Indexing my Book and Continuing to Fangirl
Aug. 6th, 2026 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pennswoodsI have received the proofs of my book manuscript and have until 10 August to check things, answer final queries and submit my index. It's wild to have my book in hand (metaphorically) like this. It's currently 174 pages without the index, but since I've decided to index only terms instead of authors, it won't be too much longer. Unfortunately, this is also the stage where I am reading (sort of) carefully for mistakes and I've found a few. Unfortunately, I am not someone who is good at noticing mistakes like this and I dread going through the whole book because I will fall asleep a lot because I will be so bored.
However, finding these mistakes has made me feel anxious about being wrong and getting harshly criticized. In essence, I don't think anyone is going to criticize me for the idea of my book, but I am sure that there will be people out there who will find my explanation of a certain theory or pedagogical approach to be wrong, out-of-date, unsophisticated or lacking in nuance. There are people who take their theory very seriously, far more seriously than I take it.
I am also anxious because I have been asked to prepare short videos to help promote the conference for the international association of applied linguistics in Vancouver next year, where I will be a keynote speaker and will be talking about fanfiction! Some of the questions are hard to answer honestly (e.g. what does the theme of the conference mean to me?) but because the conference is being held in Canada, which has two official national languages, we have been asked to respond to some of the questions in more than one language. This is causing so much anxiety in me because I am not bilingual - I am a pretty average language learner with low to intermediate levels of ability in a couple of languages, none of which are French, despite being originally from Montreal, Canada. I scripted some things to say in a mixture of English, German (my strongest second language) and Swedish, but I'm starting to stress about mispronouncing things in Swedish using German pronunciation. In my field, we talk about cross-linguistic influence where one language you speak influences your knowledge and use of another language you speak or are learning. This happens a lot for me with Swedish and German which are both Germanic languages and share a lot of similar spelling but which don't really sound a lot alike. I've been putting this off for a few weeks, but I need to get it done. I just don't want to make a fool of myself in a way that everyone who comes to this conference will see.
In fangirling news, I have been forcing myself to skip videos my algorithm keeps showing me of Hudson and Connor being real people and not their characters. I am not always successful because sometimes they are themselves talking about Heated Rivalry in promotional videos and I'm here for all the Heated Rivalry stuff. Other times I just get sucked in because they are being interesting and I am curious. Yesterday I attempted to swap out social media time and decided to spend more time on Reddit and away from Instagram. Unfortunately, this meant I was reading more political stuff about the state of the US, which I now recognize as being written from an alarmist position and not one that is helpful. An example of this is some former Republican staffer enumerating all the ways that Trump is going to be even worse after the midterms if the Republicans lose both the House and the Senate. I don't need this doomsday take on politics in my head - there is absolutely nothing I can do about it and it is also entirely possible that Trump could die at any time.
Nevertheless, I came away from Reddit feeling anxious and hopeless, which is how I spent too much of last year. I realized that in trying to avoid getting too parasocial about Hudson and Connor, I was sinking back into a damaging mental state. I think I am being a bit dumb about trying to avoid getting too fannish
However, finding these mistakes has made me feel anxious about being wrong and getting harshly criticized. In essence, I don't think anyone is going to criticize me for the idea of my book, but I am sure that there will be people out there who will find my explanation of a certain theory or pedagogical approach to be wrong, out-of-date, unsophisticated or lacking in nuance. There are people who take their theory very seriously, far more seriously than I take it.
I am also anxious because I have been asked to prepare short videos to help promote the conference for the international association of applied linguistics in Vancouver next year, where I will be a keynote speaker and will be talking about fanfiction! Some of the questions are hard to answer honestly (e.g. what does the theme of the conference mean to me?) but because the conference is being held in Canada, which has two official national languages, we have been asked to respond to some of the questions in more than one language. This is causing so much anxiety in me because I am not bilingual - I am a pretty average language learner with low to intermediate levels of ability in a couple of languages, none of which are French, despite being originally from Montreal, Canada. I scripted some things to say in a mixture of English, German (my strongest second language) and Swedish, but I'm starting to stress about mispronouncing things in Swedish using German pronunciation. In my field, we talk about cross-linguistic influence where one language you speak influences your knowledge and use of another language you speak or are learning. This happens a lot for me with Swedish and German which are both Germanic languages and share a lot of similar spelling but which don't really sound a lot alike. I've been putting this off for a few weeks, but I need to get it done. I just don't want to make a fool of myself in a way that everyone who comes to this conference will see.
In fangirling news, I have been forcing myself to skip videos my algorithm keeps showing me of Hudson and Connor being real people and not their characters. I am not always successful because sometimes they are themselves talking about Heated Rivalry in promotional videos and I'm here for all the Heated Rivalry stuff. Other times I just get sucked in because they are being interesting and I am curious. Yesterday I attempted to swap out social media time and decided to spend more time on Reddit and away from Instagram. Unfortunately, this meant I was reading more political stuff about the state of the US, which I now recognize as being written from an alarmist position and not one that is helpful. An example of this is some former Republican staffer enumerating all the ways that Trump is going to be even worse after the midterms if the Republicans lose both the House and the Senate. I don't need this doomsday take on politics in my head - there is absolutely nothing I can do about it and it is also entirely possible that Trump could die at any time.
Nevertheless, I came away from Reddit feeling anxious and hopeless, which is how I spent too much of last year. I realized that in trying to avoid getting too parasocial about Hudson and Connor, I was sinking back into a damaging mental state. I think I am being a bit dumb about trying to avoid getting too fannish
