Message anxiety, and oh hey, how've you been?

[snowgall]

I've been away for a while, but tonight I decided to tackle my inbox which has been taunting me (142 messages, christ!) I've got serious inbox anxiety, and seeing that I had an avalanche of messages waiting for me actually made it harder for me to even attempt to look at them :/

But the weird thing is that easily 75% of the messages were simply LJ alerts of people's birthdays and whatnot. Apparently I've missed ALL the birthdays. Very sorry about that!

The other 25% of the messages were all nice comments on earlier entries, so as usual my anxiety was entirely unfounded, but there's no talking sense to it.

But even after going through it all, somehow or other there are still 2 unread messages somewhere in there which I CANNOT find. I went back though several pages, but I gave up after a while. So if I never responded to one of your messages, I'm also very sorry about that, and I don't know how to fix it.

The US election has gotten me seriously depressed (as if I needed any help with that!) but I've been venting as much of my anger and frustration as possible over on tumblr. Also calling my congressperson, but he's a moron and a Trump supporter, so it feels hopeless.

Hope everyone is doing well. I'm way behind on all reading too. I've mostly gotten sidetracked into the Stucky fandom, and as with most things I get into, I get majorly obsessed for an intense period of time and then I cool off again. I think I'm in a cooling-off period now.

Anyway, just thought I'd poke my head back in and say "hi".

Comments

[kitty_fic]

*clings*

It's so good to hear from you! I've seriously missed you!!!

Sorry you've been feeling down and I hope things look up for you from here.

Also, hope to see you around here more again maybe?

[snowgall]

I will try! I've also been feeling guilty for kinda-sorta switching fandoms, and not knowing how to talk about that!

But I haven't *really* switched fandoms. As you know, I've still been posting/reblogging a ton of Drarry art over on tumblr :)

*and clings back!*

[kitty_fic]

I totally understand. I felt similarly when I got involved in Merlin fandom and Teen Wolf. But it's totally okay to be in more than one fandom <3

And yes, I was definitely going to say that I know you're still in Harry/Draco fandom because I do see you posting drarry content on tumblr :D

[khalulu]

Hi hi hi! So nice to hear from you!

No need to feel guilty about anything. Follow (or not) whatever fandoms make you happy.

Yeah, the election was horrible. My solace was being surrounded by people who felt the same and were determined to keep working. When I know my schedule better, I may do some volunteering for an immigrant rights project.

In honor of solstice, let me offer you Pete Seeger singing Quite Early Morning (It's Darkest Before the Dawn).

[snowgall]

Volunteering is a good idea!

I am fortunate that nearly everyone I know or interact with regularly feels the same way about the election, but that also just means I'm that much more in the bubble, you know? So I was taken completely by surprise by it.

My husband was also out of town that day (in a deep red area too), so I had to weather the results a bit on my own at first, which was hard.

Thanks for the lovely song link :)

[amorette.livejournal.com]

Hiiiii! Im sorry to hear youve been having anxiety and feeling down and stuff :( But welcome back, we've missed you.

Omg the inbox. So I changed the settings so that all notifications including comments on posts and birthdays come to my email; I like this better bc the only thing in my inbox now is actual direct messages. For me this works massively, idk if you would consider it! I hate wading through the inbox too and I find it more enjoyable (and not overwhelming in the least) doing that in gmail (also bc gmail separates those kind of notifications in the social tab). Basically I know how much you like organization so maybe try it!

The election/politics over here is so depressing, I totally agree. I actually need a break from listening to the news or going on Fcebook (where my flist posts lots of news articles).

Glad to see you here xx

[snowgall]

You're so right about notifications! For some reason, I seemed to have inadvertently had the settings such that I was notified for every gift that *someone else* got! So I had like 50 messages informing me that, "Amorette received a cuddly teddy bear!" or something :) It got pretty funny, actually, but I did go in and put a stop to that!

I should probably adjust the birthday thing too, but I also get anxiety about my email inbox and how much I have to read over there (even when it's organized) so I try to avoid sending too much stuff over there either :)

Nice to see you too ♥

[amorette.livejournal.com]

Yes, I understand; inboxes in general get so clogged up! I actually angst over it occasionally bc I hate extra "clutter" emails, and I've been trying to go through and slowly unsubscribe from things. Like, I don't need to be informed what goes on at LinkedIn and I don't need to know that some clothing store is having a sale, or whatnot. This is more relevant to my 'real life' email though, I feel like I have a good handle on the fandom one atm. But... I have my old fandom email too and THAT one needs to be sorted somehow. LOL I feel like you will relate to all this!

[digthewriter]

I have missed you and your organization of the organized!

[snowgall]

Thank you! I have missed being organized in public :) It is much easier to be organized online than off!

[nia_kantorka]

Good to see you! Sorry that you had a rough time after the election. Think most of us had and are still having it. It's a nightmare and even from afar it's frightening. The more you know about Trump's plans and cabinet the worse it gets.

Don't worry about switching fandoms. I do so all the time. Some are a constant, others I dive in and indulge every once in a while, some are left behind after a while. All have fabulous authors and broaden my horizon. Multishipping is a joy you shouldn't feel guilty about.
I'm not into Stucky, but have quite a great time in the MCU as well. There so many pretty boys to play with... :D

[snowgall]

As bad as it is now, I just fear it will only get worse. I can't believe we've elected a fascist to run this country.

