Kimberly Hirsh

Greetings from our spring break staycation.

Sometimes, I’ll think of someone I connected with online and wonder how they’re doing. I’ll miss them and if I don’t have their email address or they don’t have a newsletter or RSS feed, I just won’t know how they are, because social timelines are bad for my mental health right now.

📚💬 “…if you’re procrastinating on something because you’re worried you won’t do a good enough job, you can relax—because judged by the flawless standards of your imagination, you definitely won’t do a good enough job. So you might as well make a start.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

“…what we think of as ‘distractions’ aren’t the ultimate cause of our being distracted. They’re just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

In November or December, I choose a word for the next year. Then for the first quarter of the new year, I try it out and see if it actually fits. If it doesn’t, I pick a new word to coincide with the spring equinox, the start of the western astrological year.

At the end of 2024, frustrated by the fact that all I did was work, sleep, read, and play video games, I chose the word “More” for 2025. I wanted to do more, connect more, pursue more.

But that’s not the word I’m finding myself living.

My new word for 2025 is “Enough.” Enough is the spirit of harm reduction. It’s enough to feed myself, even if what I feed myself is not what I have in the moments of my richest nutritional profile. It’s enough to do my job and keep myself and my child going.

Two books are really helping me feel into enough, even though I haven’t finished either of them yet:

• How to Keep House While Drowning by K. C. Davis
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

And in the spirit of enough, I’ve decided this blog post is long enough.

🔖 Read The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion? by Oliver Burkeman (The Guardian).

I’m trying to find a space where determinism and existentialism co-exist. I just keep coming back to the line from the TV show Angel: “if nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do.”

I was looking at my On This Day page, reading an old post I wrote that’s especially thoughtful and in-depth about improv, and it struck me that I don’t think that deeply anymore. I miss it.

But I do think that deeply at work, I’m just not blogging about it. May be time to start blogging that stuff.

🔖 Book Riot’s Literary Activism Newsletter explains: Library Funding Targeted in New Trump Executive Order: What It Means & What To Do Now.

📚💬 " The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things." Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

EveryLibrary has created a tool you can use to send an email to your legislators and governors urging them to support federal funding for Libraries. Libraries could see downstream impacts from Trump’s Executive Order as soon as this Friday.

Finished reading: Dark Russian Angel by Odette Stone 📚

Finished reading: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis 📚

The first novella in a series of three. At first I thought it might not be the right moment for me to read this, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The payoff is great.

📚💬 “… once you become convinced that something you’ve been attempting is impossible, it’s a lot harder to keep on berating yourself for failing.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

📚💬 “… there’s no reason to believe you’ll ever feel ‘on top of things,’ or make time for everything that matters, simply by getting more done.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Finished reading: Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell 📚

I really enjoyed this! Sad boys falling in love in space.

📺🍿 How I Met Your Mother co-creator Craig Thomas wrote about the influence the movie A Christmas Story had on the show.

I replied with this:

This has me thinking about the voice-over narration in The Wonder Years, beautifully done by Daniel Stern. A Christmas Story (which for years my dad would put on for its 24-hour marathon) came out in 1983. The Wonder Years ran 1988-1993. What other films and shows use this device? (I think maybe 8-Bit Christmas does?) Are they all doing the same thing with it? What does it do that stories without flashback voiceover don’t? I would read the heck out of a smart pop culture essay about this.

Finished reading: Whiteout by Adriana Anders 📚

Like if The Thing, that Antarctica episode of The X-Files, and a Michael Crichton book all had a baby with a romance novel. So, you know, pretty great.

🔖 Read HTML Is Actually a Programming Language. Fight Me by Tim Carmody (Wired)

Carmody and I came to HTML within a year of each other, both via Netscape, and I love this love letter to my favorite programming language (yes, I love HTML more than BASIC). Count me in as part of HTML’s posse.

Finished reading: The Earl Takes All by Lorraine Heath 📚

A wild premise deftly handled.

Finished reading: Falling Into Bed with a Duke by Lorraine Heath 📚

Lorraine Heath knows the job. Minerva Dodger is a delightful heroine.

💬📚📝 “…a story’s as much house or garden as song.” Jane Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative

I’m very psyched that a local romance lover is launching a mobile romance-focused bookstore. She’s launched an Indiegogo to help her get over the finish line. Please consider contributing!

Finished reading: Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes 📚

A very useful and straightforward book about romance novel structure.

📚💬📝 “…what are we writers but Machiavellian manipulators of a stranger’s emotions?” Gail Carriger, The Heroine’s Journey

Finished reading: The Heroine’s Journey: For Readers, Writers, and Fans of Pop Culture by Gail Carriger 📚

This is a great book about story structure that helped me understand, among other things, why Jean-Luc Picard is my favorite Star Trek captain.