Librarians and teachers looking to squeeze three more weeks of PD into their summer might want to check out Greg McVerry’s #EDU522: “three weeks to figure out the web and how to use it to teach.”

Let’s teach students how to own their data, manage their online identity, and build the web.

Drew Zandonella-Stannard perfectly captures the reality of early parenthood in the latest issue of her newsletter.

I have been really digging newsletters for the past several months. I’m planning to do a write up of my faves soon. But for now, think about these questions:

Are we BFFs? Should we be BFFs? Do you like to imagine we’re BFFs?

If the answer to any of these is yes, my new newsletter is for you. (Sorry, the two people who signed up for my old secret newsletter… This is a whole different thing. But it’s still for you.)

A really common exercise to help people decide how to spend their time is to ask them to imagine their funeral. What do they want to be remembered for?

The only answer I consistently come up with is that I want the people gathered to all feel, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I cared about them.

My brother-in-law got married this past weekend. My mother-in-law had to give a speech at the rehearsal dinner. She was self-conscious going into it. At the reception, she told me that as she stood there, she thought, “Well, Kimberly would tell me I can do this, so I can.” And thinking of that helped her get through it, and of course she did a beautiful job.

I want as many people as possible to feel that way. I don’t know what kind of reach this newsletter will have or where it will go. But I hope each person who reads it will feel like they’re not alone, like someone believes in them, like someone has their back.

I’m describing it as

Like a high five in your inbox. Platonic love notes and things that made me think of you.

If that sounds like something you would like to have in your life, you can sign up here.

My new newsletter: Like a high five in your inbox. Platonic love notes and things that made me think of you. khirsh.us/b/1Rs

Just browsed the cooking section of the Durham County Library Hoopla Collection and I’m blown away by how comprehensive it is. I want to cook all the things!

I wrote 279 words about definitions of “makerspace” today. Tomorrow: reviewing all 26ish pages I’ve written so far and making a plan for the conclusion.

Just thought to myself, “I want to be the Jonathan Van Ness of library science.” I’ll let you know when I figure out what I mean by that.

Hey writers. What are your day jobs?

I’m fairly open about the fact that I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and polycystic ovary syndrome and that fatigue is my primary symptom for both of these. I’m in the middle of a Hashimoto’s flare up, and today I sat down and made a little table of the types of tasks I can do depending on what type of day I’m having: low energy, medium energy, or high energy.

This is a valuable table because often I think that, since I’m working on a writing project and a curriculum development project, I can only ever get any work done on high energy days. But that’s not so, because each of those projects is made up of smaller tasks. Writing up my literature review workflow really helped me set up this table. Here it is in list form, in case it would be valuable for anyone else.

Literature Review Tasks

Low Energy

• Literature search

Medium Energy

• AIC review
• concept map
• revision

High Energy

• synthetic note
• memo
• outlining
• writing

Curriculum Development

Low Energy

• identify resources
• format documents

Medium Energy

• outline

High Energy

• write

This is a great example of a library policy that was excluding people and how a library professional changed it. Le… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Reading the Hopeless/Rodriguez run of Spider-Woman and feeling super seen.

Sorry for weird colors- I use a blue light filter app and it affects my screen grabs.

Anyway, highly recommend for parents-to-be or new parents.

Which, I recently read a thing that says postpartum is three years, so if you, like me, have been doing this for almost two years already and don’t feel a lot more competent than you did in the first six weeks, don’t feel bad.

When you have been together for almost 20 years and you’re both librarians. Happy anniversary, Will!

Me: ugh writing this comps lit review is such a slog Also Me: I should probably put together an annotated bibliography of everything that’s been written about Rupert Giles and librarianship

I’ve owned my own personal domain since 2001, though it’s a different domain name now than it was then. For the past year or so I’ve been trying to remember how I internetted in 2001, because I’m super nostalgic and think that was my favorite Internet time, and then I remembered that the Internet Archive has my back. So I visited my own domain on the Internet archive and have implemented a few things here inspired by that.

