and that also feeds the Bad Brain Spiral. And I don't know.

So tl;dr, the most frustrating part of writing this chapter is myself? I guess????

*Before anyone jumps in to whine about and/or laugh at this statement, I'm not saying "I want it to be a stucky fandom classic," or anything ridiculous like that. I literally just mean that I want the people who choose to read it to enjoy it enough to finish it and maybe have an emotionally positive experience from reading it.

**I also feel very. This is another dumb complaint that I know won't come across right, because internet, but -- I feel very like... separated from stucky fandom (in part because I'm a newer fan who came to the fandom after its heyday, in part because I don't like a lot of currently-popular fanons, in part because I am way too shy for Discord?) and I feel bad bugging uninterested people with thoughts/feelings about my own stories, so I've kind of just... stoppered up my excitement for this story for a long time. Also, an asshole ex-friend of mine straight-up told me that "stuckies are going to hate it because there isn't enough sex and it's really boring for being a fic, especially since it's Steve POV and not Bucky POV" and that just kind of made me feel like. I couldn't squee about the story. And it's HARD to write longfic and not feel like you can share it with people??? IDK. Stuff and thoughts. Whatever. etc.

[septembersghost]

Hi! Sorry for bringing this up and I hope it's not triggering, I just keep thinking about these words you said: "{…}which has made my only recourse a wide chasm of separation, and that's a loss in its own sense. sometimes i think it's a relief to not allow it to take up as much space in my heart and mind, and other times i feel a stinging anger and deep, persistent grief that it had to come to that point. it's VERY hard to separate from something you love and are invested in that has also become a source of pain". The first time I read them, it made me cry. I sooo know the feeling. A small story again (and sorry for it being too personal), five years ago, when I was struggling with a particularly bad depression episode, Dean was there for me. If it wasn't for him, I know I would've done something very stupid, something… irreversible, but he saved me, single-handedly pulled me from the brink. He used to be my comfort ever since. Spn used to be my comfort. Seasons 13, 14, 15 especially and the finale brought that full-on depression and mental breakdowns back. It sucks and hurts that, as an act of self care and healing, we had to cut ties with the show. And that means, by a certain extent, to detach from Dean too :(( He's not part of the show for me or the part of the narrative, nor has he ever been, but even so, there is a level of distance and the connection I felt before is essentially lost now and things don't quite work the same way. I still love him, he is still my dearest boy, I still have his framed self-made portrait (which I drag with me wherever I go), but it's not what it used to be. There's a kind of detachment to it. I tried to rewatch spn a few months back, but I can't. And I wish I could say that it just was too painful and that's why, but no, what hurts even more is that I couldn't, didn't want to care or be invested anymore. I used to care so much. And now it's just… this hollow emptiness, this indifference. It's like what Mike in BCS said, one moment you're gonna wake up, you're gonna brush your teeth, go to work, and then you'll realize you haven't thought about it at all. One evening last year I realized that I haven't thought about spn for a long, long time. Then I burst into tears because it felt like saying goodbye, really saying goodbye this time, and it hurt, and I didn't want that, but I don't know what else could I have done rather then complete separation. There's a line from a song that stuck with me forever. "I'm writing a book on how to stay conscious when you drown {…}/ I'm writing a chapter on what to do after they dig you up/ On what to do after you grew to hate what you used to love". It's SO indicative of my (former) "relationship" with spn (the whole song is, given that it's unironically called How Not to Drown), and your words reminded me of that . It's just… I understand you and I love you ♥ You're the only person I can safely talk to about those things. I wish I could give you a hug right now :(

never be sorry, darling, and i hope you don't mind me posting this. i have a lot of emotional posts and very personal stories linked to this, so you've come to the right place and are definitely not alone.

Dean was there for me. If it wasn't for him, I know I would've done something very stupid, something… irreversible, but he saved me, single-handedly pulled me from the brink. <- anyone who's been here since the end of 2020 and well into 2021 is probably tired of me discussing this, but...same. dean was with me from the very onset of my illness, and through some very dark times and terrible moments, real traumas and losses and grief. he was one of my closest constants and a talisman of bravery and strength for those fifteen years, and i can pinpoint some specifically difficult moments where he helped me hold on, or gave me a reason to remember i had to. i've discussed this endlessly with other mutuals too, who felt similarly and turned to spn for comfort - it is not, at its core, a comforting story, it's in fact quite often the opposite, something that unearths fears and directly examines wounds, but a lot of us found a home there anyway, even if it was a haunted one. and we found resilience and courage and an unfailingly loving heart. it's not a secret i despise d*bb era overall, but i could never give the show up, because of him. it's also not a secret (considering it's...why this blog exists...) that the finale drove me to some measure of an emotional breakdown which took me quite a while to even begin to recover from, and felt like such a profound loss that it had not only a detrimental mental effect, but a physical one too, in that it actually affected my illness issues for a bit. the fracture i experienced in november 2020 is only comparable to real grief and heartbreak i've experienced, my mom watched me weep that night and has told me how terrible it was for *her*. i've been over and over it in posts, i've been over and over it with friends, but the ache never actually goes away. once that full year had passed, i got the point where i had no choice but to bury it, in a way. to separate from it in order to protect myself. there certainly IS a level of healing and self-care in that, and i KNOW it's healthier than obsessing and crying about it, i know it's better to put it aside, but that in itself has been a hard choice, because it feels a little like letting him down in letting it go.

