More anti-racism resources.

Another valuable resource: Anti-Racism Resources: Books, Conversations and People Leading The Charge

Bit of levity to break up the awfulness: the way my transcription software tries to transcribe “Mjolnir” (Thor’s hammer): meal near. me on there. me on air. (But it knows how to spell Moxxi from Borderlands 3, instead of moxie.)

Been quiet for the past couple of days because anything I have to say feels inane right now. This will probably continue for a bit longer.

🔖 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice is immensely valuable, because it gives you concrete actions to take in the face of our overwhelming and appalling reality.

🔖 Read recently:

• The Three Equations for a Happy Life, Even During a Pandemic
• Cosplay Is a Business and It Is Suffering
• Why it’s so hard to read a book right now, explained by a neuroscientist
• Bookstagram: The Antidote to Social Media Grift
• The End of Meat Is Here
• If The End of Meat is Here, What’s Next?

In November 2018, I had respiratory inflammation that was on its way to becoming pneumonia when I traveled to Charleston with my husband and then 2-year-old son. (He’s 3 now.) My husband was presenting at a conference, so my son and I touristed about; I was exhausted and stressed caring for a toddler alone for much of the day, away from home, while dealing with respiratory trouble. One of my favorite places to visit in Charleston is the South Carolina Aquarium. As I sat in front of their Great Ocean Tank and my son climbed up and down the steps that double as stadium seating, I felt an immense sense of calm come over me. Dr. Wallace J. Nichols would attribute this to what he calls “Blue Mind,” and he’s not wrong, but in that moment, I felt that Blue Mind was enhanced by the beautiful soundtrack playing in that exhibit.

So I sought out aquarium music. I don’t know what the soundtrack was there, but I learned that Douglas Morton composes music for aquariums, and put together all of his aquarium music on Spotify in a single playlist. (He has other ocean-themed music as well that you may wish to check out.) Enjoy!

Pretty proud of my new About page. You should probably go read it.

New bio: “space mermaid sparkle goth”

and new profile photo:

(If you, too, are obsessed with manatees and need to dress like one, a quick search for “manatee kigurumi” should help you out.)

Hi friend.

Austin Kleon wrote yesterday,

I am also grateful that I have a repeatable process of making and sharing work. Every day has been the same for the past three years: I write in my diary, and (almost) every day, I post something to this blog. Something private, and something public. And then every week, I send out a newsletter, and eventually enough days stack up that I can put out another book.

I want this, too. I am going to work on developing it.

I have been embracing this week the fact that our collective current lifestyle is not a temporary, crisis-mode situation. For my family, anyway, this is how life will be for at least the next three months. And because during those three months I intend to complete my data collection and analysis for my dissertation, I’m having to shift both some things about my work space (for example, putting a door on it) and some things about my headspace (for example, recognizing that self-care and household tasks deserve attention just as much as my dissertation does). I want to feel less frantic. I’ve reached a point now where I feel comfortable trying to figure out what I can do to make this time easier for our family. Now comes the balancing act of giving myself grace without using this as an excuse to continue to act like we’re on a very depressing vacation.

I do want to get back to writing about my research process, in my very me way. I want to write about the things I’m learning trying do deal with my presumed fibromyalgia, and the ways I’m trying to harmonize self-care and parenting. (Hint: It involves doing Cosmic Kids Yoga during my mom time instead of trying to use some of my work time to squeeze in Yoga with Adriene.)

I’ve been crocheting up a storm, dreaming of an endless supply of mandala blanket patterns because they seem to be the antidote to boredom. Also if my family gets tired of having them around, they can sell for a pretty high price. I’m going to make them either way, so I’m not worried about getting an hourly wage for them. (True story, if a crocheter received minimum wage for their time, plus the cost of materials, every time they sold something, mostly no one would buy crochet. Designing patterns is where the money is.)

I’m always fascinated by people’s creative processes and writing advice, and maybe I’ll read more about those and share them. I’m also planning to read more essays and published diaries in the near future.

What fascinates you? What have you sort of always been interested in, but only recognized that interest recently?

Have a lovely the rest of your Thursday. Or Friday, I guess, if you are many timezones away.

💙
K

100 Days of #bluemind Day 3: Sat on the front porch and watched and listened to the rain. Tried to capture the rain sound on video but it didn’t turn out well.

I’m still in a mostly flow, very little stock place.

I’m coming up with ideas for blog posts all the time, and keeping a list of them in Notion:

Most of these blog post ideas are for helping people, for sharing ideas related to work. I do tend to and intend to blog about everything, and work is part of everything. But I never feel like writing these posts, even though I have all these ideas. And I think it’s because I mostly conceive of this as a personal blog. And those topics all feel only personal-adjacent. Not impersonal, mind you, but they’re just not where I’m at right now. Maybe I’ll get to them later.

