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still here
It’s been a while since I updated this journal – and it seems like all I ever blog about these days is family stuff, so I’ll just give a brief update on that and then move onto other subjects.
The main family news is that my Big Sis and her Hub brought their children home to live two weeks ago today, and they are now in the process of bonding as a family. It hasn’t been without its ups and downs, as you’d expect. The children have had disrupted little lives, Miss E in particular, so understanding that this is forever will take a lot of time and patience, while forming a true familial bond is something that can’t be rushed but rather will grow gradually over time. They’ve all had colds. Little G came out in spots and is now on antibiotic for a bacterial infection. Miss E is quite jealous of Sis’s time and attention and has started talking about past trauma beyond what was noted in her file – and has proved to be obsessively tidy in a way that is also indicative of past trauma. The smaller of the two dogs has become very protective and keeps stressing herself out trying to watch over both children at the same time, which is aggravating her epilepsy. But on the whole they are doing okay, still cocooned within the bonding bubble that is required of the first few weeks together as a family.
As for me, I think I’m only now beginning to fully understand just how stressed and depressed I’ve been all this year – well, for longer than that, really – with everything that’s been going on. I won’t go into any of the more personal ins and outs, but one effect of this is that I haven’t been able to do a lot of the things I usually do to relax, like write or attempt any other creative endeavour. No matter how much I want to work on a project, my brain just won’t do it – keeps shorting out from worrying about too many things, it’s a struggle to focus on anything, never mind attempt to be creative.
So I’m trying to be really gentle with myself and not place any demands on myself at all. I’m letting all my creative projects just sit and percolate – they’ll still be there waiting, when I feel better.
Instead, I’m doing a lot of comfort-TV-watching. If the brain doesn’t want to do anything, take it off the hook for a while! Gentleman Jack and Good Omens have been two new shows that I really enjoyed this year, although I have mostly retreated into the comfort of re-watches.
But I think I must be beginning to feel at least a little bit better, because I’m getting quite excited about the new Star Trek: Picard show, which is due to air for international viewers on 24 January on Amazon Prime – and it feels like an age since I felt this sort of enthusiasm for anything, so this has come as quite a relief.
I wasn’t expecting it – I certainly didn’t feel like this when Discovery came out. I didn’t even attempt to watch that until two seasons had already aired, although I’ve seen it now and enjoyed it, for the most part, while agreeing with those critics who’ve suggested that making it a prequel didn’t do it any favours. Picard, though – TNG was the Star Trek of my youth. I grew up watching it. As a teen, I collected tie-in novels with my pocket money (still have one or two favourites I couldn’t quite bear to part with when I got rid of the rest to free up shelf space). I followed TNG, DS9 and Voyager from start to finish, when they were on TV, although I never took to Enterprise.
I hadn’t given the franchise much thought for years, though, once it went off the air. Doctor Who was my thing – I started collecting DVDs of the Classic series almost as soon as they started to be released, back when it was the only Doctor Who that existed, no ‘classic’ about it, because the reboot hadn’t happened yet. With Star Trek, I was content to let it be a thing I’d enjoyed at the time but then moved on from when it was over. I looked at the DVDs from time to time over the years but didn’t want them quite enough to justify the investment. I caught random episodes now and then in re-runs on cable, but that was it.
Then I treated myself to a Netflix subscription last Christmas as a pick-me-up. And Netflix has all seasons of Star Trek ever – including Discovery, which was when I finally got around to watching that. After a while, I started dipping in and out of both TNG and Voyager to refresh my memory of those – and I picked those two as the least serialised, so that it wouldn’t matter if I was only watching the odd episode now and then, and it wouldn’t matter how long it took to get through all the seasons or even if I never made it very far at all, there was no pressure, it was just for fun. Comfort viewing of the kind I’ve been craving all year, safe and cosy and nostalgic.
But then this new Picard series started to be talked about, and casting details started to come out, and snippets of information about characters and plot. And I got interested, and then more interested, and started to wonder if it would be possible to get through all seven seasons of TNG before it airs, rather than going into it relying on 20-30-year-old memories – and actually found that target motivating rather than intimidating, which I am taking as a good sign.
Comic-Con panels and trailers back in the summer and again this week have provided more snippets of information about what to expect, including returning cast members from TNG (and Voyager) and first sight of the new crew, who are very much not TNG 2.0 – this is, it is clear, going to be a very different kind of show, with very notable undertones of Firefly, ragtag team of misfits on a totally unauthorised mission, which has got my interest well and truly piqued. And with all that, my TNG re-watch kind of stepped up still another gear almost without my noticing, while Voyager pretty much fell by the wayside – even though a character from Voyager is going to be in the new show, with important backstory that would probably be useful to bone up on. Only so many spare hours in a week, after all.
I’m halfway through season four now, so I might make it! Seasons one and two were a bit of a slog, but seasons three and four are excellent, I'd forgotten how much! And I'm having lots of fannish thoughts, and following all new information that becomes available, trying to piece together as much as I can from what has been released, and it really does feel like forever since I felt this enthused and interested in anything new, so I'm really hoping this is the start of being able to pull out of the doldrums at last. I've found in the past that when I can't be creative, writing analytically about something that interests me is a good way of keeping the brain ticking over in the meantime, but haven't even managed that this year - so beginning to at least think analytically, piecing together available information for a new show to try to figure out what to expect from it, that's got to be a good start, no? And maybe, in time, the rest will come...
