I hope your Wednesday’s going well! (Or Thursday if you’re farther east enough than me that that’s what day it is!)

I’ve been reading and loving Aaron A. Reed’s 50 Years of Text Games. Each week in 2021 he’s featuring a different text game, writing an essay about one from each year from 1971 to 2021. I played a few text games as a kid and this series is really fueling my nostalgia even though I’m only on 1973 in my reading and I didn’t do anything with a computer until probably 1986 or so.

My first computer (well, the family’s computer) was a Sanyo, maybe in the MBC-550 series (the image certainly looks right). Our monitor was monochrome, black with green text, until that monitor died and we switched to one that was black with gold text. I wrote all my school assignments in WordStar and printed them out on a dot matrix printer.

We had some big floppy disks and they had lots of games on them, mostly written in BASIC. I also subscribed to 3-2-1 Contact Magazine which would print BASIC games that you could code into your own computer. A couple of my friends and I really latched onto a couple of specific text adventures when we were in middle school (I’d guess around 1993), probably because they were ones we both happened to have. C and I were very into Wishbringer and L and I were very into Madame Fifi’s… which I’ll let you investigate further yourself but was a very interesting game for two twelve-year-olds, one of whom (me) was perplexed as to why her parents had such a titillating game just lying around. L and I were so inspired by Madame Fifi’s that we began writing our own BASIC text adventure, School Daze, entirely based on our experiences as seventh graders. It stayed on paper - I don’t why I never got it into the computer, but sixth or seventh grade is about when I stopped programming for a couple reasons: 1. afterschool chorus and theater rehearsals ate up my free time 2. computer class was full of programming in Logo which, to me, seemed like it was for babies. I didn’t want to draw circles. I wanted to create elaborate adventures with branching logic. But instead I just stopped programming, and didn’t pick code up again until I learned HTML. Then I went full mark-up/styling and have only done a little bit of true programming since, but this series is definitely tugging at my nostalgia and making me think maybe I’ll try my hand at interactive fiction.

In the introduction to the series, Reed mentions The Freshman, a 2016 interactive fiction (I am not sure about the distinction between an IF with images and a visual novel but I think it has to do with the level of interactivity; I welcome any suggested reading on the subject) that I have played a lot. I’m looking forward to later this year to see what he writes up about that and how things have changed. Certainly the more recent interactive fiction I have played relies more on talking, relationships, and big story actions, and less on things like mapping, manipulating inventory, and moving from room to room. (I recently tried Zork and got totally lost.)

I’ve never actually completed a text adventure; I wonder if as an adult I’ll be better at understanding their tropes. I remember in Madame Fifi’s there’s at one point a “dirty magazine” in the bathroom. As a naive 12yo I thought it was literally a magazine with dirt on it. Only now does it occur to me that “dirty” is describing the magazine’s content rather than its condition.

It’s possible my midlife crisis will involve a lot of computer programming. That would be good, right?

What’s been tweaking your nostalgia recently?

Hello again!

My right hip has been hurting the past couple of days. Or almost a week, I guess - it started last Wednesday and has been off-and-on since then. This isn’t super unusual for me. I have sacralization on that side - my fifth lumbar vertebra is fused to my pelvis (specifically, the ilium, and now the Classicist in me is trying to come up with a bunch of Trojan war jokes related to this congenital deformity). This can be painless but it can also cause lower back pain and bursitis, which is what this probably is. If it doesn’t go away in the next week, I’ll check in with my doctor about it. I’m of an age where these things might need to be resolved by injected steroids rather than careful application of over-the-counter pain relievers.

This pain is constant and so far no motion or position has really alleviated it. Distraction helps some, as I discussed yesterday, but only for a little while. The pain returns and I really don’t know how to work/live through it. I’ve gotten to the point where as long as a migraine isn’t demanding I go to bed and ensconce myself in darkness, I can kind of work through it, but this kind of musculoskeletal/joint pain is newer to me than migraines (I had my first one of those at 7) and I just don’t know how to get around it yet. It’s not the kind of pain that I can breathe through and I guess I could try some gate theory and hold ice in my bare hand or something but that’s not really conducive to tidying, writing, or applying for jobs.

I might need to get a new chair to work in. It’s possible these little folding dining chair things aren’t doing me any favors.

It surprises me how much pain can be a constant, how even if I think I’m not in pain, if anyone asks me about it I notice I am. But this pain, this I notice no matter what.

The goal for treatment of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (which I may or may not have) is not to eliminate pain, but to reduce pain to a tolerable level. I don’t think the amount of pain I’m in right now could be reasonably described as tolerable.

This looks like a big pile of whining to me but I’m going to post it anyway. I don’t think people talk about pain enough.

Now I’m going to eat and have some of those OTC pain relievers I mentioned.

