The year in burlesque ('The year in review' just didn't reflect the strangeness of it all)
Before I talk about this last year, let me remind you of the story to this day, twelve months ago.
I want to do two lists - one is the blogposts that I like (zombie view of history, Dr Who and cavespeak, this sort of thing) and the other is a list of how often I was ill and how much I complained about it. The daftness of the second list convinced me not to do either. It's a pity, though, there are some good whinges on the first and some interesting thoughts on the second. Or do I mean that the other way round? Anyway, if you want the health summary, the best overview is this.
Everything else is nicely sorted into months, because I have calendars everywhere right now. My favourite for 2011 is one for 1305, which needs more saints' days in it, also ordinary birthdays. If 2011 turns out to be as much of a strange ride as 2010, I shall use the 1305 calendar to govern my daily activities.
January
January was far too interesting. I saw a great deal of my family under very sad circumstances, when I went to Melbourne for the consecration of my stepfather's grave. The consecration reminded me that medical miracles don't always work and that it takes a long time to learn to live with the death of someone close.
On the way down to Melbourne, I saw my publisher who looked rather worried about me.
"I'm fine," I said. "Look, I'm getting better." My legs were normal size again, you see, so I must have been better. My ankles were puffy and I was out of breath, but all sorts of people told me I was fine, so I must have been. Especially if I said so, many times. Actually, the 'all sorts of people' were mostly my family, and in their midst (without them noticing anything) something had gone rather wrong. It hurt to carry an umbrella for my mother at my stepfather's grave. I had to rest far too frequently. I had a lot of asthma. I couldn't see properly out of one eye.
It was better the next day, so I caught my bus back home with equanimity and did a bunch of work on the way and made jokes about it. The eye didn't improve, though, so finally I ignored the "Gillian, stop complaining about your health" and checked my vision against an online test. I didn't like what I saw (it was funky, but not normal), so I rang my optometrist. He didn't like what he heard, so he fitted me in urgently.
I was raced to hospital and we found out that my family had been wrong, from beginning to end. Also, that I was over the worst of it, just. And I was alive.
The rest of the year has been filled with slowly improving things. My eyesight is 90% better (but I still have bad days) and everything else is about being patient and taking care and spending much money on things medical. I have specialists to check up on me and friends also check and will tell me to go to the doctor if they need to. I'm doing more than I've done in years, and my vision is stable.
My month in short? January ended badly, but I got through it.
February
The social highlight of February was my Purim party. Sometimes a group of friends getting drunk together and performing a spiel works magic. I suspect that none of us present will forget that party.
I was given more manuscript assessments by the Writers' Centre. They're a lot of fun. I get manuscripts from early career writers, mostly before they know what kind of book they want to write, but have started writing anyway. I work with them to sort out their strengths and weaknesses and get them on a path that suits their abilities and interests. Some of the intending-writers I've met through this have been totally fascinating.
Working with new writers (through my teaching, through the assessments) has helped me realise that I'm greedy for skills. It's not enough to be able to write a novel. It's not even enough to be able to edit. Not for me, anyhow. I'm a sad, sad person and am not at all happy until I understand things from many directions. This is one major reason why I took the advice of friends (Lucy Sussex and Ian Nichols gave it most strongly, but they were not alone) and am moving towards academia again. Which leads me to…
March
I became a student again. I didn't actually know I was a student until April, however, so the first five weeks of my doctorate were spent in happy oblivion. 'Happy' is not the right word, since that time was mostly spent being diagnosed by various medical practitioners and having my zombie tooth taken care of.
April
I didn't go down to Melbourne for Passover. I was still too ill. Also, I was too busy sulking about my family (note to any family reading this - if you want to show you care, then phonecalls, emails, cards are all useful - thinking thoughts in my general direction just don't do the trick). I realised that my close friends are my family, so I spent Passover with them, and it was very special.
There were other good things in April. My personal highlights were finding out I was enrolled in the doctorate and getting the column with BiblioBuffet. The BiblioBuffet column is my dream writing - I can explore all sorts of things from all sorts of directions and I have a very clever and sensitive editor.
April is when I started to learn again. My life is ashes without learning (some people need sunshine and rainbows; some people need lollipops; some people need bungee jumping - I need learning) so this is when the ashes started to show sparks again. I totally drove my friends crazy with comments about my incapacity, but they dealt, as they always do.
