Drive-by post to say -- I miss that thing called "downtime".  Got back last night from a weekend away and am about to depart for another day and night.   All of this while trying to pull together a project for work by cobbling together rural 3G and borrowed Wi Fi from the road.

Today will be my fourth in a row working with high school kids!  I AM SO TIRED AND OLD OMG.

Thanks to those who sent me a number of sweet v-gifts last week -- I have been far and away from LJ-land lo these many weeks, so it was lovely to have a reminder that people still remember me even when I'm too ridiculously busy to come by and say hi.

Hi!

So part of my new job (BTW, hai hai hai flist! I read you, I do! I just have zero energy for posting these days!) involves working with parents of children aged 8 and up. And while I've always had distaste for the abstract notion of "helicopter parenting" I'm now being forced to deal with it face to face. Allow me to illustrate:

Parent #1, to Parent #2 (sincerely, and very calmly): I don't know if my 10 year old can handle a weekend retreat at a camp 20 minutes out of town. Five nights out of seven, she's crawling into bed with me as it is. Must just be her age, I guess!

And then:

Parent #3, to me: We'll hold off on committing to the group with a registration form. I want to be sure that this is a good environment for my [11 and 14 year old] boys socially. We've had to pull out of groups before because they weren't making friends. [NB: home schooled kids. Shocking, huh?]

I'm also administrating the communications system for these lovely parents and got chewed out tonight by a parent who "had to find out about an event though my daughter's FACEBOOK". This, even though she is on our mailing list, had a son in our choir last year and therefore had access to our schedules at any time online, and has, in fact, received no fewer than three emails with information about the event. Gee, I wonder how her kids are going to turn out? JESUS.

Thankfully, for every insane control-freak parent out there, we have a nice reasonable helpful parent. But man, the crazy ones make me shake my head. Do parents not realize that the goal of parenting is, in fact, to make sure your child can fend for itself eventually? And that maybe one should start with things like the ability to sleep alone after a decade, or the ability to interact with peers socially, or -- GOD.

[/vent]

It's less dramatic than it sounds, but the fact remains that I'm abandoning my church job for the questionably greener pastures of full-time work with my choir organization. It sounds like I'll be an administrator/conductor/whatever else they need, 40 hours a week. It's kind of terrifying but I think it will probably free me up to do more stuff I enjoy, like maybe artistic/creative stuff. Maybe? I hope? I sure didn't go into music to become a bureaucrat, guys, so here's to hoping that I haven't just given up my (boring) artistic autonomy for the confines of a desk and computer. GAH.

This journal is new and shiny.  I'm scared to peel the cellophane back, but I guess as a "beta" user I should really be using this thing and helping our lovely admin team figure out how everything works!

First things first -- a little wee bit about me:

I've been writing fanfiction, primarily slash, since 2003.  I started off in the Smallville fandom, then migrated to Stargate Atlantis in 2005, with a few detours along the way into CW RPS, Supernatural, and maybe two other places.  My writing is generally a little comedic, though I've been known to do the angst thing too.  My website is here: http://toomuchplor.wordpress.com/ and I'm toomuchplor over on LJ as well.  (In a past life I was known as rose_emily.)

Though I've written some fairly lengthy WIP-style stories I don't often do so anymore, as I don't trust myself to finish them and I hate leaving people hanging.  I have an occasionally very demanding RL as a professional musician/administrator and as a result I may periodically disappear from this journal for weeks at a time.

Next item:

My plans for using this journal are solidifying.  I will crosspost on DW and LJ, at least to begin with, because I like the idea of archiving fic and comments and such on DW.  If I should ever decide to go to one journal exclusively over another I will say so, in both places.  I *very* rarely do flocked posts, so that is not a consideration.  So if you're considering subscribing here, you may want to consider this in order to avoid duplicate posts every time I post.  I'm not sure yet if I will only have comments on one of the two journals.  We'll see how that evolves.

And finally, "friending"/subscriptions:

I've never been one to get worked up over people adding and removing me from their flists and this will not change here.  What I do care about is how much I have to wade through on my reading list (rlist?) and flist, and how much of *that* will be interesting to me based on divergent interests, etc.  If you've subscribed to me here and we're mutual friends on LJ I'll automatically subscribe in return and grant access.  Everyone else, I will be skimming your DW journal from time to time.  As on LJ, if I hear a lot from you on my own entries I'm much more likely to add you to my reading list.  In any case, please know that my decisions to add/subscribe/whatever are not meant as any kind of judgment.  I simply have to limit the length of my reading list for my own sanity.  (This has become an issue for me in the past, when I flocked a formerly-RL LJ and had to mutually friend about 400 people and -- whoa.  Too much information, dudes.)

If you are new here (subscribing to me) or if you just have a new name, drop me a comment here and introduce yourself!  I want to get to know you!

Inspired by seperis, I thought maybe it was time to do some sort of mini info session for the (almost 500) people watching my LJ -- especially since my userinfo has like 10 interests and absolutely no bio.

I'm making up for it now, though! VERY LONG RAMBLE BELOW CUTS.

( 1. How Fandom Nabbed Me and Why I Still Deny It Like John Sheppard Denies Being the Gayest Flyboy in the USAF )

( 2. Which fandoms, when, and why. )

( 3. Pairings I like and hate. )

( 4. Other crap about me that I'll probably mention in passing and this'll help it make more sense. )

Okay, what about you guys? Step up and introduce yourselves, if you haven't already!