I’ve been trying to avoid doing double monthly updates, however, it became necessary to make my update for July and August 2023 one. July 2023 was an incredibly busy month for me as I moved GeekDis, my annual event about disability representation, to coincide with Disability Pride month. When it got to halfway through August 2023, and I still hadn’t found the time or energy to write July’s update I realised it was better to delay it.

This is going to be a long one so hold on to your hats!

There were so many feels in July 2023, some of them amazing and some of them very difficult. Disability Pride month is both wondrous and awful at times, with an incredible sense of community surrounded with the bittersweet recognition that most people don’t even realise it was exists. I found myself falling into some negative patterns while talking to people on Twitter, and had to pull myself back a few times.

Physically, migraines were a pest again in both months. I don’t know if it’s because the weather has been all over the place this summer, noise factors or my migraines are getting worse. I’ve ruled out it being my sinuses by taking my nasal inhaler more regularly They were particularly bad right before my depo appointment as hormones got worse. I wondered why they things got so bad this month in particular, then when I made my next appointment I found out that my nurse has stopped giving me the earliest date. I had started getting my next depo injection as soon as possible to prevent my hormones playing havoc, but now I’m booking three months in advance she seems to only be willing to book on the exact date it’s due.

As I had a migraine at my last appointment, I felt too ill to argue. If it keeps happening I’ll need to try to argue for an earlier date for my depo again. I’m going to wait until the autumn to rule out the weather and then make an attempt to see my GP about my migraines. I think it’s time to see if my medication needs adjusting again.

August was difficult emotionally for several reasons. The first was yet another change with Twitter (yes, it’s always going to be Twitter to me). The changes have been steadily getting to me, as they have many people, but losing Tweetdeck to subscribers only was a big issue for me. Over the last few years I’ve been managing my social media feeds by selectively narrowing what I see to help my mental health. Tweetdesk was a huge part of how I did that with Twitter and losing it was overwhelming. Twitter is the way I communicate with a lot of friends, and it’s where my support network is, and I’ve already seen so many people leave due to the changes. Thankfully I managed to find a workable alternative – until it gets shut down.

There’s also been a huge upsurge in ableism and elitism in the ME/CFS and Long Covid (LC) community, and it’s been affecting my mental health. ME/CFS is a debilitating condition that has levels of severity; mild, moderate and severe. To give you an idea of what this means, I’m moderate and am mostly housebound. People with severe ME/CFS are bed bound, and struggle horribly especially as there has been hardly any research done for our condition. There is currently only one study being done in the UK, the DecodeME study, whereas if you check any other condition there will be many studies attributed to it – especially a condition connected to a large outbreak or pandemic.

Severe ME/CFS patients are essentially left to die (and yes, this is a condition that leads to death) by medical professionals who turn their backs on them. To say patients are so upset is an incredible understatement. I was incredibly frustrated at how I was treated while seeking a diagnosis and how it took over two years, so I can’t imagine how they feel. However, it makes me feel like utter shit when some people with severe ME/CFS or LC act as though their lives are worse than any other disabled person. While other disabled people may not be in the same physical position as them, they have dealt with the same ableism. They have been ignored by society, dropped by friends, and been abandoned by medical professionals. Most of all they have had their life ripped apart by a change that they never saw coming. To act as though this only happens to people with severe ME/CFS or LC is not just ignorant, it’s disrespectful.

It also makes me feel as someone with a lesser severity of ME/CFS as though I have no right to “complain” about my own struggles. I’m not bed bound, so my life isn’t that bad. Never mind my seven other conditions. I have a hard enough trouble proving to non-disabled people that I’m ill enough, and now I have to prove it to people who have the same condition as me?

I especially felt this when Life of Pippa spoke with journalists when the initial findings of the DecodeME study were released, and she was criticised by people with severe ME/CFS/LC. One particular person complained that she was too made up, and too perky. They even dismissed her use of a wheelchair.