I’m working to get into the flow of daily blogging, so this post will be rather stream of consciousness.

I work best in two-hour chunks. Today, I helped W. revise a project statement for a fellowship application and applied to two jobs. I’m right around the two-hour mark and can feel myself flagging. It’s also time for that 3 pm snack most people need, so I’ll have that when I’m done blogging this.

I’m in the middle of a bit of a grace period for myself, not unlike Kelly J. Baker’s. I’m figuring out how I want to spend my time and what people will pay me for. Yes, I have plans for consulting, but I would also love a little bit of stability and to not pay out of pocket for health insurance. (Blessedly I’m on W’s but it increased his insurance cost by about $400/mo to add me. This was more expensive than any plan I could get on the market, I checked.) So I’m applying for jobs that look especially good, but not applying scattershot. I’m focusing on research and editorial jobs. Today’s jobs were editorial. I’ve got a couple research lined up to apply for tomorrow.

I’m physically very tired much of the time, which is partly because my thyroid levels are off. I don’t know if I’ve written about this recently, but I’ll doubt it. So a refresher in case you’re new here: I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which manifests primarily as hypothyroidism. That means my body attacks my thyroid gland, which then doesn’t work well. I take two synthetic hormone medications to help, plus a couple of supplements to boost the natural production and conversion of thyroid hormones. The thyroid controls metabolism, literally how your body has energy, and my primary symptom is intense fatigue. I also expereince brain fog and joint pain. (I also have polycystic ovary syndrome so basically my whole endocrine system doesn’t know what it’s doing.)

Flares of hypothyroidism sneak up on me because it’s so easy to explain away the symptoms - I’m tired because I go to bed too late, I’m sore because I ate something that probably had corn in it (corn makes me achey), the brain fog is from the tiredness… But when I get lab tests, it’s easier to see the pattern: my thyroid levels, while “normal,” are suboptimal, which is why I feel low-grade misery rather than abject despair.

So in May, I found out those levels were suboptimal and increased the dosage on my supplements to see if, if I provide it with extra building blocks, my thyroid will produce more hormones. And if that’s not enough, we’ll increase the prescription synthetic hormone dosages. We’ll check on that in July.

I’m trying to take care of my body but honestly I don’t really know how to BE embodied. I’m a floating head, a cyborg lady who lives mostly on the web. Being attentive to my body usually means attending to pain and in my experience, distraction is more helpful than mindfulness. But I want to do better by my body, to feed it well and clean it enough and get it moving. But I think I have to do it very gently until this thyroid thing gets sorted out.

What is super weird is that sometimes even when my body is completely worn out, my mind is really active. This leads to a few different things happening. First, I notice all the things I’m not doing because my body is too tired: cleaning out the fridge, putting away the laundry, helping my kid pick up his room, etc. I notice these things and then, because it’s my default, I berate myself for not doing them. But I’m conserving all my energy for mothering so house stuff just has to wait until I have more energy. Sorry, house. Sorry, brain.

The other thing is that my brain wants something to chew on. At first, it was nice being done with my dissertation. But then recently W. was talking about how he was having to think through and write this appication and I thought, “Oh wow, it must be so nice to have something to have to think about and work on.”

But I also feel deeply unready for client work.

Which is part of why I’m here blogging. I’m going to spend at least a week blogging daily to get some activity in for my restless brain without wearing out my body or take on new stress.

So that’s where I’m at. I’m off to have a snack and rest more. How are things with you?

The postpartum experience isn’t just expensive; it can also be one of psychic trauma and creative crisis. Someone who was a person becomes a mother. “You’re not a person. You don’t have a name,” says Zambreno. This feeling of erasure is a current that runs through her work, reaching peak intensity in “To Write as if Already Dead.” “I need to restore myself after being made into a ghost,” Zambreno says. “I always feel like writing the most when I’m being made invisible.”

Kate Zambreno on her new book "To Write as if Already Dead" - Los Angeles Times latimes.com

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I love the way N. K. Jemisin’s The City We Became captures the spirit of the five boroughs of New York here in a way that is legible to non-New Yorkers. This book recasts Lovecraftian horror as a fight for the city’s soul. It features street artists, grad students, an MC-turned-lawyer-turned-councilwoman, a PhD director of an art non-profit, and a sheltered girl who’s never left Staten Island. If you’re looking for representation for Black, Latino, and queer characters, Jemisin’s got you. This book is a fast, fun read that imagines some of the daily horror in our world as being caused by eldritch forces from beyond our universe. Borrowed this one from @durhamcountylibrary. Highly recommend.

What’s a fantasy or sci-fi book you’ve read that helped you think through recent events?

