“If you want to change the world, you have to find a way to live in it.”

“If you want to change the world, you have to find a way to live in it.”
It’s a quote from Into The Badlands. I’m not sure if it was meant to be the least bit profound to anyone, but it just so happens that I do what to change the world and also that I have no idea how to live in it.

It goes back to a question I have been asking myself for going on four years: “what is my place in the world now?”. I don’t know how to live in this world. I constantly feel at odds with my circumstance. I have to figure out how to live in this world. With few exceptions, I never feel like I’m in the right place, like I’m with the right people, or like I’m doing the right thing. This isn’t to say that I often think that I’m in the “wrong” place with the “wrong” people doing the “wrong” thing. It’s more about the fact that the huge majority of my time I’m in my house, by myself, doing nothing of use.

So to find a way to live in the world I need to figure out where should I be? Who should I be with? What should I be doing?

I want to be in war torn country helping get children to safety. I want to be surrounded by people fighting for true equality. I want to be contributing something meaningful that will help countless people.

Those are things I’ve always wanted, maybe I’ve never accomplished any of it because I’m trying to change the world before I’ve figured out how to live in it as it is.

For my fellow Buffy fans, the quote from Into The Badlands might remind you of one of the most iconic quotes from BtVS, when Buffy tells Dawn “The hardest thing in this world is to live it”. That’s why I spend so much time and effort avoiding living in the world. 

I’m not some asshole who thinks that online communities aren’t “real life” or that the friends made on the internet are any less valid. I have many great friends who I’ve met through online fandoms, sometimes we tweet or text, occasionally we get to see each other at conventions, but sadly, moments like that account for a very small percentage of my existence.

Wynonna Earp and its twitter fandom is pretty much all I got. I don’t say this for pity, I say it for accuracy as part of an explanation. I don’t have a job – I can’t have a normal job, I don’t have a family of my own, I don’t have a group of people that I can go hang out with and post pictures of on my Instagram. I have a show and a fandom that I love, but as much as a fantasize to the contrary – I’m not going to get some kind of cool internship from it, I’ve all but begged for a bigger part in helping “lead” the fandom with no luck, and I probably won’t end up in those Instagram photos that make me jealous (working on the jealousy part). I want more from this show that it can give me…because even the best damn show, with the best damn fandom can only fill so much of the empty space. My point is – I need to find a ways to fill the spots in my life that Wynonna Earp can’t and part of doing that is spending a little less time looking at my timeline, wishing and hoping. Maybe if I spend more time being miserable in my reality, I’ll actually start figuring out ways to make it a little less miserable, figuring out ways to live in the whole world, not just on the area of the internet where I’m met with so much love and support.

This is by no means be saying good-bye to this fandom. I’m still here. I’ll still be at all kinds of Cons and I still want people to know they they can DM me if they are having a hard time or just want to chat. I’ll still be making noise and participating in #PoliteNoChill, just maybe not every day.