The main family news is that my Big Sis and her Hub brought their children home to live two weeks ago today, and they are now in the process of bonding as a family. It hasn’t been without its ups and downs, as you’d expect. The children have had disrupted little lives, Miss E in particular, so understanding that this is forever will take a lot of time and patience, while forming a true familial bond is something that can’t be rushed but rather will grow gradually over time. They’ve all had colds. Little G came out in spots and is now on antibiotic for a bacterial infection. Miss E is quite jealous of Sis’s time and attention and has started talking about past trauma beyond what was noted in her file – and has proved to be obsessively tidy in a way that is also indicative of past trauma. The smaller of the two dogs has become very protective and keeps stressing herself out trying to watch over both children at the same time, which is aggravating her epilepsy. But on the whole they are doing okay, still cocooned within the bonding bubble that is required of the first few weeks together as a family.
As for me, I think I’m only now beginning to fully understand just how stressed and depressed I’ve been all this year – well, for longer than that, really – with everything that’s been going on. I won’t go into any of the more personal ins and outs, but one effect of this is that I haven’t been able to do a lot of the things I usually do to relax, like write or attempt any other creative endeavour. No matter how much I want to work on a project, my brain just won’t do it – keeps shorting out from worrying about too many things, it’s a struggle to focus on anything, never mind attempt to be creative.
So I’m trying to be really gentle with myself and not place any demands on myself at all. I’m letting all my creative projects just sit and percolate – they’ll still be there waiting, when I feel better.
Instead, I’m doing a lot of comfort-TV-watching. If the brain doesn’t want to do anything, take it off the hook for a while! Gentleman Jack and Good Omens have been two new shows that I really enjoyed this year, although I have mostly retreated into the comfort of re-watches.
But I think I must be beginning to feel at least a little bit better, because I’m getting quite excited about the new Star Trek: Picard show, which is due to air for international viewers on 24 January on Amazon Prime – and it feels like an age since I felt this sort of enthusiasm for anything, so this has come as quite a relief.
I wasn’t expecting it – I certainly didn’t feel like this when Discovery came out. I didn’t even attempt to watch that until two seasons had already aired, although I’ve seen it now and enjoyed it, for the most part, while agreeing with those critics who’ve suggested that making it a prequel didn’t do it any favours. Picard, though – TNG was the Star Trek of my youth. I grew up watching it. As a teen, I collected tie-in novels with my pocket money (still have one or two favourites I couldn’t quite bear to part with when I got rid of the rest to free up shelf space). I followed TNG, DS9 and Voyager from start to finish, when they were on TV, although I never took to Enterprise.
I hadn’t given the franchise much thought for years, though, once it went off the air. Doctor Who was my thing – I started collecting DVDs of the Classic series almost as soon as they started to be released, back when it was the only Doctor Who that existed, no ‘classic’ about it, because the reboot hadn’t happened yet. With Star Trek, I was content to let it be a thing I’d enjoyed at the time but then moved on from when it was over. I looked at the DVDs from time to time over the years but didn’t want them quite enough to justify the investment. I caught random episodes now and then in re-runs on cable, but that was it.
Then I treated myself to a Netflix subscription last Christmas as a pick-me-up. And Netflix has all seasons of Star Trek ever – including Discovery, which was when I finally got around to watching that. After a while, I started dipping in and out of both TNG and Voyager to refresh my memory of those – and I picked those two as the least serialised, so that it wouldn’t matter if I was only watching the odd episode now and then, and it wouldn’t matter how long it took to get through all the seasons or even if I never made it very far at all, there was no pressure, it was just for fun. Comfort viewing of the kind I’ve been craving all year, safe and cosy and nostalgic.
But then this new Picard series started to be talked about, and casting details started to come out, and snippets of information about characters and plot. And I got interested, and then more interested, and started to wonder if it would be possible to get through all seven seasons of TNG before it airs, rather than going into it relying on 20-30-year-old memories – and actually found that target motivating rather than intimidating, which I am taking as a good sign.
Comic-Con panels and trailers back in the summer and again this week have provided more snippets of information about what to expect, including returning cast members from TNG (and Voyager) and first sight of the new crew, who are very much not TNG 2.0 – this is, it is clear, going to be a very different kind of show, with very notable undertones of Firefly, ragtag team of misfits on a totally unauthorised mission, which has got my interest well and truly piqued. And with all that, my TNG re-watch kind of stepped up still another gear almost without my noticing, while Voyager pretty much fell by the wayside – even though a character from Voyager is going to be in the new show, with important backstory that would probably be useful to bone up on. Only so many spare hours in a week, after all.
I’m halfway through season four now, so I might make it! Seasons one and two were a bit of a slog, but seasons three and four are excellent, I'd forgotten how much! And I'm having lots of fannish thoughts, and following all new information that becomes available, trying to piece together as much as I can from what has been released, and it really does feel like forever since I felt this enthused and interested in anything new, so I'm really hoping this is the start of being able to pull out of the doldrums at last. I've found in the past that when I can't be creative, writing analytically about something that interests me is a good way of keeping the brain ticking over in the meantime, but haven't even managed that this year - so beginning to at least think analytically, piecing together available information for a new show to try to figure out what to expect from it, that's got to be a good start, no? And maybe, in time, the rest will come...
no subject
Year is nearing the end and New Year's Resolutions will probably be for a happier, non-stressful 2020.
For now, we keep on breathing ;)
no subject
I hope things continue to progress as smoothly as possible with the childrens' transition into your family. There must be so much to process for all of you.
no subject
And I'm sorry you've been having troubles with depression. It's never easy, I know. I hope things pick up soon.