you could make a life

This universe is a very large one (I try not to think about it too hard, but it's well north of a million words), and has existed for a long, long time. Long enough that, when I went 'I already made an intro post for people getting into the fandom, though' I had to take a bit of a moment after I discovered I had...in 2017.

So yes! Huge! Overwhelming!

So I'm going to give this another go. A lot of the 2017 post is still relevant, and includes a suggested reading order, how the universe differs from our own (some different teams, for one!), and a few other resources.

First and foremost, I need to point to the YCMAL wiki. It's an absolutely brilliant fan run resource that consolidates so much information it makes me a little breathless. They have their own getting started page, which has informed me that I have written in fact north of two million words in this universe, so that's fun. That's a fun fact.

I also cannot recommend enough the YCMAL Story Guide and timeline spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is a work of wonder; it consolidates all the stories I've written in the universe, across the (many) locations, and tells you where you can find them, with links to the free and Patreon content. It allows you to filter by character and pairing, which is invaluable if you want to read extra content of a particular pairing, and even includes an estimated story order.

Unfortunately a lot of my previous organization sort of fell apart as the universe grew a little too mighty for my ADHD, so I wouldn't use the tumblr tags or resources as a tool: the wiki and that spreadsheet are going to be much more useful to you.

Suggested reading order, with links, below.

a day at the office.

Halfway through the month and I'm only peeking my head up now to let you know what's coming, but that's because I've spent the last two weeks sorting out exactly what that is: all the loose threads and overdue things (just about everything) and beyond overdue things (all my correspondence, and also my taxes) and beyond beyond overdue things (everything to do with the Kickstarter) and put it on calendars and post it notes and moved things around and gave it a ~theme and all that jazz.

Precious little was written, but I fully plotted out the next four parts of AIT. No words for Gabe and Stephen, but a bunch of administrative legwork. Executive function still sucks but a bunch of other things have improved, including brain fog, which was the fucking worst. Those kinds of give and take things.

I think taking those couple weeks probably saved me at least a month in the long run, and that's what I'm trying to think about going forward: the long run. I live from a place where urgency gets priority, and I know that's never going to change, but I've been building as many guard rails as possible into it, so that when I inevitably fall off it I have designated places I can hop right on again.

The key being that this plan is the opposite of ambitious. I've graduated from one thing a day to two things a day(!). Because I'm now just far enough out of burnout to realise I don't recall the last time I felt like this, and that's uh...scary.

So I'm going to be honest with you: I'm going to continue to be really slow for awhile. Part of it is pure rustiness, out of game shape after the offseason, whatever metaphor you'd like. The pace might pick up once I get into the swing of things (and I hope it does!), but I'm not depending on it, and you shouldn't either. I don't know what my safe baseline is yet, and that might be lower than any of us would like, but given how damn huge this 'verse already is, I feel an okay-ness about this?

This is intentionally loose: I'll get more specific when each month arrives, but this is the shape the work's going to take for the next little bit.

July - Basically what I've been doing: gathering all the loose ends, prioritizing, breaking ground on them.

I'm working on a bunch of things right now, so nothing really appears to be happening, because I'm at the 10-25% mark on them. It'll probably start coming next week, and slowly and steadily pick up from there.

August - Continuing the July catch-up, aiming to have a clean slate for September.

This will be the most post heavy month of the year (at least I'm hoping).

September - getting my bearings again once I'm not catching up, then full speed ahead (whatever speed that ends up being).

So that's my plan for the summer. Again, I'm not going to be specific right now because I have 27 things in my lap and who knows which one will emerge first. Not me. But the plan is for those 27 things to be out of my lap by September. Which should be achievable, even at two things a day.

in rose coloured glasses

I promised a proper update before the end of June, and now I come, minus a tooth, plus a few new diagnoses on my medical chart (no spoilers), and with actual news. 

I've solved the writer's block, I think. Not 'solved' like 'fixed', more like figuring where the problem was, and slowly but surely following it to the source of the issue. Which was the fact that if I kept writing, I was going to reach the end of the universe, and I wasn't ready to.

Because that's where we're headed right now. For my entire fourteen(!) year journey writing the YCMAL 'verse, I've been walking the path pretty much alongside the characters, having little more idea where we're going than they do. 

But the end has been coming for awhile, hastened by me having a bit of a quiet reckoning in the the wake of Heated Rivalry bringing hockey slash into the public eye and just...everything about professional men's hockey over the past several years, and some of pro women's hockey too.

