my hands are of your color

 I love writing goal posts. I love reviewing them slightly less, because inevitably I have to admit that I did not finish the Big Thing I meant to finish. But also: I did do some really cool stuff, and my brain kicked off several brand new projects like a chaotic little goblin in a fic mine, so. Let’s talk about it.

 🖋 July Writing Goals:

Finish A Field Guide to the Sinner Pack — ❌ absolutely not. It’s still sitting there, gentle and ominous and unfinished. I’m choosing to believe this is just a simmering stage.

Update:
You Wouldn’t Take My Word for It If You Knew Who Was Talking — ❌ noooope
I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons With You — ❌ also no, but I did think about it a lot
The Courage of My Convictions — ✅ YES. A new chapter and a spin-off/prequel side fic. I’m counting this as a win for narrative momentum and gay priest chaos.
Wolf-Tethered — ❌ untouched, though not unloved

Maybe post a one-shot just because — ✅ I’m counting the Darren/Simone scene from the priest AU, because it came from somewhere deep and tender and needed to exist....

Also. I may have started two entire new AU series, because apparently July was the month Bob! said “yes, but what if…?”

🌿 July Life Goals:

Make a doctor’s appointment about the arthritis diagnosis — ✅ did the thing. Proud of this one.
Day trip to the RAMM + sushi — ❌ no museum trip, but we did buy most of Yo!Sushi and I did spend roughly £200 in the Lucy & Yak sale, so I have no regrets and very colourful trousers. It was a good trip
Visit Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm — ✅ lions and elephants and giraffes achieved
Reclaim one chaotic space (maybe the laundry chair) — 🌀 kind of? Started rearranging my work clothes and moved some piles around. Progress is happening in slow, meandering steps.
Come back to Dreamwidth, and stay — 🌀 back-ish! A few posts, a bit of lurking, and some genuine joy in reconnecting with long-form fandom space. Still holding this one as a soft goal.
Cook something that feels like summer — 😅 not really. But I thought about tomatoes a lot.
One proper lie-in, no guilt — ✅ absolutely achieved, 10/10 would lie in again
One evening offline with candles, music, or silence — ❌ does scrolling Tumblr with one candle lit count? No? Thought not.

🌻 August Goals: gentle momentum, storybrain chaos, and maybe some tomatoes 

✨ Writing/Fandom Goals
Actually finish A Field Guide to the Sinner Pack – even if it’s just in bullet-point plan format
Update Wolf-Tethered - or at least open the doc and reread it. Or smell the forest in my head and cry about Simone.
Keep working on The Courage of My Convictions - more priest AU, more Jannik/Simone quiet intensity, more religious yearning and repressed gay disasters.
Return to I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons With You — the booktuber romantasy AU deserves more petty feuding, more yearning in comment sections, more mutual pining over tropes.
Make space for the new AUs - if my brain is going to go chaotic, might as well let it do so on purpose.
Maybe write something short and weird and self-indulgent. Just because.
Keep sharing. Even when it feels scary. Especially when it feels a little raw - that probably means it matters..

🌿 Life Goals
One genuinely slow, nothing-is-urgent weekend.
Book one fun thing for August, even if it’s tiny.
Get my new tattoo (appointment booked for the 30^th!)
Properly reclaim one corner of chaos in the house. Doesn’t have to be perfect, just has to be better. My work clothing storage isn’t working for me right now.
Keep gently decluttering my digital spaces - Dreamwidth tags, folders, etc.
Go outside for something that’s not an errand. A walk, a sit, a stretch in the sun.
Remember: lie-ins are good, my body is not a machine, and my stories are worth telling.
Keep up the shoulder, hip, and knee physio - consistency counts more than perfection.
Aim to lose a little more weight if it feels good and manageable - but keep it soft and low-pressure.
 

Tell me your August hopes! Or the weird thing July gave you that you’re still thinking about. Or the AU your brain started without asking. I’ll bring the snacks, you bring the story chaos. 💛 

Journaling Prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?

I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember. It started with Space Invaders on the Amstrad CPC 464 in the mid-80s - that clunky green-screen magic, the beep-boop intensity, the sheer novelty of it all. And I never really stopped.

Over the years, I’ve collected a fair few consoles: SNES, Gameboy, Playstation, PS2, Wii, Switch. I’ve still got them all, too. There's something oddly comforting about holding onto those pieces of plastic and circuitry, like keeping a time capsule of different versions of myself.

