Rarrr. And also, *whine*.

[sholio]

I'm tired of my fannish experiences putting me in a bad headspace. I know that it's my own fault for continuing to engage when I know it does bad things to me, but it still makes me tired and cranky.

And I'm not really sure what to do about it, because I want to be in fandom, but right now it doesn't seem like I can deal with it emotionally, and I don't know why. All I know is that one of my happiest things used to be fanning: ficcing and vidding and meta-ing and cheerfully picking apart the flaws in imperfect shows while still loving them for all the ways they didn't suck. But right now, trying to do any of that seems to end in me sulking around the house, yelling at the dogs for no reason. (They've started avoiding me.)

I don't know if it's the shows or the fandom or me, or all of the above. Maybe I'm just a bad fit for the fandom I'm trying to be a part of. Maybe it's all me and I'm going into another depressive period, but I really don't think so because my other happy things in life still make me cheerful -- I just have more trouble focusing on them when fandom is making me unhappy.

I still love fandom, but every time I dip my toe, it feels like I get sucked into a quicksand pool of despair and gloom. (My own, not other people's, necessarily.) I haven't written anything in days, except bitchy comments in other people's posts. All I have to show for my week so far, creatively at least, is a world-class case of gloom.

And, yeah, I know there are people in the world who have real problems and this is a stupid thing to obsess over, but at least ranting about it in my journal gets it out of my head so I can focus on more useful things, eh?

Comments

[spike21.livejournal.com]

I've been in one kind of genre fandom or another for 29 years and there are times when I feel like you describe. My feeling about fandom is, since it's not my family or my job, if it's not fun, I don't have to do it. That has made a lot of difference to me, altho it has probably made me less popular than I could be. I don't know if that's helpful but that is my 2c on the subject.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

No, I think you're absolutely right! Fandom is something that we do for fun; it's play, not work. And it makes no sense whatsoever to do something for fun that isn't fun.