I tend to be very all-or-nothing when it comes to interests of any sort. So if I'm reading Drarry, I'm *only* reading Drarry for months and months, but then if I get interested in something else, I will only read *that* for a while. I keep trying to make myself indulge in variety less drastically, but my brain doesn't seem to know how to do that :)

And the boys really are *very* pretty ♥

[cabinetcaligari.livejournal.com]

Hello you! Good to see you again :)

I really tried to be a multishipper, but it appears I'm not nearly invested in any other fandom or character than I am in the HP universe, so now I'm expanding my horizons with different pairings within HP :)

And yeah, the election has got me very depressed too! Especially with all the news coming out on the people he's choosing, I sort of feel numb by now, but it keeps being pretty bad. Are we gonna see you around again more often in the upcoming months? :)

[snowgall]

Yeah, like I mentioned to Nia above, I can't really multiship in the same way other people can. I have multiple ships, but can only really consume one intensely at any given time. I'm also not very good with shipping multiple ships at the same time within a single fandom either.

Like I was super into Dramione at the beginning of my HP fannishness, then switched to Drarry and didn't look back :/

I will try to be around more, if my various hangups and anxieties let it happen!

[vaysh]

*waves* It's wonderful to hear from you on LJ. Seconding DIG: I missed your organising the organising skills. :)

[snowgall]

Thank you :)

I'm still keeping up my database, actually. I just went through and updated it last night. So I have my lists of fics from fests and such, but I haven't read almost any of them in months :(

[besamislabios]

*waves hello* nice to hear from you! ♥

[snowgall]

Nice to see you too :) Have missed everyone ♥

[birdsofshore]

Hello! I can imagine that feeling of being overwhelmed by the messages. Congrats that you tackled it.

It's good to see you and I hope you do have a little more time to be around here. We can all relate to your feelings about Trump, I'm sure. I'm so sorry for what's happened over there. We Brits especially can empathise at the moment.

[snowgall]

We Americans really should have taken more heed from the Brexit vote. You guys showed us that we shouldn't be complacent in our election expectations and that xenophobia was a growing concern, and we didn't take it seriously enough :((((

I feel like we're all in some terrible alternate universe and need to find the spell/charm/whatever to switch us back!

The email/message thing is always a serious problem for me. Like I can never decide if I'd rather people respond to me or not! Mostly yes, of course, but I still freak out if it's a lot.

[blithelybonny.livejournal.com]

Good to hear from you! <33

[snowgall]

Thank you! And you too! It's nice when I see someone who hails from both of my current fandoms :)

[blithelybonny.livejournal.com]

Multifandoming for the actual win. :DDD

[capitu]

*waves* Hello there! It's been so long and oh my god, I hear you! I have one message from LJ that I haven't read and for the life of me I can't find it. It's been lost for several months now. :/ I have all my LJ email automatically tagged at gmail, and when I look at the tag list on the sidebar there's one unread and yep, it's driving me crazy. An itch I haven't been able to scratch. One of these days will go through thousand of LJ emails and notifications and see what it is. ^^

I hope you can find it! Though I think you can always ~cheat~ and mark all your email as read? XD

[snowgall]

*grins*

Yes, having unead messages is such a plague. And it's something that gets so out of my control too - especially in my gmail account. It's this horrible cycle of too much mail (mostly junk and/or spam) which comes at a time when my emotional reserves are too low to deal, so I'll put off looking at it/sorting through it. But then it just builds up and up making it ever harder to sort through and deal. It becomes inescapable!

I'll tell you a secret - I actually have *at this very moment* 1,420 unread messages in my gmail inbox! This mostly happened maybe 5 years or so ago when I had one of my periodic mental meltdowns and couldn't deal with incoming mail for a month or so. When I finally got back to it, I could only deal with the really important stuff that Google sorted into priority and kept ignoring the rest. And the non-important stuff kept accumulating faster than I could sort through it. It was like trying to bail out of a sinking ship :(

I occasionally have a burst of energy and start trying to sift through it (again, mostly junk and spam, all of it stupidly outdated) but then get discouraged and give up. So there it sits, like a constant bane of my existence. At this point I know I should just delete it all out of spite, but I worry something semi-important is buried down there and I'll lose it forever.

Welcome to my psychosis.

[capitu]

Holy shit. Oh my god, 1,4K unread messages? I'm dying! :O

When I go on vacations and come back to, say 100 or so it drives me crazy. Crazy, I can't deal with that. I have to start checking and cleaning or else—! *lol*

[shiftylinguini.livejournal.com]

ohh hello!! I was just thinking the other day about where you were and how you've been!

I'm with on the obsessing and getting sidetracked!! I'm behind on everything, as always, regarding reading and I will never catch up, so I've gone limp and embraced it.

I'm sorry to hear about the election, god, what a mess. I hope you're doing okay, or will be doing okay soon (but it's totally okay if you're not).

Exciting to see you around again!! :D :D :D

<3333

[snowgall]

Thanks!

Wait - I thought you were American? Are you Canadian or British or...?

Being behind is my default state :/

[shiftylinguini.livejournal.com]

Gosh, yep, it's mine too! I'm a bit of a disaster. I

Wait - I thought you were American? Are you Canadian or British or...?

Haha, and no, I am option D -- Australian :)