#it's been four years since i stated playing ffxiv and writing fic

[thepapernautilus]

okay I'm 10k into the omegaverse now. this fic is honestly the most return-to-form for me since 2021 so I'm kind of excited to post it... it'll be my first oc-fic but siobhan is like. a reader insert that got too specific? and honestly I'm really thinking about writing more fics like this, making a specific tav for the fic itself rather than just one tav. it's been so fun!!! idk why it took me this roundabout way to get into oc-fic but I'm having a blast.

my entire life is literally in boxes currently but I'm still somehow finding the time and drive to write lmao but I'm not planning on posting until sometime next week I think. dreaming of playing bg3 and writing my silly little fics again........ soon........

[echodrops]

The Promises I Made (2017-2018)

For the past eleven years, I have spent every New Year’s Eve compiling a list of fifty promises I intend to keep or fulfill over the next twelve months. The results have been truly amazing, and I have kept some promises I never thought I could. This year, for New Year’s, there will be a new set of promises for to me keep, but here are the old ones, for review!

The Promises I Made (2017 edition)

1) I will get a(nother) new job. Or probably just curl up and die. Status: Kept! I got a new job and moved to Texas. 2) I will translate at least one more month’s worth of Regenkatze. Status: Broken. T_T I did a few pages, but I didn’t get far. 3) I will repot all my plants that need repotting. Finally. Status: Kept, amazingly. 4) I will buy actual freakin’ curtains that I like for my house, RAWR. Status: Broken. I bought no curtains this year. D; 5) I will continue to utilize Plant Nanny to track my water intake and keep myself from getting dehydrated. Status: Broken. I was okay at the beginning of the year, but then the usage dwindled. 6) I will complete at least one craft project that requires me to utilize a new skill, like working with a new material. Status: Broken. I didn’t do anything really crafty this year… too busy moving. 7) I will repair the mortar on the fence out front and seal the bricks on the window sills. Status: Broken—ditto the above. Moved out and wasn’t able to really keep any of these promises about my Utah house. 8) I will finish at least 26 books over the course of this year. Status: …I read a lot of fanfiction. A lot. But not too many new published books. Made it to maybe ten counting the readings I had to do for World Lit class but other than that, nothing close to 26. 9) I will trim the grape vine and call the city to see about cleaning out behind the house because the water culvert is flooding into my yard and jeopardizing my garage. Status: Actually kept! It needs to be trimmed again, but yes, I was able to trim it down and keep it from flooding. 10) I will successfully pass Horsemanship II. Status: Kept. 11) I will broaden my music tastes this year by getting into at least three new bands that I have never heard of or in genres that I don’t normally listen to. Status: Kept! I got into a few new K-pop bands and also Spellblast. 12) I will do the laundry at least once every two weeks. I swear it!! Status: Uh… Somewhat kept? At the new house in Texas I have to wear nicer clothes to work so I have to do laundry more often, but I don’t know about at least once every two weeks… 13) I will finish my new Anime Expo costume early and not wait until the last moment! Status: Broken—I didn’t cosplay at all this year. D; 14) I will remove all the rocks from in front of my house because they are hella ugly. Status: Broken; see above about moving out of Utah and no longer being able to work on the Utah house much. 15) I will go to a dentist and get Invisalign or some work done to fix my front left tooth. Status: Broken. I swapped jobs and had to wait for my benefits to restart and then by that time it wasn’t a good time to get dental work done. 16) I will have at least a once weekly “game night” with my roommates. Could be fun. Status: Broken… I think that um… we played a few times. 17) I will replace the battery in my watch, finally. Status: Kept! 18) I will pay off at least half my credit card debt. Important adult thing, yo. Status: Broken, sooooo broken. T_T It just got worse, not better. D; 19) I will learn at least 100 new words in German and document them as I go to keep them fresh in my memory. Status: Broken. I totally forgot that I even made this promise… 20) I will keep up with my new book club as long as it is possible for me to attend (I.e., if I don’t move). Status: Kept. The book club kinda fell apart pretty quick, but I kept up with it until it did. 21) I will be better about walking my dog because I have been slacking lately. Status: Broken, I’m so sorry Kinguin… It’s sooo hot in Texas. 22) I will build a new PC to replace the desktop computer that my dog destroyed. SLFSFJNDFG. Still angry. Status: Broken. Moving sapped all my money away, so I could not afford a new PC. T_T 23) I will get the scratched lenses removed from my glasses and change the prescription on the orange pair of glasses too. Status: Broken. See the above deal with the new benefits not kicking in for 90+ days.

24) Also: I will get my black glasses fixed so that they stop FALLING OFF and flying into the every nearby rock and sharp pointy object… Status: Broken. T_T

25) I will obtain at least one six-star hero in Tales of Link. Don’t look at me like that. Status: Broken—I haven’t played Tales of Link in months. @_@

26) I will design at least ten outfits and post them. (I’m still trying with this one, dammit.) Status: Broken. …I guess I should probably just give up on this one…

27) I will organize my closets, especially the hall closet which looks like a bomb went off. Status: Broken. I moved out of my Utah house which did involve cleaning out the closets, but um… the closets at the new house might be just as bad now…

28) I will actually utilize the stupid Paint Tool Sai that I paid for. At least three fully colored artworks this year. Status: Broken. I was able to draw nothingggg this year. T_T

29) I will level all my battle classes to 70 in Stormblood. Status: Surprisingly broken. I wasn’t able to play much at all after July so my time for leveling just plummeted.

