#so i've had projects looming since like june

[bookwyrminspiration]

hey (has three completed big bang artworks locked and loaded, ready to post)

[dystopicjumpsuit]

An update (and it's good news).

Hi everyone! Thanks for being patient with me. I have some good news to share. I'll put details below the cut for anyone who is okay with reading medical stuff, but for those who prefer to avoid it, the TLDR is that things are going very well, and I am hoping to start making a slow return to normal Tumblr/fandom activities very soon. I have missed you all so much, and I'm so grateful to everyone who reached out with such kind and supportive words. I love you all more than I can say.

And now, the details.

Gratuitous Darcy gif because I can't find one of Mr. Bennet saying, "Read on, Lizzie!"

We are at the midpoint of my partner's treatment course, and they had a progress check yesterday. We discovered two things: first, the bad news was that it was not just one blood clot, but many, running all through their thigh. For whatever reason, that information was not disclosed at the initial diagnosis. The good news, though, is that ALL of the deep vein clots have dissolved, and only the superficial ones are left. The risk of complications from the superficial ones is far lower, so a huge amount of stress has been lifted.

It took weeks for cardiology to see them, which was incredibly frustrating and nerve-wracking. But they finally did a full workup and found that their initial diagnosis was either inaccurate, or it had resolved in the interim, which was a massive relief. It honestly felt like we were sitting on a time bomb, and so not having that looming over us feels very freeing.

Their doctors have not attempted to find the cause of the clots, but they have a follow-up appointment scheduled with their vascular surgeon at the end of the treatment (in six weeks). We are hoping that they will try to track down the root cause at that point, but we also know that they are likely to need surgery to repair the vascular damage from their preexisting condition, so this is likely to be an ongoing issue until that is resolved. That said, it seems that the immediate, life-threatening danger has passed, and for the first time since early June, I feel like I can breathe again.

During the past several weeks, we've had some long conversations about how we are going to move forward from this, and one of the decisions we reached was that we will likely be staying in this house longer than we originally anticipated, so we need to make some changes to it to make sure it is accessible and will accommodate our bodies as we age. With that in mind, we started planning several significant renovation projects, some of which are now already underway. These range in scale from installing safety railings, to a large remodel of our downstairs so we can have our bedroom on the ground floor. We honestly should have done this years ago, but living in a construction zone is my own personal version of hell, so I've been procrastinating. But this situation was definitely a wake-up call that we need to take care of these things now instead of waiting for them to become emergencies.

As you can imagine, planning and carrying out those projects (in addition to dealing with the medical stress and continuing to work full-time and take care of all my usual responsibilities and commitments) is taking up all of my energy and attention right now. I haven't had time or inspiration to write, but since getting such good news yesterday, I can already start to feel the sparks of creativity coming back, so I am crossing my fingers that I'll be able to pick that up again soon. I hesitate to commit to any deadlines, though, because my brain is just too unpredictable, and what little inspiration I've had recently has been for original fiction.

All of which is to say that I'm hoping to start returning to the fandom very soon, but I will likely be a bit less active than I was before, at least for the next several weeks. Thank you again for your patience and for sticking with me through this. You've all been so kind and lovely, and I feel incredibly lucky to have you in my life.

🩵

Hiatus announcement.

Hi friends. I've got some stuff I need to focus on in my personal life right now, and I'm not able to balance that with keeping up with Tumblr and Discord. I'll be taking a hiatus starting immediately. I'm not sure when I'll be back, but hopefully it won't be too long. If you have submitted a request for a fic, design, or artwork, please know I'll do my absolute best to fill it when I'm back, but for now, I need to be present in my real life.

I love you all, and I'll miss you, and I can't wait to come back! I'll put a few more details below the cut in case you're interested. CW for medical issues.

My partner has been unwell recently, and this week, we discovered that they have a blood clot in their leg. Further testing revealed they have a serious heart condition. Unfortunately, they also have a preexisting vascular condition that makes blood thinners risky, but their PCP went ahead and prescribed a three-month course of medication for the clot since it's an immediate issue. We are waiting to hear if insurance will cover the meds; apparently this prescription gets rejected by insurers frequently due to the cost. (Thinking about the fact that some analyst in a cubicle could decide that my partner's life is worth less than a three-month course of medication is making me feel absolutely sick.)

They have more appointments scheduled with a cardiologist and a vascular surgeon, so for now, we're just kind of stuck in limbo. Their PCP gave us a long list of, "If x happens, go to the emergency room immediately. If y happens, go to the emergency room immediately. If z happens - you guessed it - go to the emergency room immediately."

At this point, I'm still trying to come to terms with it. My partner just turned 44. We have an active lifestyle; we eat healthfully; we don't drink to excess. We just got fucked over by genetic risk factors.

The scariest part is that we wouldn't have found out about any of this if they hadn't gone to the doctor for a completely unrelated issue. I'm trying not to think about it too hard, or my imagination starts to send me into a spiral.