While this person was right to point out that the media ignores people with severe ME/CFS/LC, they don’t realise how much work disabled content creators put into their careers. Life of Pippa has worked for years to build up her brand to the point that she was recognised enough that journalists wanted to talk to her about ME/CFS. The sad reality is that isn’t possible for people with severe disabilities. I struggle just to keep up with a blog, for example. It bothers me that people in our own community only see what they want to see and choose to promote the differences rather than recognising what we have in common.

I’ve noticed that there’s a big difference between those of us who were born with a health condition and those who suddenly became ill. Growing up with a chronic health condition doesn’t mean that you grow accustomed to being ill, far from it, but you don’t view it as a challenge that you can never overcome because you do overcome it as you grow up. I talked a lot with my therapist about how I don’t talk about my disabilities as a roadblock and more as a situation to adapt to. But don’t dare mention accepting your disabilities on Twitter because that’s a huge no-no. People really need to learn how to express themselves without putting down other people’s own experiences. Too often they quote RT someone else and rebuke them as a mode of self-expression, not realising that this hurts the person they’re RTing. It just felt like this was happening a lot in August 2023 particularly.

There was a lot happening on Just Geeking By in July 2023, and that meant for the first time in a long time there were posts that weren’t book reviews! I didn’t get as many of my own posts out as I wanted to, but I’m very happy with how much content was created for GeekDis 2023! You can view all the content created by myself and other participants on their own sites over at the GeekDis 2023 content hub.

As for what content was posted here on Just Geeking By, I’m really glad that I have this section of my monthly update as when I went to pull up posts for July I found that one hadn’t scheduled properly and was still sitting in my drafts /facepalm

• CYMERA Book Festival 2023: Recap and Review

• The Disability Book Tag! [Original]

• #GeekDis Interview with Colleen Cosplay!

• Guest Post: Fly Or Die: The Ableist Narrative of Toxic Perseverance [#Geekdis]

• #GeekDis Interview with author Sally Doherty

• #GeekDis Interview with author DeAndra Davis

• #GeekDis Interview with Wesley of Forge Ahead: A Party To Access

• Guest Post: Crowdfunding Kidlit [#Geekdis]

July started with some Diablo IV to finish off maps in preparation for the first season, which we intended to play… and then we started playing Guild Wars 2 (GW2). We’ve never really played GW2 properly; I’ve dabbled in it, and Chris has played a bit of it with me. This time we got properly hooked and even though we kept saying we needed to do season one, it never quite happened.

As Chris was behind in the story it meant I was replaying it with him. I didn’t mind as we were starting with Living World season 1 which has such a good story, and as I did it on another character it meant I could get rewards again! To maximise that I started on my asura revenant and then swapped to my human mesmer. I enjoyed my revenant far more than my mesmer, and was glad when we caught up to where my necromancer was in the story. I much prefer playing that character in reaper spec.

We made our way through Living World Season 1, Season 2 and then headed into the first expansion Heart of Thorns. I had stopped somewhere in Living World Season 3, well to be more precise I got stuck on a quest because I stopped playing part way through it and when I returned I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing!

By the end of August we had completed the second expansion, Path of Fire. That was all completely new to me and was very enjoyable. We’ve now started Living World Season 4 and continue to be enjoying the game. A new expansion, Secrets of the Obscure, just came out, but we’ve got The Icebrood Saga (aka Living World Season 5) and then another expansion, End of Dragons, before we get to the new one.

One of the big things different about the game compared to us last playing it is mounts. Unlike other games, GW2 does mounts a bit differently. There are nine different mounts which you can then get skins for that change their appearance rather than collecting many different mounts. Each mount has unique abilities that players use for different situations in the game. One jumps up high, one goes through portals, and of course, there are ones that fly.

We have so far unlocked up to the jackal, and we unlocked the hidden mount, the griffon. It was a long-winded achievement to do, but it was fun!

While the pretty skins need to be bought with real money, I like that you can use dyes to change the colour of your mount. One of the things I love about GW2 is the wide range of dyes. FFXIV has dyes too, however, in comparison the range is very limited.

