#mariunnn

[winderlylandchime]

I hope your work thing went okay earlier today. Wasn't that a thing you were anxious about? If not, ignore me. If so, I hope it was WONDERFUL.

First off, I thought I was following you! But I was wrong. It’s been fixed. ♥️

Second, how incredibly kind of you to remember. I did have my Big Thing this morning. I work afternoons and nights so having to be “on” and present at 7 am this morning was really though. Thank gods for coffee. Generally, I don’t mind teaching. Well. I don’t like teaching but I don’t mind the public speaking aspect of it. I do get public speaking anxiety when I’m presenting to other professionals who will KNOW if I’ve screwed up. And that’s what I was doing this morning.

Having my colleagues and my spouse help me rehearse was super valuable. They were able to point out that since I was guiding a mindfulness practice, everyone would be focused on their experience not on exactly how much time I paused between prompts or if I repeated my words. That was super helpful to hear and I can’t believe in alllllll my years of guiding mindfulness (and being a cognitive behavioral therapist) I never thought of that.

I think overall it went well. One person wrote in the chat that it was powerful.

And now that I’ve developed this script, I’m excited to use it again. If I ever have the chance.

I was anxious too because this is a new branch to my career and it is a part of my work that I personally have benefitted from a great deal. I really want to continue to pursue it and showing up and doing Scary Things like this is how I can do so. In fact, up next is creating a proposal to give a 3 hour presentation to other professionals. Eeek!

[winderlylandchime]

I'm not anon, but I saw you had anons about your glorious story and I had to force myself to stop reading anyone else's thoughts, as I wanted my own to be true. So I stopped my Tumblr scroll and focused on notepad and my comment on your story. I'm down for being influenced when things are good, and I can't wait to scroll back up and read, and I'm willing to bet so many similar things were said and shared.

I kinda left the longest and dumb (sincere!) comment ever on the story and I stand by it all.

And again, thank you for writing that. It was such a good universe you created that hit all the good notes and so perfectly in tune with the core of these characters.

You took care and fleshed out everyone in such a good and cohesive way. There were jokes, there was history, there was love, there was sex, there was community, there was giving a shit, there was recovery, there was...actual life.

Hand to whatever God(s), it will be a thing I read over and over again. I will even edit my A03 bookmark to it so it relates the same thing.

And now I'm going to read the anon messages about such a glorious story. <3

Hello dear mariunnn!

I was falling asleep when that beloved dopamine hit of an email from AO3 came in with your comment. Now that I’m awake (and I’m having my coffee - two separate levels of awakeness) I can’t wait to reread it.

I’m so glad you liked chapter 12. To be perfectly honest, this was the chapter in my outline that had the least detail and just said “Justin comes back, they talk, they get together for real.” And where I thought I was going with it turned out to be completely different. I had a sense of wanting to use the suits and the sketches to communicate something so I also knew part of it had to be from Justin’s POV.

Then I went on a 5 day silent retreat and I wasn’t reading or watching TV before bed so I had plenty of time to think and the idea of this type of tour around gay Pittsburgh was born. I didn’t have a pen or paper to write anything down (I did contemplate stealing some post its and a pen from the retreat organizers!) so I’m also glad it stuck around in my brain enough to write it.

I hadn’t thought about how answering those anons was like spoilers for the fic! It’s wild to think I have a fic where people care about spoilers. Thank you so much for being apart of bringing this world to life.