I wrote my way out: An unnecessary reference for an unnecessary review of the year

I have a lot to write about and a backlog of blog-posts that should have written months ago but we’re at the end of the year and my once-a week, a month, a every few months blog has changed it’s rhythm but I happy with that as this was, and still is supposed to be, for me and for fun. I re-started this blog for a number of reasons, which I covered in the initial re-viving blog post, and foremost of those has been to write more. Being in academia writing for classes, my dissertation, or something for publication makes me forget that I do enjoy putting words down for fun. This blog has been there for me to write the things that do not fall into those categories and try to write what comes to mind and on things that are less data driven in relation to science fiction, community, and anthropology/archaeology.

One of the good things to come out of this year, this blog, and twitter was the forum I moderated at Geek Girl Con. That forum was a great learning experience, wrangling amazingly creative people that I had never met before. It was extremely gratifying to facilitate a conversation that involved critiquing things that I love and at the same time help others understand a serious issue. Overall, Geek Girl Con was great and introduced me to an amazing group of people who are fascinated by the same media and social issues that I am. To me it showed that as much as there are tropes in science fiction media, there are also people who want to consume and produced better, higher quality, and more thoughtful media than currently exists. Seeing that enthusiasm was amazing and I hope to continue attending such great events or to bring such ideas to events that lack them.

Another positive to come out of this year was submitting my first chapter for publication based on my dissertation research. It’s in an edited volume rather than a scientific journal, and it’s currently being reviewed so hopefully people are kind and constructive so it actually gets published, but it was great to see something that I worked on go out into the world. It also happened to fall on a strangely appropriate anniversary, the day I decided to start writing about children and landscape in archaeology. That hilarious happenstance made me feel better about the work I have done in the last year, and last few years, demonstrating how sometimes you randomly decide something, stick with it, and for some reason it keeps giving back to you enough to continue doing it for the rest of your life.

Both of these demonstrated to me how individual moments create awesome and enduring events. The split second choice to do, act, say, or write can define important things tomorrow, in a year, or in several years and while there are an infinite number of possible things that can and will happen in 2017 it’s impossible to know immediately which will be the most important.