Week notes: June 30-July 6, 2025
Jul. 6th, 2025 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soricelTeaching:
NA, yay
Learning:
Nothing formal/intentional
Listening:
A few podcasts about Trump's budget bill. Fucking bleak. I had a feeling the thing would pass, but when I saw the news that it actually did, I just felt deeply shitty inside. While the austerity plan that's kicking in here in Romania, which will also fuck people over in many of the same ways, feels like more a symptom of incompetence and indifference, Trump's budget bill just feels truly villainous and deliberately, maliciously future-killing.
Also listened to some La Dispute. I've always wanted to enjoy this band, mostly because I appreciate and admire and in some sense maybe take some inspiration from Jordan Dreyer's approach to lyrics, but the actual music has never really grabbed me and at times really put me off. Maybe I was just in a particular kind of mood the other day, but I listened to the available tracks from their forthcoming album and found myself liking them quite a bit...then listened to a few other songs from some of their more recent releases and found myself getting into them. May revisit.
Reading:
About halfway through the fourth and final book in the Raven Cycle. Still enjoying these books but at this point I feel like maybe I'm a little saturated with them. I can feel myself kinda moving a little more quickly through The Raven King and just sort of wanting to be done, even though I think I'll miss this world and these characters.
Watching:
BBT still.
Writing:
Managed to keep up with my two main RPs while we were away again this week, though that belle epoque Paris board continues to languish. Also marked the one year anniversary of my cyberpunky dystopian android/human buddy adventure RP--whoa! My side is about 130,000 words, making this the longest piece of writing I've ever done by far, and it shows no signs of slowing down! I don't think a week has gone by without my writing partner and I posting, and having this story as such a constant fixture in my life this past year has been really comforting and grounding. I can't say that my writing has been very *good* overall, but this story has really pushed me creatively, and it's been so cool to see it sprawl out in terms of lore and world-building and themes and everything else. Yay!
Also got some lines down for a new poem, so we'll see what comes of that.
Other:
This week I tagged along with T. at another conference. This one was in Sibiu, another small city in Transylvania. It was a pretty charming place! Some medieval towers and walls, lingering traces of German/Saxon presence/influence, etc., and probably most notably, a very particular style of roof dormers that make the buildings look like they have half-lidded cartoon eyes. A little touristy, and not much going on outside the center of the town, but still, a pleasant place to visit. T.'s presentation was great, though unfortunately a little rushed because of poor time management from the moderator. The conference ended with an intense student performance of Mother Courage, which I found occasionally moving if a little heavy-handed, but which T., who knows and loves Brecht far more than I, and who's way more familiar with contemporary Eastern European theater, found pretty awful and frustrating.
NA, yay
Learning:
Nothing formal/intentional
Listening:
A few podcasts about Trump's budget bill. Fucking bleak. I had a feeling the thing would pass, but when I saw the news that it actually did, I just felt deeply shitty inside. While the austerity plan that's kicking in here in Romania, which will also fuck people over in many of the same ways, feels like more a symptom of incompetence and indifference, Trump's budget bill just feels truly villainous and deliberately, maliciously future-killing.
Also listened to some La Dispute. I've always wanted to enjoy this band, mostly because I appreciate and admire and in some sense maybe take some inspiration from Jordan Dreyer's approach to lyrics, but the actual music has never really grabbed me and at times really put me off. Maybe I was just in a particular kind of mood the other day, but I listened to the available tracks from their forthcoming album and found myself liking them quite a bit...then listened to a few other songs from some of their more recent releases and found myself getting into them. May revisit.
Reading:
About halfway through the fourth and final book in the Raven Cycle. Still enjoying these books but at this point I feel like maybe I'm a little saturated with them. I can feel myself kinda moving a little more quickly through The Raven King and just sort of wanting to be done, even though I think I'll miss this world and these characters.
Watching:
BBT still.
Writing:
Managed to keep up with my two main RPs while we were away again this week, though that belle epoque Paris board continues to languish. Also marked the one year anniversary of my cyberpunky dystopian android/human buddy adventure RP--whoa! My side is about 130,000 words, making this the longest piece of writing I've ever done by far, and it shows no signs of slowing down! I don't think a week has gone by without my writing partner and I posting, and having this story as such a constant fixture in my life this past year has been really comforting and grounding. I can't say that my writing has been very *good* overall, but this story has really pushed me creatively, and it's been so cool to see it sprawl out in terms of lore and world-building and themes and everything else. Yay!
Also got some lines down for a new poem, so we'll see what comes of that.
Other:
This week I tagged along with T. at another conference. This one was in Sibiu, another small city in Transylvania. It was a pretty charming place! Some medieval towers and walls, lingering traces of German/Saxon presence/influence, etc., and probably most notably, a very particular style of roof dormers that make the buildings look like they have half-lidded cartoon eyes. A little touristy, and not much going on outside the center of the town, but still, a pleasant place to visit. T.'s presentation was great, though unfortunately a little rushed because of poor time management from the moderator. The conference ended with an intense student performance of Mother Courage, which I found occasionally moving if a little heavy-handed, but which T., who knows and loves Brecht far more than I, and who's way more familiar with contemporary Eastern European theater, found pretty awful and frustrating.
