2009 in Review

General consensus is pretty much than 2009 sucked. Absolutely, positively completely. It treated me fairly AOK though, even if it was strange, even if it left me with a few close calls and as a bystander to a lot of personal tragedy.

And tonal quality of it all aside, a lot happened.

At the beginning of the year, Patty left for a dig in Oman. This is relatively unremarkable -- I live with an archaeologist and going on digs is what she does and this was the third one since we got together. This, however, was also the one where she didn't have an address (so I couldn't send her letters) and the one where she wound up in the hospital with pneumonia. She recovered just fine and was able to finish out her time in Oman (and pick up some extra archaeology work along the way), but there was a chunk of time where I thought I was going to have to fly out there.

Right now, she's visiting her family back in Ohio. She'll be home on January 1 and then we get to go on our awesome trip together. She's great. She's awesome. I adore her. We're silly and sickening and really, really, really, really are so schmoopy we're like the fanfiction you hit the backbutton on in the first three sentences. That's okay, we sort of like our privacy, such as it is.

Anyway, the pneumonia thing was stabilized but still going on when I headed out to Los Angeles for Gallifrey One so I could spend four days getting trashed (I don't drink much or often, so this is rather easy to do) with redstapler, marchek, and _tonylee_ while dressed like Captain Jack Harkness. This was lovely. This was easy. People were good to me, so much so I often blushed. I should never be the person at any table someone is too shy to talk to, especially considering some of the people we sat at tables with.

The Whoniverse is a funny thing. It's a land of rather low boundaries, and I'm, even more than other people, often an observer to the resulting shenanigans. As much as I may often be catty about this, the fact is I'm fascinated and moved and sort of honored by this weird little world where people on both sides of the pro wall do so much of their fumbling with identity, relationships, celebrity, status and a host of other things in public.

Anyway, by the time it was time to put on normal clothes for the dead dog party, I found myself feeling miserable and fragile in one of my hottest but utterly casual female outfits. The moment wasn't about cosplay, but about being unarmored, about being a girl, about being delicate, about being judged on a set of standards I feel less comfortable with even if I do happen to have a very societally approved female body. The whole it scared me a little bit, and it's not a feeling I ever want to have again, quite frankly. I doubt I'll be so lucky.

Torchwood and suits. On some level, that really is what 2009 came down to for me. Even at WriterCon where there was Fail and habitrails and I got to talk about violence. None of these things are related.

kalichan and I finished I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling, and I'll confess I still reread parts of it all the time. That story matters to me in a way I can't explain to you. Assuming I don't get too scorched on my big cruise vacation with Patty, I'm hoping to get my tattoo of "be grand" before Gally 2010. That'll surely be wank fodder (another amazing feature of 2009 we'll address later) in some circles, but I've lived my whole life that way (taking up space through sheer force of will, not the wank), and while sometimes I get smacked down for it (both deserved and not); the reality is that it works for me. It helps me do stuff; it helps me make an impact on others; it keeps me happy.

With a lack of anywhere better to mention it, I didn't get back to flying lessons this year, and that is sad. But I did get to go up in a 1929 biplane, and that soothed a lot of hurt. If I had a car and/or lived near the Old Rhinebeck Aeodome, I'd be there every weekend volunteering.

Anyway, on to Torchwood and fandom at large: God. Well. Can I just say I'm going to Bristol and leave it at that? I gotta say, identifying with the guy who's in love with the character that dies is about a hundred times worse than identifying with the guy that dies. That's what the transition from Harry Potter fandom to Torchwood fandom has taught me. And as much as I hate what CoE did to fandom (and still don't understand why it had to be a virus that killed Ianto -- poison gas would have made so much more sense!), I'm glad I was there when it happened. It was a moment, and it was neat to be a part of it; I really, really do wish we had all been a little more gentle with each other though. Well, I wish a lot of things. In case it's unclear though, I want to say I largely liked CoE; it was brilliant TV as it was happening and I actually believe Ianto got a good death.

Moving long. Suits! Duchess Clothier has been awesome to me. I have two beautiful suits and some shirts in my closet from them now. My tux, at the time of this drafting, is expected to arrive next week. I still struggle sometimes with how I look in the suits. I am not tall and lean as a man; I can't be and hide my hips. And it is strange to have the privilege of authority that the suits bring without the privilege of the more ideal measurements I have in female form. I would wear the suits much more often than I do, yet sometimes I worry they will be perceived as costume (oh, brick shirt, you make me blush) or that I am putting myself at risk by making other people uncomfortable with my gender presentation. Also, it's a process. A long process, and not one I can deal with every day.

I would like to learn how to dress casually in masculine clothes for next year; just as I would also like to learn how to reclaim authority when people compliment me in feminine presentation in ways that I find awkward (i.e., I gave a speech you liked, and now you're telling me it's because I'm pretty). I love how I look naked and I don't necessarily associate that with male or female, and it's everything else after that that's some level of fun, weird, difficult and stressful for me; I suspect this would be the same if I had a male body. None of this isn't anything new; I just talk about it these days. It's interesting and fundamental, but it's also not very important.

