When I use Post Kind WordPress editor URLs with the ?kindurl= extension, I get an editor window that only has a title box and a response properties box but nothing else, and the response properties box only has the “response properties” title and no content. I first encountered this with Inoreader’s custom URL feature but found it also occurred when inputting the editor URL directly into my browser’s address bar. Here’s an example URL I might give Inoreader, where [URL] is Inoreader’s URL variable: example.com/wp-admin/…
If I do it with just kind=reply without trying to use kindurl=, it’s a normal editor with reply selected as the post kind and a blank response properties box as you’d expect.
The main agenda item for the meeting was reviewing that preliminary bibliography and settling on the areas for my comprehensive examination package. One of my committee members couldn’t make it; there were 5 of us on the call. I had my prospectus and bibliography in front of me and my bullet journal at hand for taking notes. (My method is really a hybrid of Ryder Carroll’s bullet journal method and Raul Pacheco-Vega’s Everything Notebook, with some modifications of my own thrown in, but that’s a different blog post for a different day.)
I can’t tell you how this will go for you, but it had a couple of really positive outcomes for me.
First, with respect to information literacy: There is a whole world out there of information literacy standards, guidelines, and models, and quite frankly, by the time you’ve been working in this field for 10 years the basics start to get a little stale. I had them all on my preliminary bibliography and Casey Rawson suggested that, since we all know those models and nobody really wants to read about them again, I could focus on newer models. She specifically mentioned embodied information practices (especially as conceived by Annemaree Lloyd), as my research focuses on the information practices of cosplayers and cosplay is an embodied fan practice.
I mentioned to the committee that I was going to start with a focus on information literacy in affinity spaces and work my way out from there, and Heather Moorefield-Lang suggested that I consider subcultures as well as affinity spaces, specifically suggesting the work of Vanessa Lynn Kitzie, who has done a lot of work on the information practices of LGBTQ+ individuals.
Taking these two suggestions together led me to a complete reframing of my conceptualization of information practice and information literacy, moving me from thinking of it as an individual, knowledge-based process to a sociocultural set of practices. More on that another time, but this was a huge and immensely valuable shift.
Second, with respect to methods: Casey pointed out that the “mixed methods” piece of my study (counting qualitative codes for frequency) wasn’t really enough to qualify it as a true mixed methods study, and so it might be better for me to just focus my methods chapter on qualitative methods. This was great because it always helps me to narrow my scope; I tend to want to be far more thorough than is necessary or appropriate when I write a literature review.
After the meeting ended, I felt great. I was really excited about my work and excited about my committee, and those feelings have carried me through the last three months of slowly chipping away at the first two chapters of my comps package.
I’ve been working on editing the fourth episode of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast, Things of Bronze, and in that episode I talk about how being a mom is like being the Slayer.
And I go track down this interview with her, and save it for later, knowing it’s going in the February issue of Genetrix:
Symbiosis (The Four Seasons, 2013-2014) talks about relationships that nourish each other both physically and psychologically. It challenges the idea of a negated mother who also negates her body and her presence to her children, so they will all ultimately conform to our unattended, unloved, and unnourished society. It is not about being a “supermom.” It is about two complete beings that strengthen each other by the relationship they establish. That is where the mutual empowerment resides.
But also then I go back to Brownie & Graydon and flipping through I realize that Álvarez-Errecalde’s photograph is in a section called “Parent power,” with quotes like these:
As the death of family provoked the adoption of heroic identities in Batman and Spider-Man, new parents find themselves transformed by the birth of a child. (p. 130-131)
and
It is just as impossible to define any parent without acknowledging their parenthood, as it is to define Bruce Wayne without acknowledging Batman. (p. 131)
and
Parenthood, like crime-fighting, is labor-intensive, exhausting and emotionally draining... Superhero imagery allows parents to express the tremendous strength that is required in parenthood, along with the new sets of values that emerge with their new identity. (p. 131)
And this is all serendipitously making me feel immensely seen and I’m on the verge of tears.
I just finished reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. And now I want to be best friends with her, because she gets me.
This book means so much to me. I didn’t have a good time in college. I was lonely. I had no interest in partying. I was clinically depressed. And fandom saved my life.
I did have an adorable tall boyfriend with a receding hairline. (Reader, I married him.) He talked through my magnum opus with me, a blatant Mary Sue in which I wrote my hopes and dreams for season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I deleted it from fanfiction.net in a fit of embarrassment in 2009, but I’m planning to resurrect it from my old personal domain in the Wayback Machine and post it to AO3 soon.)