My friend @tiff_frye posted her first substantive post here on Micro.blog yesterday, saying

I guess this is a personal blog, and through it I want to explore the things I think about every day in an effort to clarify and examine my thoughts.

That’s what I mean to be doing here, but instead I’ve been coming up with lists of things like I was trying to create an SEO-optimized, super pro, Darren Rowse-approved (let’s be clear, I love Darren Rowse, I think he’s great) blog. And that’s NOT what I’m doing. I’m trying to create an old-fashioned, late ‘90s/early ‘00s online diary. Jennicam, but with words.

Maybe clearly stating my intentions in that fashion will help me stay where I mean to be.

Maybe this is an impromptu manifesto.

👦 My child has decreed that henceforth this character shall be known as R2 Bleep Bloop. You’re welcome.

100 Days of #bluemind, Day 2: Took a drive along the North Durham Country Byway, crossing over Lake Michie and the Flat River.

🧶Got bored making a sweater that just uses the same stitches over and over, so added Sophie’s Universe to the mix. Very happy with this decision.

Had a great call with my school’s career services coordinator where she urged me not to let worrying about jobs become a distraction from finishing my dissertation. I’m so grateful every time someone says this, including my advisor and my husband.

Today is the first day of the 100 Days of Blue Mind challenge. I got my #bluemind on today by gazing up at the clouds from my hammock.

Deep cleaning 3 essential oil diffusers at once, as you do.

I just realized that to figure out what professional options I want to consider in the future, I essentially need to do an informational interview with my past self, the version of me who has her dream job.

I don’t think of librarianship as a CALLING, but I do consider it a disposition. For example, I just texted 2 friends to tell them about an amazing vegan ice cream I found recently. That’s a very librarian thing to do.

Finished reading: The Addams Family: An Evilution by Charles Addams and Kevin Miserocchi 📚

Happy World Goth Day! I’m GothEnough and if you want to be, so are you! If you are Not-a-Goth or not goth, you can still celebrate.

🔖 Read ‘A joyful thing’: the man who wrote his wife a poem every day for 25 years. I have a bad habit of idealizing other people’s marriages. This article isn’t helping.

North Carolina is moving from Stay-at-Home to Safer-at-Home & I’m anxious about it. My swim club is opening on 6/1 & I want to go swimming but I’m nervous bc autoimmune disease.

I just can’t brain this week, so I’m going to liveblog some career assessment results! First up, the Holland Code. I took the assessment at Truity. This is a measure of your interests, and they’ve broken it down by the more active words used alongside Holland’s original codes, rather than the codes themselves. So according to them, here’s the order of my interests: Creating-Persuading-Thinking-Building-Helping-Organizing. Sounds about right. Again, I’m vaguely drawing on some other sources for this, such as Wikipedia (linked above) and Career Key, but as I understand it, it’s common for career counselors to assign an individual a code according to their top 3 interests rather than the order of all six, for the purposes of career exploration. So let’s do that.

Let’s say I’m a Creating-Persuading-Thinking person. (I would say that’s pretty accurate.) Truity has a Career Search that tells you about different careers and their Holland Codes. Here are some (NOT ALL!) of the options they suggest for me:

• Actor - Yes. I have done this in an amateur capacity A LOT, and in a professional capacity once. I don’t see it being my career, as I desire either stability or control (I feel like acting gives you neither) and want to be home most nights. But definitely looking to take this up as a hobby again, once live performances are a thing.
• Computer or Information Research Scientist - Yes please. If someone wants to hire me to do LIS research without a tenure clock, let me know. I’m deeply uninterested in the tenure-track and VERY interested in research.
• Craft Artist - Endlessly giving myself permission not to monetize this; I do craft and I do love it but I think I wouldn’t like doing it for money.
• Editor - I’m available for this one and going to launch it as an actual service I provide before too long.
• High School Teacher - Been there, done that. Teens are awesome people but K-12 public schools are not institutions where I can thrive.
• Musician or Singer - Another hobby I hope to pick up again when I can. Doing it a little at home, mostly the Animaniacs theme for my kid at bedtime, but thisclose to starting impromptu concerts on my deck where I sing Disney songs and musical theater standards and hope that my neighbors don’t attack me. (I paid a lot of money to sing well, so they shouldn’t want to.)
• Producer - I actually think at this time, being some kind of producer would be pretty ideal for me. Probably a web producer or a research coordinator.
• Writer - Another thing I plan to start doing for money soon.

Overall, what I would call my professional interests - research, writing, editing - line up well with my Holland Code. As do my personal interests - performing and crafting. Okay, Holland Code. You strike me as an accurate test, though I think I know myself pretty well enough that none of this stuff is a surprise.

🔖 Stuff I read yesterday:

• One of Oscar Wilde’s last stops in England before exile was a bookstore.
• Growing Without Schooling
• Science confirms it: Websites really do all look the same