Wank. Well, it is the Internet. This year we learned that I eat babies and that peerage is powerful. Probably a bunch of other things too, but then I decided that "if you want to be a celebrity, you better behave like one" means I'm not allowed to read who_anon anymore. *Waves to the mousies*

Travel. As crazy as 2009 was (LA, Minneapolis, Boston, Atlanta, Switzerland as just some of the highlights), 2010 promises to be even crazier (LA, Atlanta, DC, London/Cardiff/Ireland, Bristol, the Carribbean, Florida, a few weekend getaways here and there, and possibly a return to Swtizerland). I feel pretty blessed by all this stuff, even if most trips Patty and I take are working vacations on some level or another. 2010 cons seem likely to be: Gallifrey One, Lunacon, Infinitus and DragonCon.

The work:
- I started my novel ConSweet and I love it with every fiber of my being. It's going to be great and it's going to get published and sell. 2010 is for finishing that. It's currently about 16,000 words; I'm guessing the finished product will come in around 70 - 80K and I've already figured out the plots for two more books in the series. I'm not even kidding.
- I got "A Tangible Reality of Absence" accepted to that damn conference in Bristol.
- A bunch of essays I wrote for LJ Idol are in Idol Musings.
- An ancient LJ post of mine will be in a Modern Library anthology that's coming out in 2010 or 2011.
- Dogboy & Justine got accepted to a short play festival here and will be back on stage in NYC in January.
- I am still trying to finish a damn werewolf story for someone.
- I got my first residuals check for feature film work I've done.
- I gave presentations on writing fight scenes, on porn and plot, on JKR's treatment of Snape's gender identity and a whole bunch of other stuff. Someone actually asked me where I teach.
- a lot of super uninteresting non-fiction stuff for the web, but hey, a check is a check.
- I earned out my advance on the HP trivia book.
- I did a tiny bit of background work and had some important auditions that went nowhere. On the other hand, I finally got my damn IMDB page up and running.
- I modeled a little bit and remembered that I hated it. Or hate other models. Or something. I wish, I suppose, I could get paid for being a man even remotely as often as I get paid for being a girl.

Meanwhile, I also had an essay I should have been able to nail rejected from an anthology and blew scads of deadlines.

And while it's not "The Work," it's work that's important to me: Other than IHNIIHBT I wrote a bunch of other fanfic, a couple of which I really care about. Those are Because Men Once Went West and Red and Fourth.

As the year's been drawing to a close, I'm been sort of torturing myself about my weird life with a foot in both fandom and pro camps. In a lot of ways, it's my value proposition (can you tell I used to work in dot.coms?). But it's also uncomfortable for me and everyone else. My ambition and my fannishess are, if not at odds, at least supposed to be at odds. I do not like it, and I do not wish to choose. And if I must choose, the truth is I fear I will choose wrong, blinded as I am both by my ambition and the nature of solace for my peculiar heart. This is compounded by something I fear is a function of my female socialization -- I do not ask when I should, I do not pitch... I think "oh I don't want to be that 'read my script' asshole" and while that's true, that's also me protecting myself. I don't know what to do, guys, and I don't have the heart to ask the one person I can think of to give me advice because it'll change everything and because I protect myself far more than you think.

Leadership. Somehow, that brings us to the other theme of 2009, which has been a really hard one for me. Leadership fail. Mine. Other people's. It's been tangled up with shit I love (fencing, dance, fandom); it's been tangled up with my self-perception and with gender. It's been tangled up with anger, with my belief in the sanctity of teaching and my utter impatience for authority figures. It's been tangled up with my ability to say "hey, kids, let's put on a show" and get everyone to play, only to have everyone get upset later when my vision is too austere and personal and serious. I want us to have fun doing what we do, but I want to believe that what we do is very serious business. It doesn't make me easy, or lovable. And it does't make me a good leader. And my propensity to try to step into vacuums and fix that doesn't make it better. It tends to make it worse. 2009 was the year I got authority. 2009 was also the year I let people down. Where it wasn't enough. Where I didn't know what the fuck I was doing and where I felt betrayed because no one's best was good enough.

Now look at that... we're back at Torchwood. I've always been great at this circle crap.

;)

sundries

21-year-old raises money for her own funeral.

The widow penalty has been eliminated. Basically, those applying for US residency that have their spouses die before the marriage has lasted for two years can still apply now.

The remaining 24 residents of a Japanese town have decided to let the town die with them.

Mexico City legalizes gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples.

Anti-trans crap is going on in Minnesota and it's the governor's fault. He's going to run for president in 2012. via soundingsea

Rwanda refutes claims it is planning to criminalize homosexuality.

Price Edward's Island updates their legal language to conform with the 2006 legalization of sam-sex marriage in Canada. via brigidsblest

The end of the Boys Choir of Harlem.

Because some of you care: You can now order Girl Number 9 on DVD.

IMPORTANT YULETIDE PINCH HIT NOTICE.

I can't really believe I'm reporting on this, but Duane Reade's shitty random store brand now sells fudge that's pretty damn good and gluten-free (it does contain glucose the source of which I don't know and that may be at risk of gluten-contamination if that source is wheat-related).

cruentum, I've written a page and a half of your story request so far.

We had the money for none of it but this is the New York in which I grew up. Check out the snuff box on slide 6. I will never stop being grateful for living in the hidden world.

If you happen to care: THERE IS DESCENSUS IN THE COMMENTS.