30) I will reach 700 followers on tumblr. You should follow me. I’m only marginally a waste of time and space. Status: Kept! I have 861 followers right now! Thanks everyone for the follows! :D

31) I will learn to make a new (delicious) cocktail or two. Status: Broken. I drank a new delicious cocktail but I didn’t make any myself.

32) I will lose ten pounds. Status: Somewhat kept? I don’t think I made it to a full 10 pounds but I did noticeably lose some weight.

33) I will reach at least 300 species on my birding life list. Status: Kept! I’m at 306 currently, thanks to making to Texas and seeing a bunch of new birdies. 34) I will win NaNoWriMo this year. (But pretend that I didn’t, to not disrupt my blue-purple-blue-purple NaNo site pattern. XDD) Status: Broken. I didn’t even get to like 5,000 words. T_T 35) I will obtain the Astrope mount in FFXIV. Status: HA. I think I’m at like 200/1000 for mentor roulettes. Broken. 36) I will see at least one new bird species in the wild that is not native to the United States. Status: Hmmm, not sure what I was thinking about for this one, but I did not succeed.

37) I will put a storm door on the side door of my house because water is leaking in (due to lack of said screen door) and causing damage! Status: Gonna count this as somewhat kept because I did try to get a storm door installed, but they wanted to charge me $300 just to install the door and I didn’t have the money at the time. But I did fix the gap beneath the door so that it no longer leaks. 

38) I will visit Nicaragua. Status: Broken. T_T I had the chance but things were so bad at work I didn’t want to blow my vacation in case I needed it… And I did end up needing it, so things worked out.

39) I will water my plants more consistently and take better care of them—to the point where the one orchid that hasn’t bloomed in years will bloom again! Status: Uh… somewhat kept? Namely, I moved and left my plants in Utah, but they’re being taken care of by others so they’re alive at least still.

40) I will write at least four new chapters of my Voltron fic. Status: Kept!

41) I will get duct work done to bring heat to the downstairs bathroom and side bedroom. Status: Broken… But we did get a bigger heater for the downstairs so at least it was warmer down there this year.

42) I will update my calendar with important dates—holidays, birthdays, etc.—and be productive about sending cards and well-wishes. Status: Uh… broken. I forgot I made this promise too.

43) I will complete my series of posts about Yato/Hiyori. Really. Status: T_______T One day. One day. Broken. 44) I will pamper myself more—spa day at least once a month! Status: Somewhat kept? Maybe like barely kept. I was good at this for the first couple months, but then it tapered off. 45) I will visit my out-of-town friends more often and make better efforts to stay in more frequent contact. Status: I think I’ll mark this as kept. I visited more people this year, anyway, including @rachelwritesstories! 46) I will make sure the lawn stays decently mowed this year instead of being embarrassingly tall and weedy. Status: Hrm… Somewhat broken/somewhat kept? I did move, but apparently the lawn has been at least somewhat consistently mowed since I’ve been gone. 47) I will do some work on my laundry room to make it look less like a dungeon. Status: Broken. The dungeon persists. 48) I will revise TVR, especially the early chapters, and move it to AO3. Status: Broken. I got like maybe 1/3 of the way through revising the first chapter. Um… maybe in time for KH3 or something? :C

49) I will get an electric tree trimmer to make trimming my trees out front much easier. Status: Kept.

50) I will keep these promises. Status: Mostly broken. T_T

Totals Kept promises: 12 Broken promises: 31 Somewhat kept/broken promises: 7

Jesus, I thought I was glad to see the back-side of 2016… 2016 had nothing on the roller coaster of a year that 2017 was. What a literal dumpster fire. While politics and the environment went haywire around me, my job situation grew untenable again (ooh, but hilarious karma—just last month they fired the shitty boss and REHIRED my old awesome boss… Except of course by then I had already, you know, quit and moved across the country to pursue a whole new career field… Well, c’est la vie!) and I ended up packing up everything and completely changing my life once again…

In just the last two years I’ve swapped career fields twice and randomly packed up and moved to Texas of all places. I experienced the drama of prepping for a hurricane and also got to see it snow in Mexico. Life’s weird.

Looking back on these promises, I honestly don’t feel too bad that so many of them were broken this year. I really had no idea what was going to happen in 2017 when I made last year’s promises, and so a lot of the goals ended up not matching up with my reality in the end. At the end of the day though, I feel like I’m in a much better place today than I was at the end of 2016.

I don’t think 2018 is going to be easy, but I do think it is going to be better, and that’s a good feeling to have. Let’s do this! The new set of promises will be up by tomorrow.