that means, by a certain extent, to detach from Dean too :(( He's not part of the show for me or the part of the narrative, nor has he ever been, but even so, there is a level of distance and the connection I felt before is essentially lost now and things don't quite work the same way. I still love him, he is still my dearest boy - honestly, did you extract this directly from my brain? it feels like i could've written it, and there definitely is a transcendence he has apart from the narrative, it was one of the first things i tried to assert and cling to, and no one has the place he has to me in that chamber of my heart, but ultimately the detachment still came. i've had people say that's letting d*bb win or giving the ending too much credit, and i did try to defy that for a while, but ultimately that was more damaging. as it stands now, i can't rewatch either - traditionally, i ALWAYS watch the pilot on my birthday, since it's also the show's anniversary. year after year, that was a part of my day, even last year. i planned to do it this year too, and when it came down to it, i just couldn't press play. last year, when i was still rewatching (i got to 11x01 and then...the comment we talked about before happened and it halted me so abruptly and dreadfully in my tracks, and like, fractured something in my head, and i never restarted it), there was an acute and constant pain in it, but it felt essential to keep. after releasing that somewhat, it was chased by those hollows and shadows instead. what hurts even more is that I couldn't, didn't want to care or be invested anymore. I used to care so much. And now it's just… this hollow emptiness, this indifference. this, so much. the indifference is...it isn't necessarily worse than being angered or agonized, but it's still terrible and unsettling. it's a lack of something. love and grief are intertwined, but what do you call it when you only have a rattling emptiness?

it's serendipitous you would send this today, because on the song topic, i was looking for something else altogether on my old-old blog, my very first blog here, and exactly ten years ago, on september 27, 2012, i rewrote the lyrics from "begin again" to be about him. it sounds silly now, red wasn't even out yet, the song was released as a promo single, and it was so beautiful and cathartic, and somehow i connected it to him, and his meaning, and to hopes that i had. being reminded of that today probably should've been more shattering, but instead it just felt...distant and memorialized. thinkin' all love ever does is break, and burn, and end...like the emotions encased themselves in amber. at some point, it became it's time to go - fifteen years, fifteen million tears...that old familiar body ache, the snaps from the same little breaks in my soul. sometimes it still does creep up on me and knock me back, but more often there's a terrible numbness to it. it felt like saying goodbye, really saying goodbye this time, and it hurt, and I didn't want that, but I don't know what else could I have done rather then complete separation. yeah. the separation is protective, but it's still a real sorrow and a loss. i'm trying to believe someday it will shift, and something warmer and brighter in it will come back to me, but even if it doesn't, i know all the words that i wrote and love that i expressed was true and still has worth and still resides in me, even if i have to keep it differently.

there are reminders of him around me - the journal on my desk, his little plush, etc - and that's meaningful, i'm glad i have them, and i keep him and the valuable parts of the show embedded here on my blog to prevent losing that altogether, but it's like there's a mourning veil around it.

thank you for sharing and feeling safe enough to tell me this, i understand more than i can say and i love you too. i'm hugging you so tightly from afar. 🖤🖤🖤

[pynkhues]

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a rut? How did you manage to get out of it? I just don't know what I'm doing. I've been in school for so long that I'm starting to realize that I'm not interested in that career at all, I feel like a failure . Why did I put forth all that effort only to give up? I just feel so embarrassed . All of my friends are just starting off in their careers, and I'm trapped. Sorry for this . I'm a mess 😅

Oh, gosh, yeah, all the time, anon! You're not a mess at all, I think we all go through phases like that, especially when we've made an investment in a certain path through something like a degree and find that path's maybe not one we want to be on anymore.

I'm going to break out some tips into different sections, just because it's sort of a big topic, but I hope there's something in here that's useful for you.

A Note on Learning and Education

Education and work is something I think about a lot actually. I'm a fairly educated person – I went to a pretty good highschool, got into my first-preference university and then had graduated with a history degree just after my twentieth birthday. I'd also been working in retail and hospitality jobs since I was 13/14, so when I entered the graduate workforce, I was very young, had a pretty useless degree, and about six or seven years of experience already in FOH work.

I was a pretty smart kid, but I really struggled at university. Which was kind of weird, I thought at the time, haha. I did pretty well on exams and assignments, but I realised pretty quickly that university wasn't something that I enjoyed. I learnt that I learn through doing, and so much of my degree wasn't about doing, it was about sitting and trying to swallow enough information to regurgitate later. Honestly, the only reason I think I graduated was the fear of failure that you yourself sound like you might be feeling right now, which is a hard thing to grapple with. So I really get you.

