melannen | (no subject)

1. We're not talking about the writing okay. (There has been preparing-for-the-holiday cleaning, though. so much cleaning. so much left to do.)

2. I added a bunch of people via the friending meme, and then when I started feeling kind of weird about how less than half of them had added me back, I looked and realized that most of them already had me added, because I had somehow become the kind of person who had 100 non-mutual followers. Oops. Some of you I'd even already been stalking because I thought you were too cool for me to dare talk to but apparently you were already reading my journal. So I went through and I think I've added-back everyone who has me added and has posted in the last month or so. Hopefully I will not regret it. If I missed you somehow, pipe up and say something. If you were hate-stalking me in the assurance I'd never add you back and you want me to go away, just let me know.

(ETA: I didn't mean to imply non-mutual-friending was bad, just that maybe, uh, accidentally not paying any attention at all to your subscribers list for over a year, even though you're looking for new dw friends, may not be the best idea either. Balance. Balance is good.)

Normally this is where I'd say 'welcome new people' but you were all already here. Don't mind me when I suddenly turn up in your comments?

3. There's still lots of slots open for December topics if anyone still cares.

4. I just made my 150 books reading goal on Goodreads! So of course I immediately upgraded it to 175 and am now 4 books behind. But even if I just finish all my currently-reading and all my current library books by the end of the year, I should make it easily. (spoiler: I will not finish all my currently-reading by the end of the year.)

This isn't nearly as impressive as it seems because of the 152 books I currently have listed as read this year: 77 are comic trades, 26 are picture books or easy readers, 8 are glossy coffee-table books that are mostly pictures, 4 were more pamphlets than books, and 19 were 'activity-focused' books like piano books, field guides, or craft books. So of real grown-up books that have more words than pictures, I only score 37. Of course a lot of those 37 were, like, ridiculously dense academic texts, so I guess it sort of evens out? Also I was supposed to be doing this so I could read some of the unread books I have piled in my bedroom, but only 39 of them were books I own as opposed to borrowed. And 17 of those were ones I acquired this year. So mission: backlog, not going so great.

Anyway I started this with good intentions to review everything on GR but am now way behind. I may try to do capsule reviews of most of them to round out the year? I dunno. All of the current topics on my December meme are going to end up as reviews of multiple books I read this year, I suspect.

5. Ugh I have to do more cleaning.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

LOLOLOLOL forever, but I feel you so much on point #2. There's not a lot of correlation between people I care about, people whose own posts I'm interested in, and people I'm glad to see reading and commenting on my stuff. So personally I don't worry too much about onesided friendings, from either direction.

(Hi, suddenly-mutual friend! I'm going to pretend I'm in the intimidatingly awesome category.)

LOLOLOLOL forever, but I feel you so much on point #2. There's not a lot of correlation between people I care about, people whose own posts I'm interested in, and people I'm glad to see reading and commenting on my stuff. So personally I don't worry too much about onesided friendings, from either direction.

Yes, this. I mean, one of my favorite features on DW is that your reading list and your access list aren't the same. When I start subscribing to someone, I don't want a personal, mutual connection right away. I want someone who posts interesting stuff for me to read. Then, over time, a deeper relationship may grow. If it does, that's awesome, but I don't wanna force it. So if people I add don't add me back, I don't even really notice. And people adding me is a cue to me to check them out to see if we share enough interests for me to follow, but no obligation to do so.

Oh, yeah, I agree!

I do feel kinda weird about not adding back in the context of a friending meme, though, where presumably everybody is actively shopping for new people to follow? Not that they're obligated to add me back even then, but that if they were someone I thought looked interesting who is actively looking for new people but didn't add me, they clearly must have looked at my journal and gone "ugh. yet another loki stan. not that one. nope nope nope." Which is also totally valid but still makes me feel weird. :P

(...that didn't happen here, because I think nearly everyone I added was in fact already subscribed. So I guess that's carte blanche to continue wibbling about Loki.)

