-my grandma die 

-my dog die (pt. 1) 

-my friend group change (pt. 1) 

-met my soulmate

-MAJOR DEPRESSIVE EPISODE 

-my life course change

-my friend group change (pt. 2) 

-my dog die (pt. 2) 

-MAJOR DEPRESSIVE EPISODE 

-GENDER CRISIS????? FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE 

...and we’re still one of the strongest fandom exchanges running.  Especially when you consider we’ve been five years this past Christmas without new canon.

But change is good, and new blood keeps a fandom thriving, and despite the fact that you guys keep coming up with prompts nobody’s thought of, it’s time to pass the baton to a new pair of mods.

This is the last post I will be making as a mod of the Leverage Secret Santa Exchange.  From here I will be shifting to a side project of developing us a proper archive of Exchange fics on AO3 - so as individual authors, you haven’t heard the last of me yet.

@meils121 and @inklingdancer are taking over as your new mods, and Fleur and I couldn’t be happier.  For right now, the intent is to keep things moving as normal, so stay subscribed to this blog (and follow the community on Dreamwidth), but I wouldn’t look for things to kick into gear until Sept/Oct.

Finally, Fleur and I want to thank all of you that have supported us through so much these past ten years.  We’ve come a long way from Liverjournal and the original mission of being a way to make the hiatus between seasons (sob!) pass more quickly.

And we couldn’t have done it without all of you. Whether you participate or just support and promote, you are the reason we have a very distinctive gift exchange to pass along.

We’re never going to forget this experience - either of us. <3

I haven’t written like this in a while. That’s not to say I haven’t written at all- I have tapped time away at the typewriter plenty in the last few months. A summary here, a report there. A fucking grocery list, while we’re at it. You can’t knock the convenience, that’s for sure.

But there’s just something to be said about the act of writing something out- really writing. it. out. I sometimes need that, the scratch of pen, the smell of ink. Bleeding onto paper, or however else you’d like to wax poetic on it. The kind of stains you can feel good about. They do say the best writing happens when there’s pain involved, and Light knows I get it.  A steady stream of cigarettes and shoes dropping all around me. I’ve been getting it since I was old enough to flash a fake ID and the right kind of smile.

Though that constant state of ‘just for now’ probably works well for any military life. Safety, sanity- someday soon- all these precious things we take for granted inside the city walls. They’re nothing out there, where your life is a resource, and a fixed one at that. More and more I realise, this place that once gave me so much, or so I thought, has come to collect on its investment. And I am overcome and overdrawn. I’ve got nothing left to give them. Once, my mother might have laughed like wind chimes to hear it, but I want to be more than a force of destruction. I want to be building- for something, towards something, whatever I can get my hands on that feels even a little bit right. I’m so sick of tearing things down. I’m so sick of being finite. There are a lot of things changing around me. But then that’s spring for you.  A preoccupation with the art of becoming- friends into lovers, fractures into wholes. I see it in Inerris’ new life, in Sana’s aspirations. New faces I keep running into, and so, so much in Lore. Fuck, but I need to be a part of it, too. For him as much as for myself.

So here it is. In the end, I guess it’s back to the typewriter. In one last official capacity at least.