Personal fear, phobias and the future. (Patreon)

Sometimes I worry. Not about now-me. Now-me is just fine. Now me has a full-time career with health benefits and a hobby that pays for house repairs and upgrades and a retirement account. 

No, I worry about future-me sometimes. Follow me on a bit of a side track.

When I started in fandom, Alyburns was everything in fandom. She ran Stargate to Cascade and organized the entire Moonridge Auction that raised thousands of dollars for the care and rehabilitation of wild animals. She worked on the Sentinel Slash Virtual Season, and she is a big part of why that fandom to this day is considered the little black dress, able to fit on any other fandom. She wrote under both Alyjude (Sentinel) and Sideburns (Stargate), and I inherited a lot of my love of fandom from her. I went to Moonridge where many of the Sentinel fans encouraged my writing (and where I sat next to the actor who plays Blair for lunch. We were both so introverted that we sat in perfect silence while the person across the table told us about every single grandchild). 

So how are those connected? Aly has many health problems, and years ago she was in serious trouble. Mind you, despite the loss of her career, her health problems and her crippling agoraphobia, she was still organizing Moonridge on the computer and phone, but her health definitely impacted her life. Well she ran out of money and refused to take charity, so she put all sorts of fanish treasures up for sale on eBay. We’re talking fandom gifts and items from the actual production. Everyone chipped in and overpaid because we loved Aly and wanted her to have money.

I guess I saw her as proof that even if you don’t have biological family, you can have fanish family. As a childless woman with crazy Trump-supporting relatives, I like that message. Anyway, fast forward ten years on Aly’s story. 

She’s now had breast cancer and she doesn’t have the strength to climb into her Explorer anymore. So she starts a GoFundMe because she has no options.

And crickets.

I think about it and so many of our friends from back there are gone. Cancer took Cindershadow. Others wandered away to new fandoms. And now I look at Aly’s struggles and her call for “A Car for Freedom” and I wonder if that’s my future.

I used to be able to lose myself in writing and turn stories out at a crazy pace. Now the pain and physical disabilities will break that concentration and writing takes a bit more work. So in twenty years, will I lose my muse? Will I be left listening to crickets? Do all childless people worry about this? Do people with children worry?

I try to take care of my future financially, but do any of us know what’s coming? Am I just spiraling off into crazy stupid anxiety land or does everyone look at the future and wonder what it holds? And sometimes I feel like I’m not the best friend. I have a horrible habit of seeing both sides of conflicts, which makes me horrible if you’re looking for a cheerleader in some fight.

And I run out of energy for people. One of my best friends in fandom, someone I actually vacationed with and who meant the world to me, got cancer. She got it at the same time my mother did. So she was online talking about how people needed to stop referring to cancer survivors as “fighters” as if their survival had something to do with their will to live. I understand her position—completely. But my mother found comfort in talking about how she was going to beat cancer. I ended up emotionally pulling back from my friend because I couldn’t carry the emotional weight.

And I’ve tried to apologize for that, but my friend can’t forgive me for not being there when she needed me, and I understand that too. I don’t blame her at all. Not one ounce. But sometimes I feel like I don’t have the energy for human beings, and then I wonder if I’m dooming myself to a future where I don’t have anyone.

And then I wonder if this is normal. I wonder if Aly saw this coming.

*Sigh*

I’m going to go play with my puppies now.