When you realize you’re closer to being the Darling Mermaid Darlings than you are to being Chuck or the Pie Maker…

Heeeeey Twitter, anybody up for being my writing buddy and offering feedback on a 153-word abstract for a lit review? Topic is TRPGs in library teen services.

To everyone who follows me in hopes of seeing pictures of @tceles_B_hsup’s kid… Sorry.

This is Damask Bowie, reporting for NPR News.

@allisunrae I’m definitely still working on the critique part. But honestly, if you simultaneously synthesize instead of summarize AND provide a strong description of each study’s context, methods, and results, you’ll be way ahead of most people.

I have made a grave error. I ate carrots and hummus for lunch, but that is not a lunch. It’s a snack.

A thing I’m telling myself today that you may need to hear, too: Who do you want to be later? Go ahead and do the things that person will do.

The first issue of my newsletter goes out today. Thoughts on peak nostalgia and assurances that you are wonderful will be included. tinyletter.com/kimberlyh… to subscribe.

I find myself having a lot of existential crises lately. I think it makes sense for somebody who is preparing for comprehensive exams but hasn’t fully articulated the research question for her dissertation, is parenting full-time with four hours a day of childcare, is sharing caregiving responsibilities for a post-op parent with her siblings, is in the middle of a chronic illness flare up, and lives in the world. (When I put it like that, it sounds like I have stuff going on!)

These crises come up especially when my kid is sleeping, especially especially when he’s having a rough teething night, so I feel like there’s little point in trying to sleep myself.

It was in the midst of just such a crisis that I decided to return to the work of Katie Linder, whom I think I found because she is one of the few people actually doing podcasts explicitly about scholarly communication and engaged scholarship. I took a break from her stuff when this flare up got unignorable, but it felt like exactly what I needed in the middle of my latest existential crisis.

And it was, even more than I anticipated. Dr. Linder’s latest blog post about Radical Self-Trust articulates exactly how I operate when I’m at my best, when I’m managing to keep the imposter syndrome and existential dread at bay. I highly recommend checking it out and following her work.

I’m reading Emilie Wapnick’s book How to Be Everything and I got to this section header and felt like she was speaking very directly to me.

Several weeks ago now I was having a late night conversation with W. We were talking about how he would have fared at my high school, where he would have gone if he hadn’t gone to the local Friends School instead.

“I think you’d be okay. I mean, I was in the middle of my class, and I did alright.”

I was tenth in my high school class of about 300. I was in roughly the top 3%. And I perceived (and apparently, continue to perceive) that as the middle.

When my final report card came, my dad said, “Why didn’t you tell us you were tenth in your class? That’s amazing!” I said, “Well, you know, it’s not like I was valedictorian or salutatorian, so it’s not a big deal.”

I think my perception might be skewed.

It’s a very privileged problem to have, I’m aware, but I suspect this kind of thinking contributes to mental illness in academia.