I’m definitely a solo-gamer. Always have been. I think it’s the introvert in me. I like slipping into a gameworld on my own terms, no pressure, no voice chat, no audience. Just me, the screen, and whatever rhythm the game wants me to fall into.

Old school side-scrolling platforms
Tight levels, tricky jumps, that sense of flow when everything clicks. Still satisfying as hell.

Racing games
Especially Rock & Roll Racing, which lives in my memory as pure, chaotic joy. The soundtrack! The mayhem! The fact I can still hum the menu music unprompted!

Millennial dream games
AKA my happy place. Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley, Palia. I will always love games where you can farm, fish, befriend villagers, decorate your house, and wander around making little To Do lists for yourself. Peak comfort.

I know gaming is a social thing for a lot of people, and that’s great, but for me, it’s always been a way to unwind, to self-soothe, to get lost in a world I don’t have to share unless I choose to. A quiet kind of joy.

There’s just something deeply compelling about watching two characters navigate uneven ground - whether it’s age, experience, authority, or institutional power - and still manage to build something charged and intimate between them. Not despite the imbalance, but through it. That slow burn of restraint. The ache of wanting something they shouldn't. The negotiations of trust, timing, control, and care.

This is especially compelling when both characters are competent in their own right, but operating from different registers: mentor/student, coach/player, commander/civilian specialist, master/apprentice. The imbalance isn’t about helplessness - it’s about the impossibility of an even playing field, and the intimacy that arises anyway.

These dynamics can be messy and complicated and so emotionally satisfying when done right. They let fiction stretch into questions of loyalty, respect, control, vulnerability. What does it mean to choose closeness, when there are rules saying you shouldn’t? What does it cost, to reach for someone who could say no with a word?

Some personal favourites:

Jannik Sinner/Simone Vagnozzi – restrained affection, a coach who holds himself too tightly, and a player who sees straight through him
Jannik Sinner/Darren Cahill - built on loyalty, history, and the kind of attention that feels more like possession if you look too long
Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi – power wrapped in devotion, connection shaped by discipline, love made sharper by its impossibility
Jim Ellison/Blair Sandburg – the sentinel and the grad student who never stops talking, thrown together by biology and staying for each other
Jethro Gibbs/Tony DiNozzo – command and obedience with a side of locker room banter and unspoken everything
Jack O’Neill/Daniel Jackson – sarcasm vs sincerity, orders vs ethics, saving the world one lingering look at a time

And yes, this is entirely about fiction. These dynamics let us explore things that might be fraught or even dangerous in real life but that, in the hands of a good writer, become vehicles for emotional tension, character growth, and that delicious blend of intimacy and restraint.

Give me the power imbalance that heightens the stakes. Give me the age difference that adds weight to every decision. Give me the mentor figure trying not to fall. Give me the younger one pushing every boundary, knowing exactly what they're doing. Give me the slow unravelling, the look that lingers too long, the moment someone steps just half an inch closer than they should. Give me the ache of wanting what they shouldn't - and wanting it well.

I want characters who should know better - and want it anyway.

I want stories where love is inconvenient. Where it’s earned. Where it burns, quietly and ferociously, just beneath the surface.

I will never be over it

I’ve loved tennis for as long as I can remember. I was a kid when Boris Becker won Wimbledon for the first time, and I still remember the shock and thrill of it. Every summer, I’d watch the big tournaments—Wimbledon, the US Open—cheering for favourites, crying over finals, holding my breath through tiebreaks. Tennis has always been there in the background of my life.

But this past year? Something changed. I didn’t just watch the tournaments. I tripped and fell face-first into the tennis rabbit hole, and my ADHD brain never looked back.

Suddenly I wasn’t just watching finals—I was streaming early-round matches from obscure courts in the middle of the night. I was memorising ranking points, tracking players through Challenger events, and refreshing draw sheets like it was my job. What had been a familiar hobby became a full-blown hyperfixation.

And honestly? It makes perfect sense. Because tennis, as a sport, is practically tailor-made for the ADHD brain.

🧠 The ADHD Brain Craves Chaos (And Tennis Delivers)

People talk about ADHD like it’s a lack of attention—but really, it’s an avalanche of attention. A constant, restless hunger for stimulation. We don’t just want something to focus on—we want everything, all at once, right now.

