Okay.
I know I’ve addressed most of this before, but I wanted to say it again.
For the past couple years, my blogging output has shrunk to almost nothing. Which I felt a wee bit self-conscious about, and made note of, but not enough to change it or go on hiatus. Now, these days, while I still have all these geeky thoughts, I don't feel motivated to put 'em down on paper, at even the slow rate I've been doing it.
It's part of my larger, unconscious shift away from fannish activities. I've never been a powerhouse in that department, but now it's slowing down even more. Maybe it's because I'm turning thirty next year, maybe it's the inevitable result of never being able to embrace a current franchise and as a whole thing, meaning my small, obscure interests run out of steam much quicker. In that light, I consider my time in Transformers fandom to have been the best, since I had the widest range of stuff to do, and I kept up with current and popular stuff.
Maybe it's that I'm thinking seriously about a writing career, and no magazine wants to take a nostalgic ode to discovering Rodimus Prime in 1999. I have to focus on what I could sell, what I could build something on.
All of those explanations don't quite work, but here we are. I'm not about to turn, snarling, on fandom as a self-absorbed waste of time or a fundamental sign of immaturity. I don’t think getting rid of fandom is a necessity for growing up as an artist or a person, even if you mean “fandom” in the sense of engaging with others or in speculation, and not simply consuming the work itself. It’s all in how you handle it.
I enjoyed the time I've spent in fandom, mulling over whatever it is I do. I've got a lot of good memories, and was also extremely lucky for a woman in fandom (you know what I mean). I also never became a fanatic or a jackass.
I still have fannish instincts, towards fanfiction, meta, and certain eccentricities. Which means that I'm still not done-done, it's just that things will be even slower from now on. I have many things I would like to get around to, but don't know when I will. I’ll keep the nerdery confined to a few places, but don’t know how much energy I’ll have to keep up with it.