Here they are so far (probably more to come):

• A "Currently" widget to let you know what I'm enjoying right now
• A shoutbox widget where you can say hi
• A "Speaking" page about where you can find me in meatspace
• A "Following" page full of links with fun annotations

My makerspaces lit review is just over 25 pages, with two sections left to write: definitions and conclusion. After I get those done, I’ll take a little break to work on other stuff. (Reading about Connected Learning, probably!) Then back to revise this.

True story, the “I Robot, You Jane” episode of Things of Bronze is the episode I’m most excited about recording. That episode of Buffy captures so perfectly what it was like to be a teen computer girl in the late 90s.

Hey friend! Do you have a website and/or blog? I want to visit it! Tell me about it, please.

Bought an Instant Pot at the urging of fellow co-working parents and I don’t know how long it’s been since I was this excited about a purchase.

I’m 37 today. It’s a number that sounds grown up. I think I felt more grown up at 27, though.

Maybe I’m Benjamin Buttoning. (Making that reference dates me. The fact that I’m pretty sure I’m repeating a joke I think I’ve already made on this blog and don’t care is also proof of my age.)

It only just occurred to me that reverse Benjamin Buttoning is just normal aging.

I have neither read nor seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

I find myself craving inspiration in the form of people sharing their stories with humility. I’m over gurus and authorities.

I long for stories of vulnerability and authenticity.

I miss distant friends.

Yesterday I found out that my thyroid is out of whack again. I’m trying to remember everything I learned before, not just about how to heal, but also how to cope.

I feel despair often, but then there’s this:

My kid is giggling in the tub right now and there’s no better sound in the world.

It feels perfect to come across this on my 37th birthday.

Tonight I went to Goth night at a Tarot-themed bar/lounge. I ate delicious Indian food from the restaurant next door. I got a spot-on, meaningful Tarot reading, for only $5. I had a strong drink. I danced to dark alternative music with my dreamy spouse and lovely sister while my friend spun records. For a brief time, I let my stress fall away and felt like a well person living in the world.

It was beautiful and I hope to do it again.

Most of my adult life has been impacted by chronic illness. I’ve got two: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and polycystic ovary syndrome. (I also have depression and anxiety, but they seem to be symptoms of those two physical illnesses, because when those are well-managed, the mental illnesses are barely noticeable.) I spent many years learning to manage them, and they were fairly well-managed before I got pregnant and for the first two trimesters of my pregnancy. Most importantly, I developed several strategies to use when I feel like absolute garbage.

I can’t remember any of them.

Breastfeeding is a funny thing; it basically takes whatever you knew about your hormones - whether they were affected by PCOS or not - and makes all of that invalid. Now your estrogen is suppressed, you’re producing prolactin, and when it comes to menstruation, all bets are off. So you might, for example, find yourself having your period for 4 or 5 weeks in a row, then not for a week, then again for several more days.

Which might, purely hypothetically speaking, leave you feeling fatigued, lightheaded, and with a sensation of pins-and-needles in your feet.

Perhaps from anemia.

I have, in fact, found myself in this situation, and I have seen my doctor, and she has assured me that yes, this is probably related to breastfeeding, and we’re doing blood tests to figure out next steps in fixing my symptoms, even if the menstrual wonkiness persists. So I’m doing what I can, medically.

But let’s say she puts me on an iron supplement tomorrow. (Likely.)

It’s still going to take some time to feel better. And I don’t know what to do in the meantime, because I can’t just retreat from life.

I’ve been saying my kid is 22 months old for a few days but I’m just now realizing he’s only 21 months old. This is going to be so much easier when I can just say, “Two.” Right now,  “One” doesn’t seem to give him enough credit for all the growing he’s done in the past 9 months.

At age 22 months, M. is generating Curious George/Pigeon crossovers, so yeah, definitely my kid.

My makerspaces lit review is now at just over 15 pages. It’s mostly cutting and pasting from synthetic notes rather than new writing. That feels a little like cheating but it also feels really nice to know that all the writing I’ve done since January is actually useful. There are lots of wacky little comments to myself like “Do a better job paraphrasing instead of quoting here,” and a few places that need to be better synthesized or fleshed out. Goal 1 is just to get it done. Goal 2 is to go back and make it better.