May
A group of friends and I went out for my birthday dinner on 1 May. This is one of those things that sounds not-too-big, but retrospectively, turns out to be the moment life starts to improve. In fact, I went out for my birthday (to Lanyon, as a present from some of those very wonderful friends) at the other end of May, too. I turned 49 in April, but May was my birthday month.
Doing the PhD was encouraging. The fact that the university wanted me and that my supervisor thought I was capable went a long way to reminding me that bad career luck is not the same thing as incompetence.
May was my turning point. Very awesome month. I was still sick as a dog, but I was starting to live again. And my eyesight improved a bit, which meant I could read more. I piled books higher and higher. I've read at least 300 books since May, which is an unchallengeably good thing. I was much happier. All those friends. Feeling as if I belong somewhere.
June
I had a work experience student in June. It was basically like full-time teaching, except that Tasha helped me with my work while I taught her. She was excellent at both the learning and the helping.
July
My diary for July is full of meetings with friends and with medical appointments. Most of it was spent catching up with those missed weeks of the doctorate. I could have claimed those missed weeks and got extensions, but that seemed an entire waste of everyone's time, so I balanced health and study and I caught up with everything. It was something I had to prove to myself, I think, that I could still do astonishing amounts of work in short periods of time, given enough space. My supervisor understood this (did I say what a very good supervisor I have?).
August
August was cool. I'm not sure I slept much, and I had to be exceptionally careful not to do too much, but it was cool. Coolness included Ditmar nominations and running workshops for National Science Week and hanging out with Kaaron Warren and family on election day.
Election day, with daleks in the library and a sausage sizzle hiding behind the polls, gave me a moment when I knew what shape I wanted my ideal life to be. It was when I gave myself permission to research and to write and to think and to teach and to be a geek and a foodie and to have my own special sense of humour and to do all this even with major crises. I just needed to think it through. And do the doctorate. I'm still working on it - this could take a while, but that moment gave me all sorts of new kinds of courage.
September
AussieCon. And AussieCon. And AussieCon. Oh, and Ditmars.
I had all sorts of expectations of AussieCon. My carefully laid plans involved much time spent in the bar chatting - I had a budget for drinks, even. It also involved finding an agent. I had carefully circled lots of bits of the academic program, because I wanted to attend a great deal of that. There wasn't time. I got two good sessions in the bar, chatting with friends. (Jenny Fallon tried to get me drunk on Cointreau.) I need to go to another WorldCon one day, just to find out what panels are like from the other side and what it really *is* like to go to room parties and hang around in the bar. And to meet other people who study spec fic as well as write it. And maybe one day to find an agent.
What did I do at AussieCon? Baggage. Lots of Baggage. And panels. And my kaffeklatsche table was full and all the people there were just lovely and laughed at my jokes even though I had not a single idea of how to run a kaffeeklatsche and couldn't think of why anyone would be there (I told them my Tim Fischer story, in the hopes that it would make amends for me being just me). And I really did meet the most amazing people and I made new friends and I had a blast. It just wasn't the blast I was expecting. I met a bunch of my personal heroes (Ellen Kushner, John Clute) and hung out with friends in the interstices of impossibly-busy.
In fact, my WorldCon was full of friends, old and new. I wince when I see pictures of myself (still sick as a dog, and it showed) but I had a fabulous roller-coaster ride.
I have to mention the Ditmar again. Still chuffed about that. I'm not the sort of person who gets awards. And I'm even more chuffed about the shortlisting for Life Through Cellophane - and I'm still getting terrific feedback about it from readers.
I did other stuff in September. I taught the guides at the Jewish Museum and I did enough of my novel so that my supervisor could check it. And he found it good, too, which means I was clear to write.
October
Mostly about writing. I went to Sydney, however, and I taught worldbuilding at the Writers' Centre and I had good quality time with people I love. I went to Luna Park with my cousin and she took the teacup photo.
November
I worked furiously between the Sydney visit and the next Sydney visit. This meant that the November Sydney visit was clear of major deadlines. I got to spend quality time harassing my supervisor, and my friends, and see some Eureka and have a totally cool dinner party with totally cool people. And then I came home to a mild virus.
December
I came within a stone's throw of being caught up with things. I discovered that 2011 is going to include a trip overseas. I filled my freezer for the summer. I finished the first draft of the Conflux cookbook. I taught. I wrote novel. I filled in many forms. Surely a year ought to end more robustly than that?