Please allow me to get sappy for a moment:

If you've read much of my work, you probably know my partner better than you might think, as they inspire a lot of my characterization, either directly or indirectly. If you enjoyed the way I wrote Waxer in "The Sixth Language" or Jesse in "In Which Jesse Gets What He Deserves," then you have a good idea of their personality. They are extraordinarily kind and patient, funny and sweet. They have been here for me consistently for twenty years, first as my friend, and later as my everything. They've held me when I cried, and they've made me laugh every single day since I met them. They know me better than anyone in the world, and I trust them with my soul.

They are the only person IRL who even knows that I write fanfiction, and they have read every single fic I've ever written. They've served as my guinea pig when I needed to work through the physical mechanics of a scene, and they've listened to me ramble for hours on end about plotting and characterization. They've supported and encouraged me in this and so many other areas, and now it's my turn to support them through this.

If you've read this far, I just want to say thank you for all the love, support, encouragement, and kindness you've given me over the past year. This fandom community has truly changed my life, and I am more grateful than words can communicate. I hope to see you all again very soon, hopefully with good news. But in the meantime, please know that I love you all.

May the Force be with you. 🩵

[the-cemetery-researcher]

PhD journey - 1st post

So I'm now officially not working on anything other than my thesis, although the reality of that is a little less clear cut because there are still some unfinished aspects of the Jewellery Quarter Cemeteries Project which require attention and some potential legacies too which we are trying to set up for post-PhD life. However, in general, I'm just being a student again, for the first time since the beginning of my Masters and it's a very strange adjustment. I'm used to working on lots of different things at once in the Heritage Sector - multiple jobs or juggling projects, giving me plenty of reasons not to prioritise my thesis. Now the thesis has to be my priority. The deadline is looming and I've become deliberately unemployed to make sure I don't miss it. Again.

I've always struggled with organisation, time management and procrastination. Some of this is because I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, but mostly it's because of my dyspraxia. In comparison to neurotypical people I've got a totally appaling working memory for example, and that can make it difficult to retain info and organise my thoughts. External motivation has always been a good thing for me, because being accountable to someone else's opinion of me stops me from procrastinating quite as badly - I'm a people pleaser and I like everyone to think I'm working hard and getting stuff done. So I thought that blogging my daily PhD journey would help with that.

Some background- I've been studying cemeteries since my undergraduate dissertation written during 2010-2011. Then I started an MPhil around the same topic in 2011 and upgraded it to a PhD course in 2012. I quickly had to switch to part-time study to be able to do fun things like eat and pay rent, but even so, observant readers will realise that a part-time PhD takes 6-8 years, and I've already exceeded a decade. I've sort of lost count but I think I've had 5 leaves of absence (for a variety of reasons, including at one point simply running out of money to pay the fees) and also a 1 year extension (pandemic) and most recently a 4 month extension because of my last job contract being longer than originally anticipated (also pandemic). My official deadline is now 25th June 2022. I'd really like to get it handed in before that though, because if we get some funding, my work projects will need to restart at Easter.

Therefore I'm looking at around 3 months to turn this all around and it's not going to be easy. I've already lost basically 2 weeks over Christmas due to COVID, but since the beginning of last week, I have been back on the case - although sometimes struggling to get started in the mornings (or working til late and night and then not being able to sleep) and I'm finding that my day to day working pace is really inconsistent.

Today I thought I had a meeting with my supervisor at 2pm, spent most of the day fretting over whether I had made enough progress and writing a bunch of to do lists. Then at 2pm I checked my uni email for the meeting link and discovered that he'd emailed 2 days ago suggesting that we move meeting to early February as the extension request we were going to discuss has been granted already.

I'm hoping that by writing these blog posts, I'll be able to muddle through some of the things I need to do, so that be the time that meeting comes around I'll be in better shape. It would be nice not to disappoint him for once - poor bastard has been working with me since the undergrad dissertation days, but I think it's been almost that long since I actually turned in what I was supposed to have done, on time, to a decent standard! I've come so far in other ways - public speaking, teaching, mentoring, research methods, but in terms of actual words on the page I've definitely not had any consistent progress.

I went into this PhD thinking that I wanted to be an academic, then our department closed/merged (so my teaching opportunities have been 4 hours per year...) and had a number of minor breakdowns (one of which was mostly because reading academic theory texts is so impossible, I felt intellectually incapable of ever finishing the thesis) so my relationship to the university is complicated at best. There have been long periods of time when I couldn't face opening my university emails, let alone set foot on campus, so I've got a tonne of emotional baggage to overcome in the next few months too. I'm really happy with the career I've been building, and have no regrets about the path I'm taking, but I still don't find it easy to engage with the university or wider scholarship in the way most people this close to the end of their PhD journey would be.

I've been really lucky outside of university to have an amazing community around me - through the Cemetery Research Group, in the Birmingham Heritage scene, and around the world on Twitter. Writing this blog feels very vulnerable, so I hope you'll all be kind while I struggle and rant for the next 3 months. I know I'll feel the love of my 'village' rooting for me to finally, finally, hand the damn thing in!

I'm writing these posts on 750words.com (it's a great place to write without distractions) and then uploading to an this old tumblr blog I haven't used for years, so hopefully they'll be interpersed with cool cemetery photos too!