I was more distant from my sister than I’d ever been in my life. My little brother was very sick and ended up hospitalized.
I got a job explicitly to pay my way to fannish events. I made so many fandom friends. I printed up pages and pages of fanfic.
I started a fan campaign. It gave me a sense of purpose when my grades were tanking and my mom was in the hospital.
I embarked on a teaching career in a town two hundred miles away from anyone I loved. I read fanfic and posted on forums and LiveJournal and it was my only human contact outside of work.
This book just feels very personal and I’m so grateful to Rainbow Rowell for writing it.
Most people who know me know that the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of my favorite things. It has been the dominant pop culture text in my life for almost 20 years, so of course my husband bought our son the BtVS picture book for his second birthday.
We read it for the first time a few nights ago, and, y’all, this is done so lovingly, I almost cried. If you love BtVS and you like picture books, pick this one up.
The plot is simple. This is, let’s say, an AU where Buffy lived in Sunnydale when she was in elementary school. Don’t think about canon too hard. The writers of the show didn’t, so we probably shouldn’t, either. Sixteen year old Buffy introduces herself at the beginning, then sends us in a flashback to when she was eight years old and afraid of the dark, because OF COURSE there is a monster in her closet.
And you know how BtVS is all about literalizing tropes, so… She’s not wrong. She recruits Willow, Xander, and Giles to help her with the problem, and of course through the power of friendship it all works out.
But where the whole thing shines is the little touches in the illustration. Each time I read it, I find a new BtVS easter egg. I don’t want to spoil too much, so here are just a couple examples.
Below, I’ve noted a few special Sunnydale locations in the front endpapers in yellow.
Next, a few things worth noticing in Buffy’s room, this time in blue:
And this is just the beginning. Each page has tons of this stuff, and the book’s climax has the best references of all.
Right before the climax, though, we get this page:
And really, isn’t stepping into the darkness together what BtVS is all about?
A week ago, my friend shared the video for Lizzo’s song “Juice.”
I commented, “I want to feel as cute as she is.”
I started watching Dietland last week. I got to the scene where the main character, Plum, goes to her Waist Watchers meeting, and everything they talked about started to feel familiar:
Logging literally every bite you eat. Telling yourself you’re doing it to look good naked.
When Janice showed up with her amazing dipped hair and fabulous eye makeup and colorful clothes, I loved her immediately. And then when she responds to the idea that she is here to be her best self with “Excuse me?” and then launches in to her lovely monologue:
I love myself... I came here to get some help to lose weight because I have back problems, not because I hate my body... I am a unicorn. I am a goddess.
I was ready to cheer.
In the one-on-one at the end of the scene, the facilitator reminds Plum that, “Food is fuel. That is all.”
Later, there’s a scene where Plum absentmindedly licks a little bit of frosting off her finger, then realizes what she’s done and runs to the sink to try and spit it out.
There are a million tricks: put half your food away as soon as you get it at a restaurant. (I actually like that one.) Drink water and fill up on vegetables before you go to a party so there will be no room in your stomach for treats. And there are all of the fashion rules to make you look slimmer, too: black. Only vertical stripes. Prints on a very precise scale to match your body.
I realized watching Dietland how tired I was of this nonsense.
I have been trying to lose weight since I was 20 years old. And I know I started later than many other people. I have tried Slim-Fast. I have tried ChangeOne. I have tried the Fat Flush diet. I have done two elimination diets. I have walked on the treadmill. I have done the rowing machine. I have done bodyweight exercises. I have used hand weights. I have used gallon jugs as weights. I have done all the things you can do to make water taste better. I have brought my own special foods to parties.
And I’ve also tried intuitive eating and Health at Every Size.
The only correlation I have found between my actions and my body’s shape is that when I eat fewer inflammatory foods, I’m less-inflamed. So that informs how I think about food. Food is one of life’s great pleasures. It is a centerpiece for social functions. It is a source of comfort. And it is fuel. I want to give my body anti-inflammatory, mostly whole foods, because it gives me energy and is more flavorful. But not to punish it for being the wrong size or shape.
Lizzo said in this interview with the New York Times, “I had to really look myself in the mirror and say, this is it…This is the person I am going to be for the rest of my life and it is not going to change.”
I need to love this vessel I’m in. This chronically ill, hard-to-clothe piece of flesh that carries me around the world, that created the most amazing person I’ve ever known. I need to get okay with it truly at every. Size.