I want to do two lists - one is the blogposts that I like (zombie view of history, Dr Who and cavespeak, this sort of thing) and the other is a list of how often I was ill and how much I complained about it. The daftness of the second list convinced me not to do either. It's a pity, though, there are some good whinges on the first and some interesting thoughts on the second. Or do I mean that the other way round? Anyway, if you want the health summary, the best overview is this.
Everything else is nicely sorted into months, because I have calendars everywhere right now. My favourite for 2011 is one for 1305, which needs more saints' days in it, also ordinary birthdays. If 2011 turns out to be as much of a strange ride as 2010, I shall use the 1305 calendar to govern my daily activities.
January
January was far too interesting. I saw a great deal of my family under very sad circumstances, when I went to Melbourne for the consecration of my stepfather's grave. The consecration reminded me that medical miracles don't always work and that it takes a long time to learn to live with the death of someone close.
On the way down to Melbourne, I saw my publisher who looked rather worried about me.
"I'm fine," I said. "Look, I'm getting better." My legs were normal size again, you see, so I must have been better. My ankles were puffy and I was out of breath, but all sorts of people told me I was fine, so I must have been. Especially if I said so, many times. Actually, the 'all sorts of people' were mostly my family, and in their midst (without them noticing anything) something had gone rather wrong. It hurt to carry an umbrella for my mother at my stepfather's grave. I had to rest far too frequently. I had a lot of asthma. I couldn't see properly out of one eye.
It was better the next day, so I caught my bus back home with equanimity and did a bunch of work on the way and made jokes about it. The eye didn't improve, though, so finally I ignored the "Gillian, stop complaining about your health" and checked my vision against an online test. I didn't like what I saw (it was funky, but not normal), so I rang my optometrist. He didn't like what he heard, so he fitted me in urgently.
I was raced to hospital and we found out that my family had been wrong, from beginning to end. Also, that I was over the worst of it, just. And I was alive.
The rest of the year has been filled with slowly improving things. My eyesight is 90% better (but I still have bad days) and everything else is about being patient and taking care and spending much money on things medical. I have specialists to check up on me and friends also check and will tell me to go to the doctor if they need to. I'm doing more than I've done in years, and my vision is stable.
My month in short? January ended badly, but I got through it.
February
The social highlight of February was my Purim party. Sometimes a group of friends getting drunk together and performing a spiel works magic. I suspect that none of us present will forget that party.
I was given more manuscript assessments by the Writers' Centre. They're a lot of fun. I get manuscripts from early career writers, mostly before they know what kind of book they want to write, but have started writing anyway. I work with them to sort out their strengths and weaknesses and get them on a path that suits their abilities and interests. Some of the intending-writers I've met through this have been totally fascinating.
Working with new writers (through my teaching, through the assessments) has helped me realise that I'm greedy for skills. It's not enough to be able to write a novel. It's not even enough to be able to edit. Not for me, anyhow. I'm a sad, sad person and am not at all happy until I understand things from many directions. This is one major reason why I took the advice of friends (Lucy Sussex and Ian Nichols gave it most strongly, but they were not alone) and am moving towards academia again. Which leads me to…
March
I became a student again. I didn't actually know I was a student until April, however, so the first five weeks of my doctorate were spent in happy oblivion. 'Happy' is not the right word, since that time was mostly spent being diagnosed by various medical practitioners and having my zombie tooth taken care of.
April
I didn't go down to Melbourne for Passover. I was still too ill. Also, I was too busy sulking about my family (note to any family reading this - if you want to show you care, then phonecalls, emails, cards are all useful - thinking thoughts in my general direction just don't do the trick). I realised that my close friends are my family, so I spent Passover with them, and it was very special.
There were other good things in April. My personal highlights were finding out I was enrolled in the doctorate and getting the column with BiblioBuffet. The BiblioBuffet column is my dream writing - I can explore all sorts of things from all sorts of directions and I have a very clever and sensitive editor.
April is when I started to learn again. My life is ashes without learning (some people need sunshine and rainbows; some people need lollipops; some people need bungee jumping - I need learning) so this is when the ashes started to show sparks again. I totally drove my friends crazy with comments about my incapacity, but they dealt, as they always do.