As I was busy working on GeekDis I mostly stuck to just watching TV shows in July. As so many shows and seasons had finished last month, I started quite a few new shows in July. They were:

• Almost Paradise – Season 1 & 2 – I’m a huge fan of Christian Kane, and I loved the idea of a DEA agent who is forged into early retirement and decides to buy a gift shop in the Philippines, a place he was once deployed to. But it turns out to be a lot different from what he remembered. Instead of being the peaceful island, the Philippines has become a tourist development. On top of that he ends up getting involved in cases with the local police. It’s completely set in the Philippines with a Filipino main cast other than Christian Kane and the odd guest, and the main cast are brilliant actors who also do their own stunts.
• Evil – Season 1 – 3 – This show caught my eye after watching Person of Interest and I checked to see what the actors had done since. It popped up when I was looking up Michael Emerson, and this show caught my eye. It’s about a psychologist who joins a tech specialist and a priest in training to work on special cases for the Catholic Church where their job is to prove or disprove whether someone is possessed when an exorcism is requested. The show jumps between the idea of whether the supernatural is real or whether people are faking it/hallucinating in season one. I’m not going to spoil the answer 😉 and just say that it’s a very interesting show, with a stellar cast. It is very dark though.
• Not Dead Yet – Season 1 – This light-hearted comedy is based on Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up by Alexandra Potter is a little outside my usual type of TV show, but I was so intrigued by the concept. A newly single journalist returns to her home town and the only position open at her old paper is writing obituaries. It’s not ideal, but it pays the bills. What she doesn’t expect is to get haunted by the ghost of the person she’s writing about… it was this quirky supernatural aspect that caught by eye and I lapped it up.
• Poker Face – Season 1 – I wasn’t sure about this one featuring Natasha Lyonne, who apparently is amazing according to several comments I saw. Personally, I didn’t rate her that much as an actor before I watched this show and I while I think she played this role well I can think of a lot better actors. The show has a unique set-up; Lyonne is the only regular cast member. Every episode takes place in a different location with different characters as she runs away from trouble and each time she solves a mystery. It was quite enjoyable, but more for the actors that joined her than Lyonne’s own skills.
• Orphan Black – Season 1 – This has been on my to watch list for a long time, and unfortunately I didn’t get far with it. It’s available to stream on Channel 4 and their online player has eight adverts in every advert break – yes, I counted. I got put off watching the show due to how long the advert breaks were.
• Lie to Me – Season 1 – 3 – I can’t believe it took me so long to watch this show! It’s about an expert in lie detection who is hired by various clients to prove whether someone is lying. It was a brilliant show with a fantastic cast and I wish it had more than three seasons.

I watched one movie during July and that was Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard as it has been on my to watch list for a long time, and it was about to leave the streaming service. It’s the sequel to the Hitman’s Bodyguard starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, and they are joined by the fabulous Salma Hayek in the sequel as Jackson’s wife. She completely stole the show, and it was a brilliant movie. If you enjoyed the first one I highly recommend the second.

I continued watching new shows in August:

• The Bletchley Circle – Season 1 & 2 – This historical drama has been on my to watch list for a while and while it wasn’t quite what I expected, I did really enjoy it. It has a couple of British actors that I love to watch, and once again they were fantastic. It’s about a group of female code-breakers who worked at Bletchley during World War II. I expected it to be set during that time, however, it’s set years later when they have been made to “move on” and forget that they once helped save their country. It was very interesting seeing things from their perspective and thinking about how many women were forced to become housewives despite being highly intelligent and capable of so much more. In the show they end up solving murders using the skills they used in the war.
• The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco – Season 1 – A follow-on from the original show, two characters (incidentally my favourite actors!), follow up on a murder that happened at Bletchley and head to San Francisco where they meet up with some former American colleagues. It’s the same format as the original British based show just set in the US.
• The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries – This series of TV movies is classed as a TV show on my tracking site, so I’m sticking it under TV shows. A murder mystery solving librarian? Naturally I was intrigued, and I had to check these Hallmark movies out. We don’t really have access to the Hallmark Channel or movies over here. They pop up occasionally on terrestrial TV channels as TV movies, and now the Hallmark Channel is available as subscription on Amazon Prime, so these flew under my radar until recently. They’re based on books by Charlaine Harris and I got hooked very quickly.