Personally, I was mostly advertising and only gave a cursory scan to the other comments, and to the journals of anyone who added me (except you because I already follow you). Not that I wasn't looking at all but I was looking very selectively.

I also will totally fail to subscribe to people for being too active, or having too many posts that I don't care about mixed with the ones I do, or for mostly posting fic in fandoms I don't share. (In fact, the less active you are, the more likely I am to subscribe because if you're very active, I can check your journal or tumblr or whatever once a day or so and read until I'm tired of it. Subscriptions mean something less like "I'm interested" and more like "I'm concerned about missing what you say", at least for me.)

I have no idea what anyone else was looking for from that meme but that's what I was looking for, fwiw.

Oh, yeah, I didn't mean to imply that there was something wrong with non-mutual friendings, I'm just kind of amused that I'm the kind of person now who gets added by people I don't know. Often enough that I somehow accumulated 100 of them without noticing.O-o.

I used to be really careful about who I added back (and I may regret adding y'all back yet... :P ) but on the other hand, if you never add anybody new your reading list gets quieter and quieter due to natural drifting away, so I used to try to check back through the list once in awhile to see if there was anyone cool that I was missing out on. Only I think I left it for, like, 18 months this time, which explains why it felt like dreamwidth was going quiet....

And I'm currently working in a job where I spend at least three paid hours a day staring blankly at social media while waiting for people to need help, so I figured it couldn't hurt. Be the DW you want to see, right? Can't be worse that the firehose of random that is Tumblr without xkit, which is my other option at work.

LOL OIC. That makes sense.

I hear you regarding cleaning and holiday prep. So much to do! And then there's my Yuletide story, which is "down" only as a very rough outline.

If you have a rough outline you're ahead of me! I have an inkling of an idea which may end up unworkable when I finally finish my canon review...

Long time lurker here. When I saw you added me back, I thought I'd done something particularly interesting. (And uh, I hope my prattling on about NaNo isn't too boring. Or whichever new fandom I finally get into...)

In other words... hi?

Everything you do is interesting. ^_^ And if you can put up with my random fandom swaps I can do the same for yours (probably).

Awww thanks. It's not putting up if it's fun and enjoyable to read! :)

Holiday cleaning is the worst, because you know it will get messed up faster than regular cleaning, what with the influx of people. But you will persevere!

Also, your Goodreads idea makes me think I should do that, especially now that I'm actually using my kindle for Real Books and not just fanfic long enough that I can take it on the subway. Do you make a list at the start of the year and work through it? Or add as you go? (Sounds like the former, but I have no idea how GR works so...) I have no fewer than 40 books in my apartment that I should read, plus another 10 on my kindle that I've been sitting on. 2015 might be the Year of the Book, though it'll also be the year the new Avengers movie comes out, so it might just end up fanfiction central again, WHO KNOWS.

Adulthood is weird.

I add as I go. Goodreads makes it really easy to track reading (especially since I'm *only* tracking reading, so I'm not worrying about making sure I've added the right edition and cataloging metadata and stuff, like I do with Librarything.)

But yeah, I'm just adding as I go - whenever you add a book to GoodReads it prompts you to put it on one of three required 'shelves': "Read", "Currently Reading", or "To Read" (there is no option for "I am a sad, sad book hoarder who needed to own this but will never read it ever.") I usually add books, as "Currently Reading", when I start them, and then when I finish them it's really easy to switch them to "Read", which automatically gives them a finished-on date of the day you mark them read, although you can backdate that.

And if you set a reading challenge on goodreads, it automatically tracks it for you with pretty graphs based on your "finished on" date.

..If you have a list of books you really want to get through, a lot of people use the "to read" function for that, switching them from "to read" to "currently reading" to "read" as they go, but I know myself, and I know any to-read list gets out of hand with me real quick.

Also yes adulthood is weird.