May
A group of friends and I went out for my birthday dinner on 1 May. This is one of those things that sounds not-too-big, but retrospectively, turns out to be the moment life starts to improve. In fact, I went out for my birthday (to Lanyon, as a present from some of those very wonderful friends) at the other end of May, too. I turned 49 in April, but May was my birthday month.
Doing the PhD was encouraging. The fact that the university wanted me and that my supervisor thought I was capable went a long way to reminding me that bad career luck is not the same thing as incompetence.
May was my turning point. Very awesome month. I was still sick as a dog, but I was starting to live again. And my eyesight improved a bit, which meant I could read more. I piled books higher and higher. I've read at least 300 books since May, which is an unchallengeably good thing. I was much happier. All those friends. Feeling as if I belong somewhere.
June
I had a work experience student in June. It was basically like full-time teaching, except that Tasha helped me with my work while I taught her. She was excellent at both the learning and the helping.
July
My diary for July is full of meetings with friends and with medical appointments. Most of it was spent catching up with those missed weeks of the doctorate. I could have claimed those missed weeks and got extensions, but that seemed an entire waste of everyone's time, so I balanced health and study and I caught up with everything. It was something I had to prove to myself, I think, that I could still do astonishing amounts of work in short periods of time, given enough space. My supervisor understood this (did I say what a very good supervisor I have?).
August
August was cool. I'm not sure I slept much, and I had to be exceptionally careful not to do too much, but it was cool. Coolness included Ditmar nominations and running workshops for National Science Week and hanging out with Kaaron Warren and family on election day.
Election day, with daleks in the library and a sausage sizzle hiding behind the polls, gave me a moment when I knew what shape I wanted my ideal life to be. It was when I gave myself permission to research and to write and to think and to teach and to be a geek and a foodie and to have my own special sense of humour and to do all this even with major crises. I just needed to think it through. And do the doctorate. I'm still working on it - this could take a while, but that moment gave me all sorts of new kinds of courage.
September
AussieCon. And AussieCon. And AussieCon. Oh, and Ditmars.
I had all sorts of expectations of AussieCon. My carefully laid plans involved much time spent in the bar chatting - I had a budget for drinks, even. It also involved finding an agent. I had carefully circled lots of bits of the academic program, because I wanted to attend a great deal of that. There wasn't time. I got two good sessions in the bar, chatting with friends. (Jenny Fallon tried to get me drunk on Cointreau.) I need to go to another WorldCon one day, just to find out what panels are like from the other side and what it really *is* like to go to room parties and hang around in the bar. And to meet other people who study spec fic as well as write it. And maybe one day to find an agent.
What did I do at AussieCon? Baggage. Lots of Baggage. And panels. And my kaffeklatsche table was full and all the people there were just lovely and laughed at my jokes even though I had not a single idea of how to run a kaffeeklatsche and couldn't think of why anyone would be there (I told them my Tim Fischer story, in the hopes that it would make amends for me being just me). And I really did meet the most amazing people and I made new friends and I had a blast. It just wasn't the blast I was expecting. I met a bunch of my personal heroes (Ellen Kushner, John Clute) and hung out with friends in the interstices of impossibly-busy.
In fact, my WorldCon was full of friends, old and new. I wince when I see pictures of myself (still sick as a dog, and it showed) but I had a fabulous roller-coaster ride.
I have to mention the Ditmar again. Still chuffed about that. I'm not the sort of person who gets awards. And I'm even more chuffed about the shortlisting for Life Through Cellophane - and I'm still getting terrific feedback about it from readers.
I did other stuff in September. I taught the guides at the Jewish Museum and I did enough of my novel so that my supervisor could check it. And he found it good, too, which means I was clear to write.
October
Mostly about writing. I went to Sydney, however, and I taught worldbuilding at the Writers' Centre and I had good quality time with people I love. I went to Luna Park with my cousin and she took the teacup photo.
November
I worked furiously between the Sydney visit and the next Sydney visit. This meant that the November Sydney visit was clear of major deadlines. I got to spend quality time harassing my supervisor, and my friends, and see some Eureka and have a totally cool dinner party with totally cool people. And then I came home to a mild virus.
December
I came within a stone's throw of being caught up with things. I discovered that 2011 is going to include a trip overseas. I filled my freezer for the summer. I finished the first draft of the Conflux cookbook. I taught. I wrote novel. I filled in many forms. Surely a year ought to end more robustly than that?
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