I was kind of dreading looking back on this year, because I know that I have not been mentally well. I have tried to limit my description of my obsessive thoughts in order to protect the innocent, but if you play Admiration Point, you can get a feel for what it has been like. As I look back, I notice that I wasn't always miserable. I was tired a lot (probably because I write in my journal right before bed), and I had obsessive thoughts, but I also made new friends and tried writing in new genres. I did some really fun research and found out some interesting things.
I continued to teach Sunday School for half of the year, and I read a lot of commentaries to try to understand what was going on in the Old Testament (spoiler alert: it is really complicated). "I'm down in the weeds, and am having trouble seeing the field." I've had a dedicated personal project day (with childcare and no work) once a week for most of the year. I have not been bored during this time. It felt like it wasn't enough! Halfway through the year we started trying to conceive another child, an attempt that makes awaiting my period every month a bit agonizing.
A big thank you goes out to my nannies and last-minute babysitters who make my work possible.
January - I resolved to ignore my obsessive feelings. I thought maybe they stemmed from feeling unfulfilled at work, despite enjoying my day-to-day work. I toyed with several ideas to remedy this problem, from the ridiculous to the doable. "My anxiety is WAY worse than normal and I'm not really sure what to do about it." I started taking omperazole again, often waking early in the morning with stomach pain. I washed a LOT of dishes by hand while our dishwasher was broken; our stovetop was also broken for a while. A lot of our family members got covid and we were constantly taking tests. "I'm starting to seem slight unmoored, but that isn't going to change, so maybe I can just lean into that for my own benefit." I had several successful meetings of small group Sunday school: "maybe I should start calling it snacking on the word of God."
February - I started writing Admiration Point. "Have I just gone so far off the deep end that I don't even try to stop myself anymore?" I started taking Lion's Mane supplements (stop rolling your eyes, there are clincal studies) and they completely helped my focus. "I know I am a weirdo and I simply must make the best of it." More dishes. Petra threw up a lot and everyone was sick.
March - I started playing getting back into playing guitar. I had my (second) sinus surgery. I watched a lot of TikTok during my recovery. "I'm ready to be healthy and useful again. But I think I need to wait another two days :(." I went to church without wearing a mask and started socializing more in larger groups. I watched Turning Red several times: "I'm not sure why, but I'm fascinated by the idea that my emotions could be a helpful, not a hurtful thing." I had "a wonderful day" where I worked on my game, started reading a book on Vardis Fisher, practiced guitar, played a visual novel, and made okonomiyaki with Adam. I felt jealous that Laura Bridgewater, BYU VP of academic affairs, "felt so sure that God didn't require her to stay home with her children. She literally had a GA tell her that" (I still have Mom guilt over not being a SAHM sometimes).
April - "must I bear the burning shame of being thoroughly aware of my MANY weaknesses?" "Should I feel guilty? Of the sin of fangirling too hard?" I started a monthly casual meeting at work that I called a charcuterie salon, because I figured being as bougie as possible could make people curious and want to come? It has actually been pretty successful. "I feel a flowering of creativity in my life." "I feel like my brain wants to write a LOT and it is starting to spill out in weird ways." I wrote and recorded a library parody version of the Echo Canyon song. I read and loved Heike's Void. "It was in the seventies on my bike ride home today. I was listening to some French-Canadian folk music and it was a shining moment of bliss." I continued working on Admiration Point and doing some Mormon Esperanto Society research on the side. I saw a branching-story outdoor play in Salt Lake City.
"my solution was, instead of a battle of our egos that I would lose [...] was to devote myself entirely to his aims."
May - I started writing and publishing monthly library zines at work--my attempt to define work culture in my own image. It has been a very fun outlet. I compare it to Brandon Sanderson's librarians of Alcatraz series. Yes, it's a little juvenile, but in good fun and a productive mental break from my more serious writing. I saw my therapist who encouraged me to befriend the object of my obsessive thoughts (why??). I published an essay on how writing Wikipedia pages on church history has affected my faith on the ARCH-HIVE blog. After finding out that the Mormon author Bela Petsco died, I attended his funeral and created Wikipedia pages for him and his most famous book. I felt that I was being haunted by him. I got to see the Mountain Goats in concert with friends! "I don't know what it is about men singing backup but it's like the feeling I get when I see a man holding a baby. Like, they're actually being supportive of someone else whole-heartedly." I contemplated studying for an MLS (I decided I didn't feel excited enough about it to dedicate two years of my life to that). I continued working on the Mormon Esperanto Society article ("How am I still finding stuff?")
June - I attended a pre-conference publication workshop for the Mormon History Association conference and the conference itself. I worked really hard to network! I got Claudia Bushman to sign my copy of Mormon Sisters. I met Michael Austin (Mike) in-person, and he promised to help me with my Mormon Esperanto Society article. We began our friendship through online chess games which chess.com described as "wild" (i.e., often it was not clear who the winner would be until the very end). I met a bunch of other people too, including my internet friend Makoto. I invited most of them to join the AML Discord, which has been enjoying a little growth from our efforts. AC approved the proposal for my job to change from 1/2-time to 3/4-time (this just means I work 4 days/week instead of 3). I kept working on Admiration Point, but I sometimes felt like I wanted to delete the whole thing "in a fit of shame." Skillick's Bride was a finalist for AML's short fiction award! I got covid and my immediate family had to miss the vacation we planned with my parents, siblings, and niblings.
