TFW you have to go back to the literature and carefully review it to figure out the next step for your data analysis.

I just added a Reading page to my site. It lists every book I’ve read since March 2007. Over time, I’m planning to add links to posts about the books. I’m also going to flesh out a full Books and Reading category. I deleted the one I already had because I had been really inconsistent about putting things in it. If you peruse it and see any books you want to chat about, let’s do!

Want to read: Want by Lynn Steger Strong 📚

🔖 📚 I found myself wanting to read so many of the books on Book Riot’s Best Books of 2020 So Far list that I decided it makes more sense to bookmark the whole list than to add each title individually.

📝 📚

“…we have little hope of producing excellent writing unless we write a great deal… If we want lots of practice and experience, we can’t limit our writing to times when our mind is operating well… If we write enough, we have at least a chance of producing some excellent bits.”
— Peter Elbow, Writing with Power

📝📚 I’ve started doing The Artist’s Way. Yesterday I read the chapter for Week 1 (which, now that I’m doing CS50x, I really want to rename Week 0). This week is about recovering a sense of safety as an artist, replacing negative statements with positive ones, and confronting fears and blocks.

For me, I don’t have much trouble starting or creating. I have trouble finishing and revising (though I quite enjoy working as an editor for other people). So I’ve been thinking about that, about why I fizzle out at the revision stage. Still working on it.

But just as an example, I’ve been sitting on this accepted with revisions paper for far too long now, and I make a little progress every once in a while, but I get stuck. I thought of something today that might help, at least when dealing with my sense of inadequacy in response to reviewers’ comments. (I need to get over it, I know. I’m working on it.)

I wrote the first draft of that paper four years ago.

I am a different, better writer than I was then.

Now Me can serve as an editor for Then Me.

I’ll let you know if this helps.

I’ll be 39 in a little over a week, so I decided it was time to just lean into becoming my mother. 📚

Finished reading: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo 📚

From NPR: A Competition To Finish Louisa May Alcott’s Story - I mean why have a competition when you could just hire Mary Robinette Kowal? 📚

What to an American Is the Fourth of July? Power comes before freedom, not the other way around. - Awesome piece by Ibram X. Kendi about how resistance is patriotic, who is free, and the relationship between power and freedom.

Oh yeah THAT’S why I always stop listening after “Cabinet Battle #2.” 😭

I’m watching Hamilton & of course it’s amazing but I’m especially blown away by how much more nuanced Daveed Diggs’s French accent & Jonathan Groff’s Received Pronunciation are here than in the cast recording. Bravi!

Started CS50x and programming with Scratch last night and definitely decided to build a robot to be my best friend.

Want to read: The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuil 📚

I just realized that part of watching Hamilton will involve watching “It’s Quiet Uptown” and now I’m thinking maybe my first watch SHOULDN’T be alone? I don’t know.

I drew The Tower for my daily tarot pull. There’s a person on the left falling off the tower. There’s a person on the right diving off the tower. I’m going to be the person on the right. (It… It might be an ivory tower.)

Getting back into 100 Days of #bluemind with a Blue Mind Company sticker on my second notebook for 2020.

Want to read: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 📚

Want to read: A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow 📚

Want to read: The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall 📚

📚 Finished reading The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs (@ayjay)

Another one I enjoyed and hope to write more about soon.

📚 Just finished reading The Power by Naomi Alderman. It’s so good and I want to write about it in light of some articles I read recently about the end of #girlboss culture. I hope I’ll get to it tomorrow.

📚 Want to read:

Hi friend.

I’m taking a break from most social media right now. It can be valuable for a lot of reasons, but I need a little time away. Usually I’m back within 24 hrs of making these declarations, but we’ll see. I’ll still be posting here at my website.

What’s up with you? I’m making good progress on my dissertation. I have finished my first round of coding for information horizon maps and am going to move on to collapsing some codes together. For example, “YouTube,” “youtube,” and “YouTube tutorials” can probably just all fall under “YouTube.”

I’m having widespread pain A LOT this week. I don’t know if it’s what I’m eating, or what. I’m also having some unpleasant side effects from upping my magnesium supplement, I think, but I’m going to give it another week or two to see if my body adjusts. I assume lots of people with chronic illnesses have been having flares during quarantine, because of the stress.

We got my kid a little pool - it’s technically a dog bath pool, but it works for kids, too. It’s the best thing. He will play in there for a really long time, and it’s so cute to watch. Yesterday, he was playing in there and a bunny came over to the garden he and my mother-in-law have set up, and it must have sat there munching within 6 - 10 feet of us for an hour or more. So cute!

I’ve been doing a lot of exploration related to what comes next after school, and have circled back around to thinking some sort of librarian role is best, though probably not a traditional sort of public or school librarian. Maybe working for a library vendor, or something remote. I took a bunch of assessments, and my values, priorities, and skills all align with librarianship which, well, makes a lot of sense, given that I will have spent 8 years in library school by the time I graduate.

Last week, or maybe earlier this week, I was feeling tough and awesome. Today I’m feeling noodly and a little sad. I know I’ll come back around, though. It’s always important to remember the coming back around.

Anyway, I’m off to work.

Love to you all, friends!

Oh oh oh, so THIS is what it feels like to care about something besides keeping your child and yourself alive. 💓💗💖 (I’m referring here to my excitement over conversations with NoveList & Ludi Price about the intersection of fan studies and Library & Information Science.)