Picture from Pixabay.

Answers to today’s questions at The Friday Five @ Dreamwidth

1. What were you doing in 2001? 2011?

2001: having fun with my Mom’s Beagle Caro and my friends. I’d go over to my Mom’s pretty much every week so my Mom, the dog and me would see each other all the time. Also my best friend would come over to my place (she lived with her parents, I lived alone) 2-3 times a week for like 5-6 hours if we were both unemployed. Otherwise we’d see on the weekends. We’d also go on adventures because I had my Mom’s car in use, so we’d explore the nature and towns around our city, and also sometimes make shopping trips (comics) to Helsinki along with some sightseeing there. Often we’d take Caro with us when we went hiking/walking. Those were great days, the best of my life! I still had hope of a good future – of a steady job for myself, and both Mom and I were still healthy and Caro the Beagle was so sweet and loving and fun. I planned to get a dog myself when I had steady employment, and a breast reduction. Life was good! And then from September on, everyone would wonder about the terrorist attacks in the US.

2011: praying I’d get some sort of clarity on why I had been having daily diarrhea for going on three years now (the Crohn’s Disease diagnosis was still a year away but once I got it, it made things mentally better – I knew it wouldn’t go away and I would need to learn to live with it, how to manage it), and praying they could resolve my horrible non-stop headache/migraines. Not knowing whether I could hope for better about those two was awfully stressfull. Also diabetes and hypothyroidism were starting and for a few years it felt like everytime things seemed to level out, a new health problem would pop up. So illnesses and feeling sick every day took all my attention and all my thoughts pretty much. I in such a bad shape both physically and mentally that I don’t remember much else from about 2008 to 2014.

2. What’s something you’ve kept going for over a decade?

Doing fanart (wallpapers, icons etc.) and my fansites. I’ve been doing them faithfully since I started in 1996… so 25 years! I’ve reduced the number of fansites I own drastically, and I don’t have the energy to do wallpapers/icons as often as I used to (I might go a month or two without opening Photoshop, but I’ve never stopped completely but I still collect photos and think about what I want to do next even so), but I enjoy making both fansites and fanart very much still after all these years!

3. What’s an anniversary you want to mark down and celebrate?

If I ever get disability retirement due to my chronic migraines, that certainly is something I’ll celebrate! I feel like I’m on the wrong benefit when I’m on unemployment because the 300 days of long sick leave is all used and there’s no other option. Or if my chronic migraines get better once my periods end and hormones stop (doctors say that it might happen, and also my Mom’s best friend says that once hers stopped her migraines became much less often and less bad – so there’s hope I guess even if I can’t quite believe it), I’ll celebrate that too!

4. What would your past self think of your present self?

That I’ve had a long run of bad luck what with my all my illnesses, and that I’ve failed because I never got a steady employment (quite general in women my age around me) but also that I’ve done well for myself, finding other purpose and joy in my life, such fansites and creative pursuits.

5. What was the first online communality that you loved?

I really loved the fanart Usenet Xena and Hercules fandom in the late 1990s and early 2000s – it also expanded to other scifi-fantasy fandoms, and that’s where I made my first wallpapers and learned so much from makers such as Mike Quick and Beth Smarr. There hasn’t been anything like it since. The Livejournal days were also good fanart wise, so much creativity! My first fanfic community was the Oded Fehr fandom – which was and still is the only one I have finished fanfics for! The fabulous writers at Weaver Of Dreams and Land Of Dreams wrote just the kind of fics I love to read the most about my favorite character Ardeth Bay from The Mummy and other characters Oded Fehr had played, and was very welcoming to newbies in my experience. I still miss that fandom at its best but people have moved on. I was very fortunate to be trusted to adopt both the fanfic archives once the original owners could keep them going anymore; there are so many great stories that would’ve been lost otherwise.