In August 2023 I caught up with new seasons for shows I watch regularly and finished off some.

• Veronica Mars – Season 4 – I was part of the way through the final season when I got a major spoiler for a character death (if you know, you know) and when that happens I tend to avoid finishing things. I decided it was time to finish the show and get it off my list of shows to finish.
• The Brokenwood Mysteries – Season 9 – I didn’t realise that the latest season of Brokenwood has been available for me to watch for free on UK TV play for months.
• The Magicians – Season 3 – Once I finished Veronica Mars I moved on to another unfinished show but have only managed to watch a few episodes.

And some new seasons have started up again for:

• FBI – Season 5
• FBI: Most Wanted – Season 4
• FBI: International – Season 2
• Annika – Season 2
• The Chelsea Detective – Season 2

In July 2023 my reading was focused on disability and neurodivergent reads for GeekDis 2023 with a few personal reads scattered in between:

• We’ve Got This: essays by disabled parents
• HellSans by Ever Dundas
• The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle (Edinburgh Nights #3) by T.L. Huchu
• Disability Pride: Dispatches from a Post-ADA World by Ben Mattlin (DNF)
• I Will Die on This Hill by Meghan Ashburn and Jules Edwards
• The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
• A Mind Like Mine: 21 famous people and their mental health by Rachael Davis
• When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Chair: A Memoir by Ryan Rae Harbuck
• Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs
• The Hawkling (Tales of the Edge #2) by Rebecca Zahabi

The books I read in August 2023 were:

• Never a Hero (Monsters, #2) by Vanessa Len
• Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim
• In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia Anthology
• The Fragile Threads of Power (Threads of Power, #1) by V.E. Schwab
• The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth
• Rayleigh Mann in the Company of Monsters by Ciannon Smart
• Sun of Blood and Ruin (Sun of Blood and Ruin, #1) by Mariely Lares

My reviews in July 2023 focused on books with disability and neurodivergent representation as a part of GeekDis:

[rcno-book-listing ids=”31161, 31640, 31785, 31877, 31924, 32001, 31945″ wc=250 readmore=”Read my review”]

The books I reviewed in August 2023 were:

[rcno-book-listing ids=”32102, 32108, 32104, 32244″ wc=250 readmore=”Read my review”]

I have mostly been taking it easy since finishing GeekDis 2023. After a lot of thought I’ve decided to go on hiatus from November to the new year. There are multiple reasons for this decision. A big one is that all year I’ve been behind due to being ill last autumn/winter, and struggling with a new chronic health condition ever since. Due to that I’ve not been able to do anything else but try to keep my head above water. I have so many things to do behind the scenes and I have an interview to finish transcribing which embarrassingly is from before the pandemic.

It’s also time to change Just Geeking By’s main focus to books. It’s been heading that way for a while now, and I’d been stubbornly holding onto the geek blog niche as I felt I was going to lose visitors. Then I realised that I already had or never had them to begin with. I was always a bit of an outsider in the geek blog community because I talked about books and while I’m a gamer I’m an MMORPG player which means I tend to stick to one game at a time. I’ve never really fit in with that niche and if I’m honest, there’s not much of a community to leave. Very few people from it still follow me, fewer still keep in touch and some only follow to gain a follower then unfollow you a few months later.

Whereas the book blog niche feels like a better fit right now. I’m still going to do my thing and post what I want, when I want, but this way I won’t feel the weight of expectation to do more geek content if I don’t want to.

I’ve already started slowing down book reviews to once a week from August 2023, and that will be the same for September and October. There will still be some reviews and posts from me in November and December, however, unless they are absolute wish list books I’m avoiding applying for ARCs and any reviews will be personal ones.

If you stuck with me to the end of this lengthy post, thank you!

How was your July and August 2023?

Are you ready to head into autumn or are you missing the summer already?

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