![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Today I intended to go for that walk, but I still didn't manage. I set 3 pm as a target, but I was still working on things at 3, so I couldn't go then. And then a little later, the sun was low and I didn't want to go.
But I got the outline for my NaNo project written and one of my friends is giving it a read-over for sense and stuff.
This week would have been Viable Paradise (24 I think), but they wisely cancelled it for the pandemic back in March or April. One of the staff members, who was in my year, organized a zoom call for one of the Thursday night traditions, and that just let out. It was fun and a little bittersweet, remembering my week on the island 7 years ago. My class is still mostly in touch through a group slack (it's VP 17 and some of our friends), and we had a con earlier this year, which was basically a dozen or so of us hanging out on zoom and talking about stuff. I got to talk about etymology and roller derby.
I won't say I didn't learn anything at VP - the instructors were good, and it helped solidify some of the things I know instinctively from being a reader for 40 years - but the biggest thing I got out of it was a couple dozen new writing peers, many of whom have become friends (and one of whom is letting me live in her guest room). There's also the very large community of VP alumni, though a lot of the early years people are off doing their own things because there was much less internet-community-stuff back then.
For people like me, who are terrified of introducing themselves to strangers, being able to go to a VP meetup at a con (when those exist again) makes it less terrifying. Especially because you know some people who know a lot of people and will introduce you.
But I got the outline for my NaNo project written and one of my friends is giving it a read-over for sense and stuff.
This week would have been Viable Paradise (24 I think), but they wisely cancelled it for the pandemic back in March or April. One of the staff members, who was in my year, organized a zoom call for one of the Thursday night traditions, and that just let out. It was fun and a little bittersweet, remembering my week on the island 7 years ago. My class is still mostly in touch through a group slack (it's VP 17 and some of our friends), and we had a con earlier this year, which was basically a dozen or so of us hanging out on zoom and talking about stuff. I got to talk about etymology and roller derby.
I won't say I didn't learn anything at VP - the instructors were good, and it helped solidify some of the things I know instinctively from being a reader for 40 years - but the biggest thing I got out of it was a couple dozen new writing peers, many of whom have become friends (and one of whom is letting me live in her guest room). There's also the very large community of VP alumni, though a lot of the early years people are off doing their own things because there was much less internet-community-stuff back then.
For people like me, who are terrified of introducing themselves to strangers, being able to go to a VP meetup at a con (when those exist again) makes it less terrifying. Especially because you know some people who know a lot of people and will introduce you.
