forever we try

Every time I fall out of journaling and then try to write a catch-up post I remember that my life is pretty boring for the most part...which I don't mind except for when I'm trying to write catch-up posts. But anyway. I've been pretty busy. Some things have happened. More things have not happened. 

1.) My summer class is officially over with! It ended up being a lot more relaxed and less stressful (though not stress-free) than I was worried it would be. It still did obviously take up most of my time, and I haven't wanted to read or write much of anything for the past three weeks or so. I don't want to not want to read or write anything, so hopefully I can get back into the groove of that soon. Hopefully. 

2.) I'm about three episodes into season 3/the last season of Jessica Jones and realizing more and more that the show peaked for me in the first season. It's not that I hated season 2 and I don't hate what I've seen so far of season 3 either but...I'm just not grabbed by it? Either emotionally or plot-wise; I keep switching it off mid-episode and going to do something else because it's...not all that interesting. At least not to me and at least not right now. I wonder if some of that has to do with pacing; NONE of the Marvel Netflix shows had this as a strong point but back in season 1 of JJ Kilgrave was a presence right from the beginning. Season 2 took its sweet time setting up the villain, and season 3 seems like it's going down the same route, and for some reason they way they went/go about that sucks so much urgency out of the plot for me. Not having a good sense of who the villain is for the first couple episodes doesn't leave me all that interested in finding out. Also--I really, really didn't want to be this person but GOOD LORD is Trish getting on my nerves. I love her. I really do love her, and boy do I get the obsession with wanting to be someone special and heroic and to do something that matters (who doesn't?), but her desire to be someone is really starting to overtake her desire to, y'know, actually help people. Which I'm pretty sure is what this season is going for, and I'm pretty sure they'll resolve it in an interesting way (if I can make it that far), but. TRISH.

3.) On the bright side I got a new phone and have been catching up on My Favorite Murder and also getting into The Teacher's Pet; I need to finish The Long Dance, too.

4.) War and Peace keeps chugging on. I'm up to Volume Three, Andrei is very obviously Not Long for This World and I'm much, much sadder about that than I expected I would be based on my reaction to him when I first started. Pierre continues to be adorable and awkward and ineffectual in the most relatable way, Natasha and Princess Mary and Sonya are all lovely and wonderful, Hélène is awful and wonderful, Anatole is pitiful, Dolokhov is...Dolokhov. I know I'm missing more than half the characters, but I really do love every single one and I'm both excited to say that I finished War and Peace and not ready at all to finish War and Peace. 

Just a couple minutes ago I was looking back over the list of goals for 2018 that I posted in December, and there it is, right at the top: "Get back into the habit of posting." For a while there I did manage to keep up (mostly thanks to the Fandom Snowflake Challenge) but all that dropped off once February hit. And, okay, my life is both very busy and very, very boring, but you'd think I could do better than two posts a month.

Anyway.

My birthday came and went, and the day of I woke up too tired to care and went to bed too tired to care, which is probably one of the truest signs of adulthood (semi-adulthood, at least). Otherwise it was a mostly quiet and not incredibly stressful day; I fell asleep to the sound of my sister watching Stranger Things--a good way to end the day even if Stranger Things doesn't make for the most relaxing background noise out there. 

I've signed up for both the space_swap  and maythe4thbewithyou exchanges this year. I'm a little nervous since their deadlines are pretty close together, but they're both exchanges that I really, really wanted to participate in and as long as I don't sign up for anything else I think I should be fine. Star Wars is one of those fandoms that I've only dipped my toe into so far; it's so huge and so scarily full of writers much, much better than me. But it's also full of an almost infinite number of cool and unexpected character combos, so I'm pretty excited to play around in a new sandbox and see what I can come up with. 

Otherwise my only plans for the weekend are watching as many episodes of the second season of Jessica Jones as possible. I always get nervous about being spoiled for Netflix shows before I finish them, so my solution is usually to power through as fast as I can--plus, I've been waiting for the second season of JJ for what feels like forever. It was fun to see Jessica interacting with everybody else in The Defenders, but I missed the darkness and twistiness of her own show. Hopefully season 2 will deliver on that front!