Tennis is perfect for that. It’s always moving. Always shifting. There’s no off-season, just a weekly churn of tournaments: new cities, new surfaces, new stories. Matches run almost 24/7, thanks to international time zones and overlapping events. And my brain absolutely eats it up.

Some days I feel like I’m conducting an entire symphony of tennis in the background of my life. I’ve got live scores on the BBC site permanently open. I’m lurking in Discord servers, scrolling Tumblr, catching up on fan analysis, watching streams on one screen while doing something completely unrelated on another. If I can’t watch, I’ll listen—commentary in my ears while I work, drive, cook. I always want to know what’s happening, who’s playing, and what it means for the rankings.

And I’ve had so many favourite players over the years. McEnroe, Becker, Agassi, Hewitt, Ferrero, Ferrer, Henman, Rusedski, Nadal... names that marked different eras of my life. Right now? It’s Jannik Sinner. I’m a little bit feral about him, if I’m honest. His calm intensity, the way he’s grown, the narrative of it all. My brain has fully latched on.

Hyperfixation means I don’t just enjoy tennis—I need it. I collect every detail, chase every stat, build an emotional attachment to players’ arcs like they’re characters in an epic novel. I cheer like a maniac. I grieve their losses like personal heartbreaks. It’s deeply immersive, and deeply ADHD.

💥 The Joy of Feeling Everything

One of the secret superpowers of ADHD is intensity. When we love something, we love it big. It’s not casual; it’s not background noise. It’s a full-body, full-brain experience. And with tennis, that intensity finds the perfect outlet.

I get emotionally attached to players like they’re old friends. I follow their arcs, their interviews, their off-court stories. I root for the underdogs, the veterans on a comeback, the teenagers making their first deep run. I feel the drama of a five-setter in my bones. I get actual adrenaline spikes during match points. Sometimes I have to pause matches to pace around the room like a sports parent at a school final.

Tennis gives me endless narratives to invest in—rivalries, redemption stories, unexpected breakthroughs. And the sport’s natural unpredictability? Chef’s kiss. My ADHD brain thrives on that kind of emotional volatility. It's dopamine with a scoreboard.

🌀 …But Also, It Can Get a Bit Much

Of course, the flip side of hyperfixation is that it’s not always healthy. ADHD doesn’t really come with a dimmer switch. When I’m in it, I’m all in. And sometimes, that means I burn out.

I’ll watch twelve/thirteen hours of matches in a day (first day of Wimbledon there were TWENTY SEVEN matches I wanted to watch), forget to eat lunch, and then feel completely wiped out with post-slam emptiness when it’s all over. I’ll refresh pages and track rankings like my mood depends on it—and sometimes, it kind of does. There are days when I realise I haven’t listened to music or read a book in weeks because all my spare time is going to livestreams, stats, and press conference clips.

And when a favourite player loses—especially if it’s early, or unexpected—it can hit harder than it should. It feels silly sometimes, getting so upset about a sport. But hyperfixation doesn’t really care what’s “rational.” It’s real. The emotions are real.

There’s also the ADHD guilt loop: the moment I step back and go, Should I be this obsessed? Should I be more balanced? Should I care less? The truth is, I don’t always want to care less. But I do try to remind myself to pause. To breathe. To let myself step away when I need to. Because I know the cycle by now: fixation, immersion, burnout, reset.

💛 Letting It Matter

I’ve learned not to fight it anymore—this way my brain grabs hold of things and refuses to let go. My ADHD doesn’t always play by the rules, but it’s not broken. It’s wired for passion. For deep dives. For connection.

Tennis gives me structure and chaos at the same time. A rhythm that’s always changing. A story that’s never finished. It gives my brain something to build with—facts, feelings, routines, predictions. It’s comfort. It’s stimulation. It’s joy.

Yes, sometimes I have to pull back. Sometimes I have to take a breath and remind myself I don’t need to follow every match or know every stat. But other times? I lean in. I let myself feel it all. The wins, the losses, the late-night streams. The Tumblr memes and score-watching tabs and yelling into the void with strangers on Discord.

Because in a world that often tells neurodivergent people to be less, to be quieter, calmer, more contained—hyperfixation can feel like resistance. Like claiming joy on our own terms.

So yes, I am currently obsessed with Jannik Sinner. Yes, I do keep live scores open while working. Yes, I cry over matches and scream over fifth sets and watch tennis like it’s the greatest drama ever written.

And honestly?

It kind of is.