I’ve tried a million things to fix my mood - not things that move directly toward giving me the neurotransmitters (a thing I wholeheartedly endorse getting via pharmaceuticals if your body isn’t making them), but things that indirectly help: sun lamps. Fish oil supplements. Scheduled friend times. Gratitude journaling. Affirmations.
I’ve tried gamifying my habits with Habitica and Fitocracy.
I have more than five different books about how to get my home organized and keep it clean. It isn’t organized. It’s only clean because my husband cleans it.
I have two different books about improving my wardrobe. I have four about fixing my finances.
I subscribe to two self-care newsletters and two self-care podcasts. But at this point, self-care feels like another to-do list item that overwhelms me, not something that actually involves caring for myself.
I read this New York Times piece on the genius of insomnia, and thought about all the different ways I’ve tried to fix my “bad sleep hygiene.” Red light bulbs. Blue light filters on my devices. Yellow glasses. White noise. Audiobooks. No caffeine after 4 pm. Using the bedroom for nothing but sleep.
And then I thought, “What if everything I am - everything I’ve tried to improve in this particular, optimizing, tool-utilizing way, is just fine?”
And then I thought, “Well, what if I try living as if it is, anyway?”
What if I give all facets of myself the nutrients they need, without judgment? What if I purchase things from companies that affirm the idea that I’m already great, rather than selling me the idea that I need to be corrected? What if, when I wake up at 4 am, I don’t chastise myself for being a bad sleeper, but instead use that time to relax while awake? What if the only self-improvement projects I take on are related to my curiosity, my desire to grow and learn?
And I decided I will live this way. I’m going to operate on the assumption that everything about me is exactly enough.
Some notes on Millennial burnout. This started as a Twitter thread because I needed a frictionless place to write my initial ideas, and apparently I was hoping they would get some attention. (They didn’t, really, and that’s fine now that I’ve slept on it.)
Anne Helen’s excellent piece on Millennial burnout sketches out a framework for us to think about why (white, middle class) Millennials are burned out. She admits that a framework is not a solution, and in her newsletter that acts as a sort of commentary track she talks about both why she didn’t use academic jargon (BLESS HER) and also didn’t offer a solution (which I’m sure is disappointing/frustrating for some people). Tiana Clark offers a valuable critique about the limits of this sort of generational thinking and its failure to capture the experiences of people of color. Helen published additional perspectives on what Millennial burnout looks like for different people: black women, first-generation immigrants, queer people, chronically ill people, people with disabilities, people at the intersections of more than one of these identities, and more.
I’ve collected some less in-depth pieces on the phenomenon in my Pocket, like Kristin Iversen’s Why Millennials Are Always Tired (found via Holisticism’s newsletter), which approaches Millennial exhaustion more from the perspective of the youngest Millennials, as opposed to Helen’s piece coming from the perspective of older Millennials. (Jesse Singal’s Don’t Call Me a Millennial – I’m an Old Millennial is my favorite piece that makes it clear how old Millennials and young Millennials differ and what the inflection points are for Millennialness.)
Helen says:
You don’t fix burnout by going on vacation. You don’t fix it through “life hacks,” like inbox zero, or by using a meditation app for five minutes in the morning, or doing Sunday meal prep for the entire family, or starting a bullet journal. You don’t fix it by reading a book on how to “unfu*k yourself.” You don’t fix it with vacation, or an adult coloring book, or “anxiety baking,” or the Pomodoro Technique, or overnight fucking oats.
This is basically a caricature of my life. I have been an avid follower of Lifehacker, obsessed with Inbox Zero, installed and uninstalled Headspace and Calm, prepped meals for the week ahead, used a Bullet Journal for approaching five years, read and re-read Unf*ck Your Habitat, have the immense privilege of being able to take a beach vacation annually, have a huge stack of adult coloring books, anxiety baked my way through my Master of Science degree, powered through PhD writing using the Pomodoro Technique, and had overnight oats for breakfast every day for a week. (Other things that won't fix it: mason jar salads. An Instant Pot. Subscribing to every self-care newsletter and podcast. Witchery.)
And I agree with Helen that
...individual action isn’t enough. Personal choices alone won’t keep the planet from dying, or get Facebook to quit violating our privacy. To do that, you need paradigm-shifting change.
But at the same time, I can't sit and wait on that paradigm shift. Helen doesn't have a plan of action, but I need one. So that's what I nattered about in that Twitter thread. And here it is, summed up:
We have to perceive ourselves, and by extension others, as creatures of inherent worth, not merely parties to transactions, in spite of existing within an economic system that views us exactly as such. Tiana Clark points out that being a literal commodity was an actual, physical reality for black people until 1865. I think our economic system still relies on people seeing themselves as engines or tools.