But hey, look, this was ten years ago for me, so here are two things I can tell you for sure:

What your career will look like, and what you feel about your career when you're studying, are not the same thing.

If you decide you don't want to be in that particular career, that's okay. The skills you developed while you were studying still matter and will still be useful to you.

I've never worked in history, but what my degree gave me was analytical research skills, the ability to corroborate evidence and an understanding of the importance of doing so, the ability to write in a variety of styles, to know how to use a style guide, a deeper understanding of the way the political and social intersects with and informs the personal, a foundational knowledge in film and art history, and quite frankly made me a great asset at pub trivia.

Just because I didn't end up in that field, and just because my undergrad was something I didn't overly enjoy, doesn't mean those three years were a waste, and they don't make me a failure either, just like the time you've spent isn't a waste, and the choice you make to pursue it or not won't make you a failure. What it's doing is giving you a lot of skills to take forwards in your life, even if they're not used in as tangible a way as your degree intended.

And just to circle back to point one too - the workforce is really big and really varied, and at university, you're really only seeing a very specific microcosm of any particular field. I can't tell you if your particular industry is going to be for you or not. Maybe it'll be everything you dreamt it would be when you started your degree, maybe you'll hate it, but regardless, this has just been a chapter in your story, it's not the whole book. Hell, it's no one's whole book. The estimate these days is that people change careers five to seven times in their lifetime – if this is your first career, it doesn't mean it'll be your last.

Goalsetting and Planning

OKAY!

Goalsetting and planning isn't for everyone, but I do find it useful, and I think it can help defang your life a bit. Breaking up this big, formless, infinite time in front of you into tangible, do-able goals means that you can really take a bit more control over your day-to-day life that doesn't just keep you moving forwards, but helps you maintain habits that keep you grounded, even when you're in a bit of a rut.

There are tons of tools online to help you, and I'd urge you to have a look around and see which one works for you, but I've also popped the one I use into a Google template spreadsheet for you. It's one I really like, because it breaks up goals into four categories:

What do you want for work?

What do you want for your family?

What do you want for your health?

And what do you want for you?

One of the things I want to stress though is specificity. Vague goals don't get you anywhere and they're immeasurable, right? Like okay - saying you want write more isn't quantifiable, but saying you want to write for three hours a week, or write 500 words a day? That's something you can measure and tick off your list.

For me this year my health goals for instance was to do two pilates classes a week instead of one, and to have two meat-free days a week, while one of my work goals was to finish a new draft of my screenplay, and something I wanted to work on for my family was to start talking to my sister every week again, something we used to do but had stopped after we had a really bad fight in 2020 where we didin't talk for six months.

These are all specific, quantifiable, and important to me. I could've had the broad goal of just 'keep repairing my relationship with my sister', but who knows what that looks like, right? Whereas calling her once a week (even when it was really awkward and tense still, haha) meant she started calling me again too after a few months and we were able to rebuild that relationship in a really meaningful way. It started awkward, but that regularity of scheduled contact matters, and meant that broader, ephemeral goal of repairing our relationship was really met.

Having these goals in four categories is something I find really useful, because even when the work goals are falling down or I'm in a rut, I still have these three other categories that are helping to keep me grounded and focused in other areas of my life. It also means there's always something do-able in my week, even when I'm really struggling. Something as small as not eating meat one day can feel really important when I'm in a rut, as I feel like I'm growing as a person still in this small way that I wanted to be growing three, six, eight months ago when I set the goal in the first place.

Regrounding

But, of course, your question's more specifically about work and career, so let's talk about that.

For starters, I think uncertainty around career paths is extremely normal, especially when you're late in a degree. There's nothing wrong with that. Talking to other people in your field, friends, family, trusted adults is all something that's really valuable and shouldn't be taken for granted.

I think going to things and getting different perspectives really helps too. I'm not sure if you're in Australia, but twice a year, I usually go to Mentor Walks, which is something I recommend to every woman and woman-identifying person in this country. You send in a question and the organisers put you in a group with two other women and an industry mentor and you go for a walk for an hour and talk through your professional worries or career prospects. It's a really wonderful, supportive environment and it's only about twenty bucks.

I'm also in the Creative Women's Circle, and go to a lot of industry events where I get to see talks and hear other perspectives and connect to others in the industry in a way I personally find both practical and inspiring .

Most industries have these sorts of things (in fact, Mentor Walks isn't industry-specific at all, which I really like. The last one I did, it was me, a woman who works at a bank, and a marine biologist, haha). So look some up. Look up mentoring opportunities and workshops outside of university, listen to podcasts and interviews with people in your field and beyond it – find people who can give you a different perspective, and maybe help you identify some goals that you can set yourself that can help you move forwards too.

I hope this is a help, anon! It's a challenging time, both starting your career and doing so in the middle of a global pandemic, and you shouldn't feel at all embarrassed for being in a rut. I'm amazed at anyone who's not right now to be honest, haha. 💖