My head is swimming after attending the #FanLIS symposium today. At this moment when I’m taking a few weeks off before launching consulting, occasionally doing job interviews, and mostly resting, I’m in the middle of an existential crisis about what I want to do and who I want to be.

I’m in a position where, if I can bring in a fair amount of freelance work, I could use some of my time as an independent scholar and I think that’s what I want to do. I’m not interested in academia-as-institutionalized-in-higher-ed but I love scholarship. I don’t want to not be a scholar.

I’ve been reviewing my notes from Katie Rose Guest Pryal’s Book The Freelance Academic and this quote is standing out to me today:

Our tracks are, by necessity, only limited by our own creativity. They literally are what we make them. (p. 49 in the Kindle edition)

So this is my track today. Freelance academic/independent scholar-librarian.

Tomorrow: Digging into Raul Pacheco-Vega’s blog for help setting up my workflows moving forward.

I’m planning to return and clean up formatting and add links to videos once they’re online, but for now, here’s a collection of everything I tweeted from the presentations at #FanLIS, handily compiled and tweeted for me by Noter Live.

ACE OF SPADES by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Chiamaka and Devon are both students at the prestigious Niveus Academy and total opposites. Devon is a nobody, a scholarship kid who spends all his time working on music composition, only noticed by his friend Jack. Chiamaka is the definition of Queen Bee, working hard to be noticed and celebrated. She is a brilliant science student with designs on Yale.

Chiamaka and Devon have three things in common, though: they are both prefects at their school this year, they are the only Black students at Niveus, and they are both victims of an anonymous texter calling themselves “Aces” and sharing Chi and Von’s secrets with the whole school.

⚠️: Author Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé provided an extensive list of content warnings for the book on her website. Chief among them are racism and homophobia but this thriller is full of potential triggers so I definitely recommend reviewing the list before reading.

The promotional materials call this book “Gossip Girl meets Get Out” and that description is spot-on. If I get too specific I’ll spoil more than I’d like, but it has the anonymous gossip and deep secrets, especially around personal relationships, of Gossip Girl and the “Oh no seriously get out of there” of Get Out. Multiple times revelations made me gasp and think “OHHHH!” There is some exposition at the beginning to introduce you to the characters and the setting, but as soon as Aces’s first message comes out, the pacing picks up and things get and stay intense.

The book also reminds me of Veronica Mars, with its focus on intrigue, detailed depiction of class differences, and teenagers managing their own affairs without much adult interference.

I definitely recommend this to readers who love gossip, mystery, or thrillers. Author Àbíké-Íyímídé says she has “has dreamt of writing books about black kids saving (or destroying) the world all her life” (lack of capitalization in the bio on her website). She has succeeded beautifully here.

Pre-order ACE OF SPADES now, out June 1 in the US and June 10 in the UK. Àbíké-Íyímídé offers some pre-order incentives on her website, so be sure to check those out!

Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan for the e-ARC of this book!

♠️❤️♣️♦️

[A phone displaying the US cover of ACE OF SPADES sits on top of scattered playing cards.]

Hello again, internet. I just finished writing the last thing I had to write for my assistantship. I’m taking a break and not hustling hustling for the next month or so. But I am planning to launch as an independent researcher and consultant in mid-June, and in case anyone else is interested in what that life is like, I thought I’d share some of my prospective work.

I really appreciate transparency such as when Dr. Katie Linder and Dr. Sara Langworthy talk about their income streams on the Make Your Way podcast, Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal talks about hers in her book The Freelance Academic, and Dr. Kelly J. Baker talks about hers on her blog. Because I haven’t launched yet, I can’t tell you how much money I’m making. But I can tell you what kind of clients I’m courting.

Here are some possibilities I have in the works:

• doing some curatorial work for my blogging host platform
• working with a small start-up to promote qualitative research and qualitative data analysis software
• editing theses and dissertations either through my own networking or as part of another organization’s network (both, if I can swing it)
• writing curriculum materials for Open Educational Resources
• working as an independent researcher again through both my own networking and as an affiliate of a consulting company

In addition to whatever paid work I get, I have a dream of also continuing to do my own research and maybe doing some creative writing (either creative non-fiction or YA fantasy), but we’ll see how much time and energy I have.

I’m auditing Stanford’s CS101 on EdX because while I love Harvard’s CS50x I think I need some back to basics stuff. (All of this recommended by the great FreeCodeCamp article, How to Hack Together Your Own CS Degree Online for Free.)

I’ll be jotting down some notes and reminders to myself here, adding future posts for this course as replies to this one.

If you’re a developer you’re going to be like “Wow, I know that already.” Yeah. It’s a 101 class, y’all.

Data Types

• numbers
• strings - text between quotation marks, e.g., “Dr. Kimberly Hirsh”

Some Javascript stuff

• // comes before a comment; a comment is not run