July - I was still recovering from covid but was well enough that we had Ada's baptism as scheduled. Mike told me that the Vardis Fisher Wikipedia page I wrote a few years ago was well-written. "It has been a pleasure for another scholar to take an interest in my work." "I feel at peace with my career and artistic achievements currently. Which probably means that something terribls is going to happen soon?" I was released from my church calling as Sunday School teacher and got called as the ward bulletin editor. On distributing the third library zine issue - "this is actually a good way for me to get more face time with library people." I flew to Ireland for the Wikipedia + Libraries conference, where I met a bunch of cool people and presented. "There was an amazing 8% cream yogurt at breakfast and I can't think of anything else." I also saw the Book of Kells and did other touristy stuff in Dublin, don't worry.
August - The pantry got flooded and we had to take everything out of it so the restoration people could take out the flooring and dry everything out. I hosted a baby shower for my sister-in-law. My parents watched my children while Adam and I went to Montreal for the International Esperanto Congress. I had the surreal experience of dancing to the YMCA song with people from around the world. I met a bunch of people I had only met online. It was so cool to meet other Esperantists in-person and discuss things with them. I bought so many Esperanto books! "My bahn mi had pate on it!" I participated in my friend's Adrift game jam, which was fun, but also, Adrift is so different from Twine. Mike was incredibly supportive of my fiction and non-fiction writing. Petra started going to a special-needs preschool. It's weird that I have no idea what she does there. I spent a weekend with college friends in Ohio, which was very fun, because my college friends are extremely funny.
September - I had a very painful time when my work friend, who also was the object of earlier-mentioned obsessive thoughts on my part, insisted on better boundaries and I mistook this as a request for no contact. "I found some hypnotherapy scripts for dealing with grief, but none for altering memory." My maternal grandpa died. I helped Mike to write a Wikipedia page for the Corianton film, and he continued to give me feedback on my writing. I used OpenRefine to upload a small test batch of data to WikiData! I finished up Admiration Point and started working more seriously on my Mormon Esperanto Society research. We finally got floor in our pantry.
October - Drove to my sister's in Albuquerque for a week, to make up for not seeing them when I had covid. Admiration Point received several in-depth reviews from being in the Interactive Fiction competition, which I attended to with great interest. I got a new phone and gave Ada my old one to replace her iPad that broke. I told Mike about the Relief Society General Board minutes being online and he OCR'd them all to make them text-searchable! Then I was like "Mike I wish you had been my thesis advisor!" and he was like "I bet that could be arranged." For my birthday, I looked at exhibits and Esperanto books in the library, ate sushi, hung out with my friends, and went to a music festival where I saw two of my favorite local bands, Little Moon and Goldmyth. "I can be sane again."
November - Mike floated the idea of someone doing a selected works of Alice Louise Reynolds collection for BCC Press, and my two coworkers who are doing an exhibit on her were very excited about this idea, and decided I should be a co-editor with them. I was telling another coworker how many graduate credits I had and she was like "that's enough for TWO master's degrees, you should go back and make them let you finish." I researched a lot of policies and emailed several people, but in order to even apply for a policy exemption, I need to be a current graduate student. So in a fit of madness I decided to apply for the English master's program at BYU (I completed coursework in 2011). I am still working on my writing sample for this. I got three professors to agree to be on my thesis committee, should I be accepted, and I have a preliminary topic: speculative theology in Mormon fiction from the home literature era (early 20th-century). There was a bunch of stupid drama where the graduate office told me that none of my hare-brained schemes would work and that they couldn't help me. I have not given up on the idea of getting some credit for my decade-old graduate classes. I went to the Church History Library and looked at old correlation committee meeting minutes, which weren't quite as exciting as I'd hoped, but still had some interesting tidbits. Admiration Point won 20th place in the Interactive Fiction Competition!
December - networked with more Mormon letters people at the Wayfare release party and the ARCH-HIVE scrupulosity show. I did some work on the Esperanto-USA search committee. Someone on Wikipedia started bullying me, and it reminded me of two years ago when I got taken to COIN, and I got very anxious about it. There were days I dreaded going to work because I didn't want to read more accusations against me. I'm still anxious about it. Luckily, my fellow editors have been supportive of me, but the feeling that someone is looking over my edits and waiting for me to make a wrong move is poop. Speaking of poop, there was more of it than normal coming from Petra, but thankfully, our prayers and a probiotic seemed to have fixed the problem. I ordered and received 19 volumes of the plena verkaro de Zamenhof (complete works of Zamenhof) from UEA. I just have a hunch that they could be useful in my future research on Esperanto culture. Mike responded to the reviewer's comments on our RS literary lessons article, and I did a little more research in the CHL (church history library). I hosted my parents for Christmas and we spent time eating, walking, and watching TV together.
I have a bunch of projects lined up for next year, including, hopefully, finishing my scholarly article on the Mormon Esperanto Society. If I am accepted to graduate school, that will take up my personal projects time, but if not, maybe I will be able to continue the far-future Wikipedia-like that I had started writing last January. I would also like to figure out how to control my own thoughts better, or not freak out about them, but I am also trying to accept that this might be a part of my personality, and I should instead find good outlets for my obsesssions. If you read this far, you can consider yourself one of my hardcore friends/fans. I hope you have a lovely new year.