I think we have to reject that idea with our whole hearts.
When I was a freshman in college, I saw a clinical social worker in my school’s Counseling and Psychological Services department. I saw him once and never again, because he enraged me. But now, almost 20 years later, I’m realizing he was really right in one thing about his assessment of me. He’d asked me to tell him about myself. And after I did, he’d pointed out that everything I’d told him was about my achievements: the grades I’d gotten, the scholarships I’d won. I left angry. Of course those things were how I defined myself. Of course those things were what made me a person of value in the world.
My 18 year-old-self had completely bought into the idea that her value could be measured and had to do with the production of valued things. (In my case, scholarly output. That’s still the valued thing I try to produce.)
Almost-38-year-old me is ready to reject that idea. I have value because I am a person who exists. I don’t need to be productive all the time. I feel a sense of purpose when I work, but that work is not what makes me a person.
The current version of me is ready to move into this way of thinking.
Many thanks to Austin Kleon for first running Anne Helen’s piece across my radar.
Featured image is my favorite panel from Joss Whedon’s run on the Astonishing X-Men, Vol 3 #22, drawn by John Cassaday. Colors by Laura Martin. Letters by Chris Eliopoulos.
It’s January 9 and I’m finally ready to talk about my intentions for this year.
I selected PHASE as my word of the year because I wanted to capture my intention to be chill in the face of cyclical experiences. To accept that my energy will ebb and flow. To surf the big waves when they come, being as productive as I can, and then to rest at low tide, letting my body recover. To recognize that whatever hard parenting moment I’m having at any time is just that, a parenting moment, even if it’s a moment where my kid doesn’t sleep for longer than two hours at a stretch for four weeks, because eventually we’ll come back around to a 6, 7, 8 hour stretch.
One of my favorite lines from the Aeneid is Book I, line 199: “dabit deus his quoque finem” (forgive the lack of macrons, please) - which comes from an even better couplet:
O socii—neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum—
O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem.
As happens so often, translating this directly is a challenge. And I don’t have my Fagles at hand and I’m not content with the Williams or Dryden translations at the Perseus Project, so I’ll paraphrase. At this point, Aeneas and his friends/comrades, who have sailed away from Troy, narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Greeks in the Trojan war, are shipwrecked at Carthage. And he rallies them, telling them, essentially, “We’ve been through bad stuff before; we’ve endured harder challenges than this; god will give an end to these things, also.” It’s the Wheel of Fortune in the Tarot. It’s the Circle of Life.
[caption id=“attachment_6507” align=“aligncenter” width=“443”] Wheel of Fortune from the Moonchild Tarot.[/caption]
Each of us has survived up to this point, and whatever we’re dealing with now, things will change before too long. And that might mean they’re worse, or it might mean they’re better, but whatever they are, they’ll be different.
That’s the key interpretation the Tarot reader gave me of the Wheel of Fortune right before my birthday, and it is the energy that I, as a chronically ill woman, as a mother, need to embrace. It is one of my key lessons in life: you’re strong, you’ve gotten through everything so far, you’ll get through this too. Don’t get too comfortable, don’t get too complacent, don’t despair too much.
So PHASE is my word, which captures cycles like the moon, which captures stages of projects, which in its verb form can be defined as “to adjust so as to be in a synchronized condition.” Also, it’s what you call it when Kitty Pryde uses her power.
I’m not big on resolutions, but here are the things I’m feeling/trying this year:
I wrote 2 pages about new models of information literacy in affinity spaces today, or about 968 words.
I’m trying a new thing with my writing. Usually my process is Read > Take Notes > Concept Map > Outline > Write, the whole paper at once. But right now I’m trying a thing where it’s Read > Take Notes > Quick Outline > Write for just a small chunk of the paper and I’m really liking it.
I’ve probably read that this was a good way to write in a million places, but I can’t identify any of them right now.
There are lots of gaps, but I wouldn’t even know those gaps were there before I started writing, so there we are. If you’ve been struggling, maybe try this more cyclical writing process.
I find myself admiring people who seem together. They are well-coiffed. Their clothes are carefully styled. They welcome you into their homes and effortlessly manage to make it feel like everything is totally fine and will continue to be so. They are pleasant. They are calm.
I recently gave myself permission to accept that I will never be one of these people.
Smooth and collected will never be part of my personal brand.
Then I gave myself permission to think about what is, naturally, part of my personal brand, and go all-in on that. Here’s what I came up with:
Kimberly Hirsh