So when I say I solved my writer's block, I probably have solved it, given the resistance was entirely rational underneath the surface: I wasn't ready for the end. I wouldn't write toward the end. 

But this universe deserves to be finished, and it deserves to be finished with the same level of attention to detail and love of these ridiculous humans I feel less like I created and more like I discovered. And as I told my therapist yesterday (damn good things, therapists, if you get the right one), 'it's going break my heart, and I'm going to do it, so.', followed by a fatalistic shrug, and if that isn't sports fandom, baby, I don't know what is.

Before anyone starts panicking, thinking I'm about to pull down the shutters immediately: this is something we're probably measuring over the course of years. AIT will be completed. COTT will be completed. Gabe and Stephen's story will be told. This time next year I'll still be updating. But the reason I've been so absent is, alongside a few health issues (not incidental!), I've been mourning this behind the scenes, waiting for the moment I was ready to share that, because it felt like I had to do that before moving forward. You know me, radical honesty.

Radical honesty: there has been a lot of ugly crying along the way, and I'm fully prepared for more to come. But it took me a while to get there, and it might take me a while to get back to what I consider on track. 'Still feeling a bit fragile', as my family is apt to use after an illness.

Thanks, as ever, for your patience with me. I'm forever grateful to all of you.

I had plans today. Correspondence to get to, a tax appointment to finally set up (in my defence, self employed deadline's different, but, you know. It's this week. ADHD gonna ADHD.). Capping off with finally finishing the Kickstarter story so I could send the damn update.

Hah, capping.

Anyway, I am in the midst of a slight dental emergency. Apparently June is the month for that. All plans, including taxes, are momentarily on pause while I sulk the sulk of Joey Munroe, and just appreciate that, unlike him, I've still got the front ones.

Sorry the Patreon poll is late -- the getting slowly back to work is mostly going even smoother than anticipated, except I suddenly have the inability to do more than one thing a day. Today it is apparently this? (Tbh today is, in fact, mostly bitching and moaning about prostaglandins, I hate those fucking things).

Things are all still coming, I'm just finally pacing my work to Sustainable versus Max Throttle Then Quiet Dark Room and it is...much slower than I thought it'd be. Some of this may fade as burnout does, but going forward I'm going to be a little more -- well, not slow, necessarily, because I've already been that, but a little less frantic like if I don't meet my word quota I'm going to be brought before a tribunal.

This isn't really a reflection of outside pressure -- you all have been fantastic as I've deal with family emergencies and sort of bumbled my way through diagnoses and medical shit the last few years, in addition to trying to once again attempt to beat burnout by force of will (sadly, no go). Or if it is, it's the sort of general pressure that follows every activity right now. I had to pick 'content creator' as a job for an official form recently. Author was not an option. Not writer, except, they specified, the technical kind. I cannot overstate how much I hate this reframe of everything as content.

But it's mostly internal pressure. It's in fact an internal narrative I've been constantly sparring recently, and I think have actually maybe finally defeated? Not in a 'oh good, my tendency to tie my sense of self-worth to my productivity is gone, phew', but now that I literally can no longer perform at the level I was achieving in my 20s (volume wise, at least), now what? Because continuing to try to do it anyway hasn't served me all too well, and at a certain point I do have to quit doing the same thing and expecting different results.

I am going to do the formal 'what to expect in June' thing this month, but I'm not going to do it quite yet. For one, I'll be finishing up this arc of always in tandem, and I'm not sure what's going to step forward when I finish that part. Holden and James? Gabe and Stephen? Robbie and Georgie again?

What I am going to sort of focus on in June, as leading into the halfway point of the year, is catching up on all those (very!) late stories of the month and week, and I will, again, discuss this in more detail in the formal 'what you can expect in June' post, but until that part gets done, I don't entirely know what to expect in June, so it'd be a bit of a blind leading the blind situation -- I mean, even moreso than it usually is.

surprise update!

Because I think the day sort of demands it: this story of the week is public.

Today is a lot.

I have to post a story of the week (a week late, natch), see my therapist (virtually, thank fuck), see my niece (always a delight, but she's two, so it's a lot), and watch the Eastern Conference Finals.

It's also the tenth anniversary of Always in Tandem, which is -- a little insane. Ten years in both the real world and the text, a pretty huge ten years for me and a monumental ten for them.

Various Excuses Below.